H. G. Wells - The World Set Free

(Back when I was studying the history of science at Notre Dame I took a class called The Technology of War and Peace. In that class we had to give a presentation on a related book, this is a transcript of my presentation.)


The World Set Free
by
H. G. Wells

It is impossible to discuss the writings of H. G. Wells without also discussing the man, for his writings reflect both his deepest fears and his greatest hopes. He was born in 1866, a member of the lower-middle-class. His mother was a domestic, his father an unsuccessful business man. Although he was apprenticed to trades several times, his escape from this existence came in the form of a scholarship to the Normal School of Science in South Kensington in 1884. One of his teachers in his first year there was T. H. Huxley, the staunch defender of Darwin. Despite early success, Wells did not take a degree. He wound up in London, teaching, and writing essays and popularizations of science. In 1895 he published The Time Machine. In it he presented a theme that was to dominate all his works. The narrator says of the Time Traveler that he “thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end.” But, the narrator continues, “If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so.” (The Science Fiction of H. G. Wells by McConnell, p. 11)

By the turn of the century he was the darling of the British literary world. In 1903 he joined the Fabian Society, a group that strongly supported socialism but believed that the change would only come gradually through reasoned argument rather than class warfare. By 1905 he had written some 24 books, including almost all of his science fiction (McConnell, p. 17), and this level of productivity continued for most of his life. But by 1911, the tenor of his works changed and they became little more than vehicles for his ideas of social reform and his prophecies of the doom that awaited mankind unless they woke up and listened to him. In 1914, on the eve of the first World War, he published The World Set Free. This is the novel that gave the world the ‘atomic bomb’ and depicted an atomic war. For the most part, in telling the story of this novel I shall let Wells speak for himself, quoting liberally and often, and only adding explanatory and connective details as needed.

It opens, as Wells was wont to do, with a sweeping panorama of human history in which he begins with the statement that “the history of mankind is the history of the attainment of external power” (p. 7) the greatest expression of this is mankind’s desire to find “the snare that will some day catch the sun” (p. 13). Inspired by Soddy’s writings, Wells concludes this prelude in 1910, with a professor of physics named Rufus giving a lecture on Radium and radioactivity in Edinburgh.

The first chapter opens in 1933, when the scientist Holsten manages to set up atomic disintegration in a minute particle of bismuth; it explodes with great violence into a heavy gas of extreme radio-activity, which disintegrates in turn over a period of seven days. Coincidentally, it was in 1933 that the Joliot-Curies first produced radioactive phosphorous by bombarding aluminum with electrons (H. G. Wells: Discoverer of the Future by Haynes, p. 41). It takes Holsten another year to show that the final result is gold. The Alchemist’s Dream. In this first experiment, however, “Holsten knew that he had opened a way for mankind, however narrow and dark it might still be, to worlds of limitless power” (p. 26). He is stunned by his discovery and the ramifications for the future of mankind and spends the next day wandering around Hampstead Heath in a daze. He “felt like an imbecile who has presented a box full of loaded revolvers to a Creche” (p. 28). In the evening he stands outside the doors of Saint Paul’s Cathedral listening to the service. He feels oppressed and scared “by his sense of the immense consequences of his discovery. He had a vague idea that night that he ought not to publish his results, that they were premature, that some secret association of wise men should take care of his work and hand it on from generation to generation until the world was riper for its practical applications” (p. 30).

Holsten continues his soul searching: “His intelligence struggled against this mood and struggled for a time in vain. He reassured himself against the invasion of this disconcerting idea that he was something strange and inhuman, a loose wanderer from the flock returning with evil gifts from his sustained unnatural excursions amidst the darknesses and phosphorescences beneath the fair surfaces of life” (p. 31). Finally, he concludes that “It has begun. It is not for me to reach out to consequences I cannot foresee. I am a part, not a whole; I am a little instrument in the armory of Change. If I were to burn all these papers, before a score of years had passed some other man would be doing this...” (P. 32).

And so Holsten relieves himself of responsibility, yet one of the things that Wells believed was that we should think about where our science is leading us. We should think about what the future may hold. We should not let ourselves merely drift along.

It takes another twenty years before Holsten’s discovery bears fruit, with the first Holsten-Roberts engine replacing the steam engine in electrical generating stations. Other engines quickly followed, the Dass-Tata engine, used chiefly in vehicles and the American Kemp and Krupp-Erlanger engines. By autumn 1954 a gigantic replacement of industrial methods and machinery was taking place. Within 3 years the old polluting automobiles were replaced with “light and clean and shimmering shapes of silvered steel” (p. 34). The light weight of the engines revolutionizes aircraft design, creating a new age in personal transport: “The Leap into the Air” (p. 34). Technological innovation flourished. The prosperity of the patent holding companies was enhanced by the fact that the recoverable waste product in both the Dass-Tata and the Holsten-Roberts engines was gold. But beneath this brightness of wealth and productivity “there was a gathering darkness, a deepening dismay. If there was a vast development of production, there was also a huge destruction of values.”... “Millions of coal miners, steel workers upon the old lines, vast swarms of unskilled or under-skilled laborers in innumerable occupations were being flung out of employment by the superior efficiency of the new machinery, the rapid fall in the cost of transit was destroying high land values at every center of population, the value of existing house property became problematical, gold was undergoing headlong depreciation, all the securities upon which the credit of the world rested were slipping and sliding, banks were tottering, the stock exchanges were scenes of feverish panic” (p. 35).

In 1955 the suicide rate in the United States quadrupled. Violent crime increased. “The thing had come upon an unprepared humanity; it seemed as though human society was to be smashed by its own magnificent gains” (p. 36).

The story then shifts to the experiences of Frederick Barnet, told through the pages of an autobiographical novel that he published in 1970. It is through Barnet’s eyes that we see the collapse of the old world and the outbreak of war. Barnet was of the upper class, until his father was ruined by the atomic revolution and took his own life. In an instant, Barnet’s world was turned upside down. He finds himself on the streets with the millions of other displaced workers. As he wanders the city of London, now recreated with elevated side walks that raise the haves above the ground, to which the have nots have been relegated, he sees a society literally stratified by class. Above him the rich flit about in their personal aircraft, below him are the beggars and dispossessed. And he thinks to himself: “I saw an immense selfishness, a monstrous disregard for anything but pleasure and possession in all those people above us, but I saw how inevitable that was, how certainly if the richest had changed places with the poorest, that things would have been the same. What else can happen when men use science and every new thing that science gives and all available intelligence and energy to manufacture wealth and appliances, and leave government and education to the rustling traditions of hundreds of years ago?” (P. 54).

This catalog of the decline of human society brought on by the sudden changes of atomic power is cut off by the outbreak of what Wells calls “The Last War.” He does not give us details about how it started although prior to its outbreak there was talk of war looming on the horizon. Talk of the “Central European powers suddenly striking the Slav Confederacy, with France and England going to the help of the Slavs” (p. 55). We don’t even get many details on the waging of the war itself. We know that it was primarily a ground war, but Wells does not have machine guns, just infantry and rifles. At the beginning, airplanes are used primarily for reconnaissance, and only later do they get used in aerial combat, and of course, for dropping the bombs. The center of command of the allies fighting the Central European powers is in Paris, and is destroyed by bombs. With the allied military effectively decapitated, the scientists and airmen decide to carry out their own plan, a plan that they would have carried out with or without approval from the military commanders. As one of the airmen puts it “now, there’s nothing on earth to stop us going to Berlin and giving them tit-for-tat” (p. 67).

The bombs that they drop on Berlin use a substance known as Carolinium, which is analogous to plutonium in many of its properties. It is a continuing explosive, meaning that once its atomic decay process has been started, it continues with a furious radiation of energy that cannot be stopped. The bombs used by the allies are black spheres with handles for lifting them. They are composed of pure Carolinium, coated with a substance that induces the radioactive decay of the Carolinium when exposed to air, the whole thing being covered over with a nonreactive substance. A small celluloid stud between the handles is bitten off to admit air to the device, activating the radioactive decay. Thus resulting in a chain reaction. The picture is this: Two airmen in a plane, the pilot and the bombardier. The bombardier sits with these spherical bombs between his legs. He lifts one up by its handles, bites off the celluloid stud, and drops the bomb over the side of the airplane. “What happened when the celluloid stud was opened was that the inducive oxydized and became active. Then the surface of the Carolinium sphere began to degenerate. This degeneration passed only slowly into the substance of the bomb. A moment or so after its explosion began it was still mainly an inert sphere exploding superficially, a big inanimate nucleus wrapped in flames and thunder. Those that were thrown from aeroplanes fell in this state, they reached the ground still mainly solid and, melting soil and rock in their progress, bored into the earth. There, as more and more of the Carolinium became active, the bomb spread itself into a monstrous cavern of fiery energy at the base of what became very speedily a miniature active volcano. The Carolinium, unable to disperse, freely drove into and mixed up with a boiling confusion of molten soil and superheated steam and so remained spinning furiously and maintaining an eruption that lasted for years or months or weeks according to the size of the bomb employed and the chances for dispersal. Once launched the bomb was absolutely unapproachable and uncontrollable until its forces were nearly exhausted, and from the crater that burst open above it, puffs of heavy incandescent vapor and fragments of viciously punitive rock and mud, saturated with Carolinium, and each a center of scorching and blistering energy, were flung high and far” (p. 73).

On a mountain-side above the town of Brissago in Switzerland, the surviving rulers of the world meet. They are called together by the French ambassador to the US, a man named Leblanc, “to arrest if possible, before it was too late the debacle of civilization” (p. 93). “For the whole world was flaring then into a monstrous phase of destruction. Power after power about the armed globe sought to anticipate attack by aggression. They went to war in a delirium of panic, in order to use their bombs first. China and Japan had assailed Russia and destroyed Moscow, the United States had attacked Japan, India was in anarchistic revolt with Delhi a pit of fire spouting death and flame; the redoubtable King of the Balkans was mobilizing. It must have seemed plain at last to everyone in those days that the world was slipping headlong to anarchy. By the spring of 1959 from nearly two hundred centres, and every week added to their number, roared the unquenchable crimson conflagrations of the atomic bombs, the flimsy fabric of the world’s credit had vanished, industry was completely disorganized and every city, every thickly populated area was starving or trembled on the verge of starvation. Most of the capital cities of the world were burning; millions of people had already perished, and over great areas government was at an end. Humanity has been compared by one contemporary writer to a sleeper who handles matches in his sleep and wakes to find himself in flames” (p. 95).

Against this backdrop of destruction, Leblanc manages to gather the remnants of the world leaders in Brissago. A place chosen for its remoteness, for its distance from old associations. The natural leader of this conference is one King Egbert of England, who is going to show the rest of the leaders how to create a world government by being the first to give up his sovereignty. The only no-show is the King of the Balkans (also known as the ‘Slavic Fox’), who attempts to turn back the clock and make himself king of the world by sending airmen to bomb the conference. The plane is shot down, without dropping its bombs, and although there is no identification on the airmen, it’s pretty obvious to everyone who is responsible. Egbert travels to visit the Slavic Fox, ostensibly on an inspection mission, to verify that the Balkans do not possess atomic bombs. The Fox tries to smuggle the bombs out of the capital city, is caught, and killed. Now nothing stands in the way of the world government.

And so, out of the ashes of destruction of the old world, rises the new. There is not much to say about this utopia, it is like most utopias, long on dreams, short on practicality. It does not include capitalism, democracy (as we know it), or nations, states, or flags. English is its language. Education is universal. An index of human knowledge is being created, a world encyclopedia, in a sense, a world brain, long a dream of Wells.

Shortly after the publication of this novel, World War I broke out. Wells felt, in some way responsible. He began a shrill and vociferous journalistic campaign leading off with an essay titled: The war that will end war. It became a national slogan. Interestingly enough I have not yet found any evidence that the novel itself had much of an impact on the political tenor of the time. Perhaps it was simply that then, as now, science fiction is read more by scientists than by politicians. We do know that it did influence scientists. Leo Szilard read it and was impressed by the vision that Wells presented.

In 1939 war loomed once again upon the horizon. Wells was seventy-three, ill and tired. Sir Ernest Barker saw him sitting alone at a reception and asked how he was. “Poorly, Barker, Poorly,” he said. Barker asked him what he was doing. “Writing my epitaph.” He asked him what it was. “Quite short,” Wells said, “just this–God damn you all: I told you so.” (McConnell, p. 9). And what was Wells telling us? As Frank McConnell put it, in his book The Science Fiction of H. G. Wells it was this: “That the major disease of modern man is that his scientific and technological expertise has outstripped his moral and emotional development; that the human race, thanks to its inherited prejudices and superstitions and its innate pigheadedness, is an endangered species; and that mankind must learn–soon–to establish a state of worldwide cooperation by burying its old hatreds and its ancient selfishness, or face extinction.” (McConnell, p. 11).

H. G. Wells died on August 13, 1946, a year after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

What is Insurance for?

The health care debate has stirred up a lot of emotion and generated a lot of rhetoric, but the debate still doesn’t seem to be getting at the fundamental issue: what is insurance for? Insurance is to protect you against catastrophic circumstances. You don’t use your auto insurance to pay for routine auto maintenance do you? You don’t use your home owner’s insurance to pay for routine home maintenance do you? So why is it that we expect our health insurance to pay for our routine visits to the doctor?

I think that there are actually a few simple changes that could reap a large benefit to both individuals and society at large. First, you have to reform Tort law. This is necessary so that the malpractice insurance rates can be decreased, which will help bring down the cost of health care. Second, we should institute Health Savings Accounts for everyone who wants one. This would be pre-tax income. I’m not sure how the amount that could be contributed would be calculated (percentage of income, perhaps, or maybe no limit), but the money should not disappear at the end of the year if it hasn’t all been spent. Once the accounts are established, link a debit card to them and use them to pay the doctor directly at the time of service (no paperwork to file). Third, there needs to be transparency in health care cost. And last, but not least, health insurance should only be used for catastrophic illness or accident, not for routine visits to the doctor, and it should not be linked to your job.

If you do this, you will probably cover the majority of people, and then you just need to have a government program to catch the folks that fall between the cracks, because there will always be those people.

One thing that we should not do is require that everyone buy health insurance. This simply burdens the young and poor. We have the same problem with requiring everyone to have auto insurance. If we went to true no-fault auto-insurance we wouldn’t need to do this either and young people just trying to get started and poor people trying to improve their lot would not get hit by these unfunded government mandates.

We keep hammering at the existing mess and making things more complex (and increasing Government in the process), when we should be taking a step back and asking ourselves if our underlying assumptions are correct. That is the way to true reform.

At Last! Comfortable Shoes!

For the past few years I have been wearing LL Bean Comfort Mocs. These are inexpensive, but quite comfortable, slip on shoes. Unfortunately this past year not only did LL Bean redesign their Comfort Mocs, but they also got rid of my favorite color - Purple Night. I held out for as long as I could, but my pair was wearing out so I finally broke down and bought a pair of the redesigned Mocs, in Coffee. I bought size 7.5, which is the size that I wore in the original Comfort Mocs. They fit okay in the heel, but were too tight in the toe box. Sigh. So I bought a pair in size 8. They were too loose in the heel, but still did not have enough room in the toe box - I don't like the feel of the shoe pressing down on my toe nail. Sigh. Two returns to LL Bean. The search continued. The search was complicated by the fact that I really wanted purple shoes.

In my quest I found a cute pair of purple suede Mary Janes at Lands End. They were in the girls section but I bought them anyway. They are cute, and pretty comfy, but not much arch support, and they definitely look like girl shoes. I also picked up several pairs of boiled wool Mary Janes at LL Bean (which they don't seem to be carrying anymore). Although not great for wearing all day long, they are pretty comfy and I figure I can wear them with my dresses and skirts. I tried a pair of purple Klogs that I found at Amazon but decided that they must have been designed for aliens because the contours of the shoes did not resemble the contours of my feet. I tried a pair of purple Hush Puppies that fit, but just didn't feel right on my feet. More returns.

The search continued and I finally abandoned the idea of finding purple shoes and just concentrated on finding comfy shoes. I don't know if it is my practical nature winning out over my vanity but I am of an age now where I prefer comfort to fashion and where I now find practical, well-made things more attractive than things that just look cool.

At last, it seems, the search is over. Last week I found The Walking Company. I discovered this place through the Concurring Opinions blog (a great blog on legal issues). It was just a throw away line in a blog written by a woman who seemed to have reached the same place that I had, at least with regard to shoes. I clicked on the link and started browsing their site. The first thing I liked was that you could browse not only by shoe type and brand, but by comfort level. I went for the ultimate comfort. The prices gave me a bit of a start but I told myself that if the quality and comfort match the price tag it is worth it. I finally settled on a pair of Dansko Calista shoes in Chestnut. They came this week. The only modification they required was a piece of moleskin in each heel. I have narrow and boney heels and unless there is enough padding in the heel of the shoe I will rub my foot raw.

Today is the first day that I have worn them to work and I am happy to say that they are living up to expectations. I like them so much that I ordered a pair of Dansko Suri in Cordovan.

Ah, happy feet!

In the Bag

Before I bought all this cool technology my typical load out for work consisted of my Baggallini bag (in purple), my lunch cooler and my knitting bag (a small custom color boat and tote from LL Bean.

When I got the Kindle I tucked it into my knitting bag. No big deal. The Kindle is small and light and didn’t take up much room. When I got the Dell Mini I tucked that (and the charging cord) in the knitting bag as well. That made it a wee bit heavier, and combined with the Kindle was starting to eat into the knitting project space. What to do.

Well, once again, my techie friend Terry came to my rescue. He pointed me to the Waterfield Designs web site where all manner of bags can be had for your cool techie toys.

First I bought a sleeve case and Vertigo bag for the Fujitsu Sytlistic. I haven’t used it much, yet, mostly because I haven’t had the occasion to. The Sytlistic lives under my coffee table or in my lap.

When I got the Dell Mini I purchased a sleeve case for that as well. At the same time I picked up a slip case and bag for the Kindle. I haven’t used the Kindle bag yet either, other than to store accessories in, but I am keeping the Kindle in the slip case rather than the cover that came with it. I like the Kindle cover that comes with it, but when I’m reading the Kindle I found that the cover got in the way, so I got the slip case instead.

Unfortunately, while these bags were great for toting the technology, none of these fine bags could replace my purse and knitting bag. The search continued. First I looked at knitting bags. They all featured lots of pockets, but none of them seemed to have a mesh pocket for my water bottle, an absolute must. I tried a Baggallini messenger bag. It had lots of pockets and it even had a mesh pocket, inside the main compartment, that I could just fit my water bottle into. It required a bit of surgery before I used it – they had magnetic clasps and I didn’t want those near my credit cards. I used it for a week or so and it worked…okay. But I really wanted something that was just a wee bit deeper front to back and not quite so long side to side (between the shoulder strap ends).

I was feeling pretty frustrated and discouraged. I dug through the closet stash of old bags from my college days, but nothing would work. Then I came across an old LL Bean bag from my grad school days. It was called the Traveler. It had some distinct possibilities but was somewhat the worse for wear. So I went back to the LL Bean site and found the Travel Touring Bag. It has sturdy construction, an ample mesh pocket on the outside for my water bottle; a front pocket with flap that can hold the stuff from my purse; an inside zipper pocket that holds the Dell Mini with its charging cord; adequate room in the main compartment for my knitting; and a pocket on the back that holds my Kindle and iPod.

It still is not a perfect solution. Now I have the problem of what to do when I just need a purse. Sometimes I pull out the old Baggallini purse and stuff what I need in it, sometimes I just grab my wallet and cell phone and stuff it into one of my LL Bean custom boat and totes that I use as knitting bags. But really, some kind of modular system would be ideal, where I could detach the purse portion, or the technology portion or the knitting portion but I have yet to see that kind of design approach being applied to bags. We tend to approach bags from the single use perspective. Hmm, I know a woman who used to design bags for a living, and she usually comes to Bead and Button, maybe I’ll have a little chat with her this year…

Another Computer ?!?

The last bit of technology that I've acquired recently is a Dell Mini. Yes, I know, in a previous post I said I didn't really like it, and I didn't like it as a design computer. The Fujitsu Stylistic is far superior for that use. But the Dell Mini does have a place - in my bag.

The main reason I bought it was to have a small portable computer that would be easier to lug around than your typical laptop, especially when I go to the Bead and Button show in Milwaukee. You see, for the last couple of years I have been lugging an older Dell laptop to Bead and Button so my sister Virginia would have a way of staying on top of the email to the bead store. But after seeing the Dell Mini and then looking at the old laptop, well, who can blame me for wanting the smaller package that could still do everything, and in fact do a whole lot more.

I went to my techie friend Terry for help picking one out. We went to the Outlet page at Dell and started looking through the list of available models. He convinced me that I should get one that had the expansion slot for the air card so I could use a cellular network if there was no WiFi or Ethernet connection available (it didn't really take much convincing on his part). It didn't take us long to find what we were looking for. A Dell Mini 9 (Terry said that the screen on the 9 is superior to the one on the 10) with Windows XP, the air card expansion slot (he had a card he could sell me) and BlueTooth. No built-in camera, but I don't care. A 16 gig hard drive. Only 1 gig of RAM, but he advised me to upgrade that to 2, which was easy enough.

I've had the Dell Mini for a little over a month now, and I've been pretty happy with it. I use the air card a lot, every day at work, in fact. I even used it in the car one time when we were going into town to make sure that the local Lowes would have what we needed. I like the size and the fact that the drive is solid state. The screen size doesn't bother me and the resolution and color are great, but the key board does take some getting used to, especially the location of the single quote/double quote key. On a normal size keyboard that key is just to the left of the Enter key. Yeah, I keep hitting enter when I use contractions. I guess I could stop using contractions...

The sim card that I use to connect to the cellular network pops out from its little slot easily and I can put it in the USB connecter that it came with and use it on my Fujitsu as well. We'll see how my sister likes it in a couple of weeks.

To Boldly Go...

(SPOILER ALERT)

Yesterday Bruce and I went to see the new Star Trek movie. It's been a long time since we've been to the movies but we're both Trek fans and the review in the NY Times was favorable, so we went. I'm happy to say that we enjoyed the film.

First, the casting was superb. Chris Pine captures the brashness of Kirk while Zachary Quinto captures Spock's conflicted nature. Their initial confrontations form a nice foundation for their future deep friendship. Karl Urban does a splendid job as a young McCoy - I've liked him ever since I saw him on Hercules and Xena. Zoe Saldana as a super-sexy super-smart Uhuru and Simon Pegg as the irreverent Scotty round out the main crew. John Cho does a nice job as Sulu and Anton Yelchin is fine as Chechov, although he seemed awfully young and why was he so smart?

I wasn't too crazy about the Romulans, but they were renegades so I could overlook the tattoos. I still don't know what to make of their ship.Yeah, it was big and scary and kind of cool but it really didn't make sense to me as a functioning spaceship. It was a mining ship, which I guess would account for the drill. But Red Matter? Seriously? Couldn't they have come up with something better?

I liked Leonard Nimoy showing up as Spock from the future and his ship was very cool. It reminded me of the Vulcan ship from Enterprise. The time travel angle creating an alternate future was a clever idea. It allowed the writers to pay homage to the original series without becoming locked in by the existing canon. I am not, however, a big fan of this technique as a plot device.

Ben Cross does a nice turn as Spock's father Sarek. I especially liked the scene between Sarek and the young Spock when Sarek explains that Vulcans are actually deeply emotional, but that they cultivate logic so that they are not ruled by their emotions. This was something I had twigged to when I was watching the original show, leading me to use Spock as one of my early role models.

Unfortunately Winona Ryder was not very memorable as Spock's mother Amanda. And what was the deal on the costumes for the female Vulcans?

But these criticisms are really just quibbles. Overall, a very good movie, and a worthy addition to the franchise. It might even give it a new lease on life. I especially liked the way the movie ended - with on updated version of the opening of the original show complete with a big E beauty pass and soaring original sound track, but with Leonard Nimoy doing the voice-over narration.

Sharp-eyed viewers will spot Paul McGillion (Dr. Carson Beckett of Stargate: Atlantis) in the scene where everyone is getting ship assignments.

My only other WTF moments: building a starship on Earth? Spock and Uhuru? A green Orion girl in Star Fleet?

And what about Nurse Chapel? Of course Majel was the computer voice. What will they do now that she is gone?

Oh, yeah, and where was Yoeman Rand?

Live Performances, Over Amplification, and Hearing Loss

This past St. Patrick's Day, Bruce and I went to see Celtic Woman up in Baltimore. Other live performances that we have seen lately are Cats, in Charlottesville, and Cirque du Soleil, also in Charlottesville. Before that, we had been going to the Opera in Philadelphia.

In our minds, one of the reasons to go to a live performance is to hear the artists without the mediation of electronics. As any audiophile can tell you, there is a loss in sound quality when you convert between analog and digital. Unfortunately, except for the Opera, too many performers are relying upon electronics in their performances. The primary form of this electronic assistance is amplification. This amplification generally leads to two basic problems - the performance is too loud, and the different instruments (including voice) are not well-balanced. So at Cats, for example, the accompaniment tended to overpower the singing. At Celtic Woman they had both problems. The performance was too loud for the space (the Hippodrome) and the different instruments were not always well-balanced.

This is a very disappointing situation to encounter. Why don't they have competent sound engineers help them set up the sound system for the space? And why do they think that cranking up the volume is going to give us a better experience? Don't they realize that too much amplification just results in distortion? Here you have performers with lovely voices, but we can't appreciate them because they are over-amplified. This is a disservice to both the performers and the audience. It makes me not want to go to live performances, which is a shame.

I just wish that the people responsible for setting up the sound systems would actually go sit in the theater and listen and tailor the sound to the space. I'm not even sure how much amplification you need in these theaters. They were designed, after all, to amplify the acoustic energy naturally.

Sound systems cranked up too loud are also why I don't like going to movie theaters anymore (well, that and the sticky floors). I've also noticed a tendency for the soundtrack to overwhelm the dialogue, another balance issue. Wouldn't it be wonderful if, when you were watching a movie on DVD, you could control the sound track separately from the dialogue?

And while we are on the topic of noise, why do some restaurants play their sound systems so loud? Before the show we had dinner at Oliver's up in Baltimore, a recently opened Brew Pub. It was a nice place, good food, reasonable prices, and great beer, but it was too noisy. They had the stereo cranked up so loud that you couldn't hear each other talk unless you shouted. How does that make your dinner an enjoyable occasion? It's also hard on the wait-staff, because they have a hard time hearing us and we have a hard time hearing them. So, not only is the pub making their jobs harder, but it is also probably causing permanent hearing damage.

It just doesn't make sense to me.