Culture Magazine
I've been thinking a lot about Walt Disney's influence on our sense of progress and the future. I'm exploring the idea that, during the 1950s and 1960s, Disney was the most important single laboratory and conduit for a sense of progress into the future and, in particular, for the role of technology in that progress. Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow: The Futurism of Walt Disney is two-hour documentary about Disney studios presents a history of the studio that is oriented around the future.
Starting at 50:03, Sam Gennaway, a Disney historian, remarks: "His is the first guy to be like Silicon Valley. He was the first guy to leave a high tech organization to start up his own high tech organization because he was bored with the one he was with. He was basically an employee to his brother..." So his brother, Roy, funded WED Enterprises as Walt's R and D division in 1952. It became Walt's sandbox/playgound. Roy and his people were not allowed into WED.
