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PANOPTICON-LAND!!!
Greg Mottola’s forthcoming Adventureland is set in a slightly run-down 1980s Pennsylvania amusement park, and, as this link demonstrates, amusement parks have come a long way in 25 years. In a creepy application of the surveillance state, visitors of U.K.’s Alton Towers have the opportunity of paying extra to have themselves recorded during their day on the various rides by the park’s surveillance cameras. The park developed software capable of tracking each of its wristband-wearing visitors and then dumping footage of them onto a DVD that’s available when it’s time to go.
From the amusement park’s site:
What did we do to create YourDay at Alton Towers?
Firstly, we dug 6 km of trenches to hold 24 strands of fibre optic cable…
We installed and linked up 140 computer servers, 36 cameras and over 100 RFID antennae to create a data network across the 550 acre park – a big place to wire up!
After storyboards and scripts, we spent 13 days filming a huge cast of actors, including 80 extras, on the big rides and attractions, smiling and screaming in all the right places.
Plus we spent the equivalent of 3 ‘man’ years to develop all the YourDay software.
Pull all these together and you get YourDay at Alton Towers!
(Hat tip: BoingBoing.)
