Coming of the ‘Babble Machine’

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12217, 15 August 1925, Page 11

Coming of the ‘Babble Machine’

When the Mouth is Mightier than the Sword

By STEPHEN SOUTHWOLD,

ALKING down the main, thoroughfare of a London suburb the other evening I heard a vast leathery voice bawling: “The Prince of Wales’s stay on the Gold Coast is likely to be prolonged. ... . grr-h-h-h - - » br-r-r----oooood . . . Cbe»l-

sea one, Port Tale one; Birmingham one , Nottingham Forest one. . . . grr-h h-h .... brr-r-r-ooooop Monsieur Harriot said that his defeat was due simply and solely. . . . grr-r-rooooop . . . -r-r-rooooomp.” I stopped in the middle of a small knot of people, and there, above my head, was a great trumpet protruding from the fanlight of a wireless shop. Now read the following from “When the Sleeper Wakes,” by H. G. Wells: “Graham’s attention was immediately arrested by a violent loud hoot, followed by. a vast leathery 1 oice: ‘The master is sleeping peacefully,’ it vociferated. ‘He is m excellent health. , . He says women are more beautiful than ever. Galloop! Wow! Our wonderful civilisation astonishes him beyond measure. Beyond all measure. Galloop 1 ’ Graham sfopped at the first sentence, end, looking up, beheld a foolish trumpet face from which this was brayed. This was the General Intelligence Machine, or Babble Machine,, as they were popularly called.” Wells wrote his wonderful story but twenty-five years ago, and it is supposed to describe the world of A.D. 2100. When Wells wrote wireless and flying were both but dreams. Yet he foresaw not only the things that have come be commonplaces, but the things we still leave in the region of barest possibility. You and I see clearly enough, for example, that the product of two and two is four. But men of Wells’s type 6ee not only that simple product, but the distant product of powers of two. To put it mathematically: Not simply that 2 multiplied by 2 equals 4, but that the third power of 2 multiplied by the third power of 2 is equal i to 64. For once, however, it seems that the vision of tho prophet moved too slowly —not two hundred years but a mere twenty-five have been enough to parallel much that is found in “When the dleeoer Wakes.” It is true that the Babble Machines were provided with a screen upon which the figure of the speaker could he shown, if it were so desired, at the same time as his message emerged from the trumpet. But this, too, we shall reach within the next ten years. All that the coming of the Bahble Machines implies to us it is impossible to foresee; that they will be an im mens© power for good or evil it is sheer blindness to doubt. But it seems at least to suggest ono very definite fact;

the man of the future who is to move great masses of people will be, the orator and not the writer. Inasmuch as that is true we gjo back to the beginnings of civilisation, before the written word. It follows inevitably that the. heyday of the pen is over. That the novelist is doomed, as a writer of novels as we know them, appears certain. The motion picture points the way to his oblivion. To see where the motion picture plus tho gramophone lead, let us return again to Wells’s romance. Graham, the Sleeper, had been wandering about the room in which he was confined by the council, when he noticed that in the middle of one wall was an apparatus about a yard square, and with a smooth white face. Above were rows and rows of lettered cylind-

era, each supplied' with a small stud. Graham pressed one of the studs: “On the fiat surface was now a little picture, very vividly coloured, . and in this picture were figures that mov ed. Not only did they move, but they were conversing in clear small voices. It was exactly like reality xiewed through an inverted operaglass, and hoard through a long tube. His interest was seized at once by the situation, which presented a man pacing up and down and vociferat mg angry things to a pretty but petulant woman. Both were in the picturesque costume that seemed so strange to Graham.” Here, undoubtedly, is the novel of the future. The playwright and the scenario writer are apparently still assured of a long run; but the novelist, the essayist, the poet, the journalist, and. the editor (as we know them today) are moving rapidly towards that spot where lies buried the last of the dodos.