{"id":13366,"date":"2024-08-02T18:31:50","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T18:31:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=13366"},"modified":"2024-08-02T19:06:02","modified_gmt":"2024-08-02T19:06:02","slug":"saturday-morning-cartoons-prescience-what-they-got-right-what-they-got-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=13366","title":{"rendered":"SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS PRESCIENCE..what they got right, what they got wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Hanna-Barberra Everett Collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My sisters and I were raised on Saturday morning cartoons. We’d gobble down our Cheerios and then rush the door to play all day, the great outdoors a much safer environment. In any case, we loved Bugs Bunny, Rocky & Bullwinkle and The Jetsons, fascinated by their house in the sky and flying cars. Little did I know that some day-the early 90s- I would found the Edgewise ElectroLit Centre and use videophones to facilitate Telepoetics link-ups, connecting poets and audiences across vast distances, crude technology, or “new media” back then.<\/p>\n

Saturday morning cartoons were more than a source of entertainment; they offered a glimpse into the imaginations of their creators and helped to ignite my own.<\/p>\n

As this poem posits, Hanna-Barbera got a few things right.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TOON FUTURE<\/strong><\/p>\n

My mother related to Rosey the Robot maid,
\nJane Jetson nothing like my mother.
\nMy mother worked. Jane didn\u2019t have to
\nbecause Hanna-Barbera supposed everyone
\nwould live in leisure,
\nfreed from toil\u2019s chains by technology.<\/p>\n

Though Hanna-Barbera couldn\u2019t imagine
\nthe Internet, AI, driverless cars,
\nthe almighty algorithm
\nor a world nearly void of cigarettes
\nwe live with video calls, 3-D printers, smart
\nwatches, space tourism and 24-hr surveillance.<\/p>\n

I suspect our infatuation with devices
\nwas stoked by the Jetsons\u2019 allure.
\nMy loquacious mother
\nwould have adored a mobile phone.<\/p>\n

She knew nothing of ethics
\nor the moral dilemma
\nof \u2018plagiarism software\u2019 and search engines,
\ndid not consider that perhaps Jane,
\nGeorge, Judy, Elroy and Astro
\ndwelt high in a celestial sphere
\nbecause by 2062 the earth\u2019s crust
\ncould be uninhabitable.<\/p>\n

The eager reader, budding naturalist
\nwithin me always worried about such things.
\nMy mother, embroiled in sexual intrigue
\nand earning a living,
\nnever looked past Saturday morning
\nor fretted about the future.
\nShe lived in the present
\nas I pondered a world
\nwhere technology\u2019s promise
\nmasks its price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My sisters and I were raised on Saturday morning cartoons. We’d gobble down our Cheerios and then rush the door to play all day, the great outdoors a much safer environment. In any case, we loved Bugs Bunny, Rocky & Bullwinkle and The Jetsons, fascinated by their house in the sky and flying cars. Little […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[236,476],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13366"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13366"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13372,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13366\/revisions\/13372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}