Real Time 2
A catalog of ideas and information

Publisher:  Anchor, New York, USA
Year Published:  1973
Pages:  256pp   Price:  $4.35   ISBN:  0-385-02224-7
Resource Type:  Book
Cx Number:  CX5658

Real Time is a trip, self-consciously so. It's full of "new technologies", "new perceptions", "media-mixes", "communication", "system, "soft-ware", "interdisciplinary viewpoints", and "consciousness programs". More concretely, it's a book, 256 pages long.

Abstract: 
Real Time is a trip, self-consciously so. It's full of "new technologies", "new perceptions", "media-mixes", "communication", "system, "soft-ware", "interdisciplinary viewpoints", and "consciousness programs".
More concretely, it's a book, 256 pages long, with 108 entries on various topics, grouped under the themes of Communication; Human Systems; Mind; Science and Technology; Trends, and people. Generally, each topic consists of discussion of a specific book, with a brief summary of the contents and author, and longer excerpts (and many diagrams and pictures ) from the book itself. All of which is supposed to provide you with a broad range of ideas and knowledge.
When you've said that, there's not much left to be said in a review. The book can be criticized for being too trippy, for being too infatuated with various technologies (including 'software' technology), for being oblivious to the existence of power and politics, for often uncritically falling into the assumptions of behaviourist social science (or 'pop' futurology if there is a difference.) On the positive side, it does provide some good information and ideas, and does mention some valuable authors.
Topics include: non-verbal communication; defense of poetry; radical soft-ware; independent film-making; architectural design; the roots of coincidence; medicine, mind, and music; the computer; biology and the future of man; on the track of unknown animals.
- reviewed by Ulli Diemer