DISNEYLAND AND THE RISE OF AUTOMATION

Automation at amusement parks isn’t just about efficiency, argues Betancourt in this nonfiction work.

Maybe you learned about automation from the novel Cheaper by the Dozen (1948), in which Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey detailed their father’s obsession with making every process, including morning tooth-brushing, faster and more glitch-free. (Frank Gilbreth does figure in this new history of automation and Disneyfication.) You definitely have learned about automation if you’ve ever visited a theme park, particularly Disneyland. Art historian Betancourt discusses the ways in which this technology has helped to create “the happiest place on Earth,” but his thesis goes much deeper and is far more compelling: He posits that as Walt Disney leveraged the ideas, techniques, and equipment used by such automation innovators as Henry Ford, John T. Diebold (“Mr. Automation”), and Robert W. Gilman, theme park visitors themselves became the “products” of the automation process. People who had been through rides like the Matterhorn Bobsleds and Space Mountain were, in effect, emerging as more delighted, happier versions of themselves—and these experiences relied in some way on the mechanics of automation (assembly lines, tracking devices, interlockingness). Although most of this quite dense (though clearly written) text focuses on the history of Disney and 20th-century automation practices, the author also comments on the ways in which robotics and AI are changing theme park attractions: “Now, it is the factory machine that becomes the Disney character, rather than the other way around,” concluding, “the valley dividing labor and leisure has come close to being fully eroded.” He passes no judgment on these changes, instead reminding readers that we’re all embedded in “this new reality.” Betancourt’s text, supplemented by a plethora of archival photographs, charts, and other images, is sure to be an important contribution to future discussions of humans versus machines.

A superbly researched, structured, and written treatise on how two behemoth 20th-century trends converged.