The Massive Dynamic website has fully launched! Whilst this might not mean much to some of you just yet..to those of you who have been following the Fringe ARG/Viral, this fairly big news! Show/ARG premise spoilers may follow:
Just a quick recap – Massive Dynamic (MD) is the company owned by William Bell – former colleague of Walter Bishop. MD is a cutting edge company at the forefront of scientific and technological advancement. It is believed that the company produce or own many of the things that we will see in “Fringe”, from the mundane, to the extraordinary. The first issue of the comic book, “Like Minds”/”The Prisoner“, hinted that William Bell amassed his wealth through the synaptic transfer of Walter Bishop’s genius, however this is pure speculation on my part, and I suggest reading the comics if you fancy digging deeper into the fringeverse.
Massive Dymanic have often been compared to Microsoft by media reporters hungry to glean some real-world comparison between the show and today’s corporate giants. Please don’t sue us Microsoft, but your web is pretty large.
So what does the opening of the Massive Dynamic website mean? Well, it appears to confirm what many fans have been speculating – that the Fringe ARG will continue into the show itself, unlike the “LOST” ARG’s, for example, which only run during hiatus periods. Speaking of LOST, many fans have already likened MD to the Dharma Initiative, another forward thinking, seeming;y alturistic, corportation who want to better the world through science (but it’s never that simple, is it). That’s the thing, we don’t really know MD’s aims, but we do know what their website tells us, and if it’s to be believed, they are particularly interested in the following scientific and technological fields: aerospace & transportation, biological and medical, computing and communications, energy and environment and life & leisure. The words “HOPE”, PROGRESS”, “GROWTH” and “HAPPINESS” can also be seen floating around on the front page of the website.
So we have an idea of their vested interests, but are these their real goals, or is this a PR stunt? Eitherway, what genuinely made me gasp as I looked through the site, were some of the descriptions for their achievements or goals. For instance, this is taken from their aerospace & transportation page:
Time spent in transit is time wasted. Time you could have spent with family, friends, and co-workers. Because Massive Dynamic values your time, our mandate is to get you where you’re going — safer and faster than ever before. The acclaimed PEARL aerocontrol system, developed by MD’s Fleming-Monroe division, promises to reduce flight delays by as much as 30% in the next few years. Meanwhile, our zero-friction light rails and flex-hull container ships promise to revolutionize commercial transport.
What’s next? Travel time follows a power law, decreasing by a given factor year by year. MD’s Zeno-Transit Initiative aims to take that process to the limit, making near-instantaneous travel a reality in your lifetime.
So we’re talking about time-travel or teleportation, right? That’s what they’re working on making a reality ‘in our lifetime’. Whilst I am well aware that the premise involves “Fringe Science”, reading through the MD website makes it somewhat more real. It’s really happening, we’re finally going to get a show that deals with exciting aspects of our world that are improbable, yet very possible. Other than LOST, there is no other show that excites me to these levels, and the show hasn’t even started yet. *OK, breathe* I know we shouldn’t place too much expectation on the shoulders of JJ and his team, but already I’m liking the effort and meticulous research that the creative team, FOX and the runners of this ARG have put into this show. Well done guys, the lines are blurring, now the challenge is to keep it up!
As an aside, that jingle that you hear as you touch down on the MD website – yup, it’s made up of Fibonacci code, as first spotted by maestrojon. The Pattern, it’s THE PATTERN!
We’ll have a lot more on MD over the coming days, weeks and probably months, so why not head on over to the site and have a look around. Don’t forget to stop back here in the comments, and share any thoughts, observations or theories that you might have. Or, if forums are more your thing, we have a partner forum, fringe-forum.com, where fans are already discussing MD and everything FRINGE!
