Jim Henson's “Paperwork Explosion” (1967) [video] | Hacker News Reader

Jim Henson's “Paperwork Explosion” (1967) [video]

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66 pointsvanderZwan18 comments

Sorry if this is off-topic for HN. I thought more people here would be interested in looking back at this advertisement from 1967 for IBM. Not just for the vision of the automated future it promotes, but also because of the presentation style, and a bit because Jim Henson of Muppets fame made it.

I cannot say for sure if it is my modern interpretation of an old video, but my take is that Henson inserted a lot of ominous undertones that were subtly subversive the "official" stance of the advertisement. Certainly would fit his character. Henson also made a video with similar themes for AT&T in 1963, with an automated robot[0].

In retrospect we can see that instead of freeing us up, automation merely lead to more paperwork - an example of Jevons Paradox in action[1]. To me it's a reminder that with many problems we try to improve things by doing it the same way but more efficiently. Sometimes that is appropriate, but sometimes that will not be enough, or even make things worse without also applying first-principle changes that address the root cause of the problem.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivJNNwTGDcw

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Thanks for the Jevons Paradox mention, as that was going to be my comment.

If you want to reduce paperwork (or nearly any other activity or consumption), you need to increase its costs (or decrease its benefits), not reduce them through efficiency improvements. Preferably on the party imposing it.

This reminds me of a discussion I had with a younger sibling (10+ years) about high school homework.

I was shocked to hear from him and our parents how much homework he was assigned compared to myself at his age, and I couldn't help but wonder whether the ease with which this homework was assigned played a role.

In 'my day' homework involved handing in paperwork, which the teacher took home to grade over the weekend, along with that of 30+ fellow students.

In 'his day' homework involved filling in a web form within some shitty e-learning environment, or at worst uploading a document somewhere, which the teacher could either grade automatically in the former cases, or skim through on their laptop in the latter case.

Discussions surrounding this increase in homework often center around higher-level sociological/psychological factors, but I wonder how much of a role ease played in all this: if you can grade 30+ tests with a click of a button, perhaps it leads to more testing?

Damned good point there.

The explosion reminds me of his hilarious and surprisingly violent ads for Wilkins Coffee. They have precursors of Kermit the Frog and other muppets from as early as the 1950s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmhIizQQol0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxLyuw5bdyk

http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/jim_hensons_violent_wilki...

Seems like Wilkins Coffee is remembered mostly for those commercials: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22wilkins+coffee%22&oq=%22w...

... though they were able to land a PR piece into the Washington Post in 1989: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1989/0...

I first heard this 20 or so years ago when a compliation of works by Raymond Scott came out. The music featured in this advertisment is by Ramond Scott a composer and pioneer of the synthesiser for musical purposes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Scott

Reminds me of this other short done by Jim Henson for IBM I think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IgF6_jVaj8

About half way through I accepted the likelihood that there would be no muppets. Then I was surprised that this was an ad, and not an art film about Orwellian offices.

If you listen closely you can hear Frank Oz say a few lines though

The last shot is a killer— "I don't do much work anymore—I'm too busy thinking."

This machine reduces the head count of the typing pool. They're all busy looking for a new job.

Yep— that’s that old “two sides to every coin” part. GP made a much better point of that—I just was mentioning one line that struck me. People still are shooting for that end, but not preparing for the fallout so well.

Is it meant for the elderly man to look like Statler? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Statler_and_Waldorf.jpg

I think it's the other way around, given the age of the ad. The old man looks like he was the inspiration for that character.

Wow, the style immediately made me think of Organism (1975) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS5X2zpCFzk

I can't seem to find any relation between the two, but the videos seem eerily similar to me.

I know this from audio samples used in the Music for Programming podcast. I always want to find out where various bits of dialogue in the podcast come from, but they're generally really hard to Google. It made me laugh to see that this one looks exactly the way I imagined.

And now that paperwork is no longer paper, we can do even more paperwork. Thanks, IBM!

(After I just got off the phone to make an appointment with my doctor, not a new doctor, and it took 15 minutes to "freshen up" the paperwork.)

I really like 60's documentary styles.

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