> p8: "A child watching television under normal conditions is subject to frequent interruptions and distractions. The TV must vie for his attention. In order to simulate this condition, we decided to program distractions into the laboratory situation... Slides could be used to fill the slide tray and they could be projected automatically, at regular intervals, onto a screen similar to that of the television set. The carousel projector allows the viewer to choose three exposure times. The 7.45 second interval proved most satisfactory with the preschool children.
THE FIRST YEAR OF SESAME STREET: THE FORMATIVE RESEARCH https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED047822.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Looker
the same year as Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, featuring computer generated characters, brainwashing television commercials, a light pulse gun that causes absence seizures, gun battles inside a plastic surgery clinic and an AR simulation environment, a sadistic computer, a physician who doubles as an action hero, and James Coburn giving a lecture explaining the enemy's evil plans in the opposite role that he played in the (excellent) The President's Analyst.
This time I was not so dazzled and saw it for as atrocious everyone else things it is. The minions of "Digital Matrix, Inc." manage several assassinations with the light-pulse L.O.O.K.E.R. gun but when they use real firearms they outdo Vader's stormtroopers by shooting each other. (Want to see the scene where somebody from E.Y. tells them to stick to the L.O.O.K.E.R. gun) The bad guys explain the penultimate secret to the protagonist early on but the ultimate secret is revealed in the L.O.O.K.E.R. lab which doesn't feel like a lab at all but rather a rather good room in a theme park experience where you're supposed to uncover the secret. (Contrast that to the lab Doug Trumbull outfitted in the Brainstorms movie a few years later which is packed with real surplus equipment... I've been to that lab!)
I can see it now.. The Distractatrons: a new chapter of protagonists in Transformers! The modern equivalent of evil in this day and age of ADHD and low attention span!