I embarked on my first trip to Walt Disney World recently, and let me tell you, I love Epcot. If Celebration is anything like the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, then it might not be as bad as I've always been told. While there, I visited The Land (sponsored by Nestlé) and took the Living With The Land boat tour. It was very cool, but I left with a slight sense of unease about the propagandistic experience I'd just had. Perhaps it's just liberal paranoia, but I don't quite trust Nestlé to be pushing the frontier on eco-friendly, sustainable hydroponics. While the facts in the ride seems to be fairly accurate, it all had the feel of sub-propaganda, i.e., good will efforts done ahead of time by an entity upon a population that it may one day later need to brainwash. And while the Mickey Mouse headed pumpkins were cute, I'd rather not indoctrinate children to accept food that no longer comes in a natural shape.

A little bit of Google-ing turned up this excellent article that totally reinforced my thoughts and expressed my opinion more eloquently than I can. The truly interesting part comes in at the comments section. I'm trying to be truly open-minded these days and look past my prejudices, and the commenters bring up some relevant facts and counter-opinions to the article. I've modified my feelings on Living With The Land somewhat, and I think Disney World is actually incredible for getting fat-ass middle Americans to walk miles and miles and miles each day, but I stand firm on the negative impact they've had on Florida's environment.

More to come on The Land...

p.s. Watched the space shuttle launch today. Check out the animated Building the ISS, it's way cool!

Labels: disney, florida, technology