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Tech

Archival Student Film Takes on Techno-Anxiety Circa 1958

Enjoy: 'Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?'

"Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?" is a student film produced at the University of Southern California in 1958. It's a dystopia, of sorts. A world of unceasing buzzing and whirring and ringing. Voice memos are carved into vinyl records; cars are fixed by mechanics in white lab coats equipped with oscilloscopes; a radio ad pitches replicas of ballistic missiles ("be the first to launch one in your neighborhood"); a mouth-breathing child blankly stares at hyperviolence on TV.

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It's sort of uncanny, but I'm also struck by how pristine it makes our contemporary technological reality appear. In terms of information saturation, 1958 had no idea, but as far as technology being this maddening, numbing chaos of shrieks and buzzes and drones, things really could have been worse. Or maybe I'm just numb to it.