Last month we discussed how computers are portrayed in cultural icons like Lost in Space, Star Trek, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, and — of course! — that lost gem, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. This article continues this essential exploration of American culture with more probing profiles of computers on TV and in the movies.
“That R2 Unit We Bought May Have Been Stolen”
Luke: You know, I think that
R2 unit we bought may have been stolen.
Uncle Owen: What makes you think
that?
Luke: Well, I stumbled across a
recording while I was cleaning him. He says that he belongs to someone
named Obi-Wan Kenobi. I thought he might have meant old Ben. Do you
know what he’s talking about? (Source: IMDb database)
With that dialogue, the original Star
Wars (1977) introduces one of the two most famous robots in history. R2-D2,
with his cute antics and quirky personality, along with his companion C-3PO,
demonstrate that the ultimate end-point in computer evolution will be the
robot. C-3PO even posits the robot in anthropomorphic form. A bit like Data from Star Trek but more heavy metal. (My girlfriend once called him sexy… Say what?)
Cute Little R2-D2
(Images: Wikipedia)
Sexy
C-3PO (could it be those steel-hard abs? Those long fingers? How can I compete with that?)
Star Wars, of course, is the
hugely successful sci-fi franchise launched by director George Lucas’
1977 film, Star
Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.
As of 2008 the seven films in the series grossed 4.41 billion dollars,
making it the third largest grossing film series, behind James Bond and
Harry Potter.
We don’t see a whole lot of computers that who aren’t humanoid
in Star Wars. But there are exceptions. One example is the Navigation Computer, also known as
the astrogation computer, navicomputer, navicomp, or nav computer in various Star Wars games.
Well, it’s all too much for me to keep straight. Fortunately, important resources like the comprehensive Wookiepedia
document it all. And of course The Archives at StarWars.com and GalacticHolonet. Even About.com has a pretty good Star Wars spread. Intergalactic history must and will be preserved!
“I’m Sorry, Dave. I’m Afraid I Can’t Do That”
In contrast to the cuddly, almost human robots of Star Wars, the
computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey
is a psychotic nightmare. Its serene, disembodied voice, always
rational, always reasonable, comes to strike terror into the hearts of
its human “masters.” And the audience. HAL
seizes control of the spaceship when it decides that the humans
nominally in charge are not acting “in the best interests of the
mission.”
HAL’s creepiness seeps through in the very reasonableness of his
smooth, baritone voice. His eye watches the crew at all times. As
they become suspicious of him, HAL teaches himself to lip-read so that they
can’t escape his all-seeing, all-knowing presence. Kind of like the surveillance cameras in the U.K..
The HAL-9000 (Images: Robotionary.com)
HAL’s All-seeing Eye
When it was released in 1968, 2001 received mixed reviews from the critics and struggled at the box office. Today
it is considered a stylistic masterpiece. The film modestly covers
mankind’s history from the dawn of time straight through to infinity. Along the
way we get to see how computers evolve. Turns out they have huge mental
capacity but are disembodied intelligence in its
purest form. Dream or nightmare?
I believe HAL might be an audio-enhanced version of Windows. “I’m sorry,
I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“I, Proteus, possess the wisdom of all men, but I can’t feel the sun on my face. My child will have that privilege!”
A fine film in the HAL tradition is Demon Seed,
released in 1977. In what can only be called the ultimate geek dream,
the Proteus IV computer decides to propagate itself by impregnating the
ever-nubile Julie Christie. While this masterpiece only achieved a 6.2 rating at the IBM
IMDB database, I was proud to see that my fellow geeks had the
common decency to accord the film its well-deserved 10 star rating. How
could anybody possibly misconstrue this light-hearted romantic romp as a “horror film”?
Julie
Christie
Proteus and Julie Hook Up(Images: AltFG
and Wired)
What I want to know is, has Proteus been tested? This is not presenting a good
role model for our young people! Julie should have told him “Hey, Proteus, I don’t care how smart you are… No glove, no
love.” Wait a minute… is that a glove on his hand? That’s
not where it goes, you dummie! Proteus is supposed to be so
intelligent but he proves that there are certain aspects of human
behavior computers still aren’t good at. I wonder if IBM’s Watson computer (of Jeopardy TV show fame) could have done better: “What is mating?”
And you thought dating was difficult!
“The Only Winning Move is Not to Play”
Last up is the film WarGames (1983). This movie’s theme is that our most intelligent machines will be used for planning and conducting warfare. The clever twist is that the military’s WOPR computer war-games Thermonuclear War and concludes that “It is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” What we all love, of course, is that it’s a hacker and his girlfriend who save the world (just like in real life!).
A Hacker Saves the World!
… using his out-dated IMSAI (Images: IMDB and Wikipedia)
Here’s my problem with this flick. I don’t know what to think of a computer enthusiast who’s still using an IMSAI 8080
in 1983, when the film was made. The IMSAI came out in December ’75 and
production halted by 1978. It was way obsolete by ’83. (Not only that,
the dork hooks it up to an acoustic coupler!!) Either this guy’s incredibly
cool or a total loss. Most likely the film
makers decided the IMSAI looked cooler than the IBM
PC’s and Apple’s that were popular in the early 1980’s.
Many people don’t know that a sequel to this film came out in 2008. Released directly to DVD, it’s called WarGames: The Dead Code.
The film is hardly believable — Homeland Security doesn’t apply
“enhance interrogation techniques” when they capture our hero, and the
WOPR computer has a sense of humor. Not! At least the hacker isn’t
still using an IMSAI. (Since it’s 2008, they probably upgraded him …
to a Pentium II.)
“Wouldn’t you rather play chess?”
There is so much more we could cover but life is short and re-runs
endless. I’ll wrap it up next month with some recent films. Meanwhile,
here’s a list
of movies prominently featuring computers. They range from Desk Set (1957) — where Katharine Hepburn frantically tries to keep up with a mainframe spouting punched cards — to Iron Man 2 (2010), with Larry Ellison (yes, that Larry Ellison). Enjoy!
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
– – –
Howard Fosdick (President, FCI) is an independent consultant who
supports
databases and operating systems. Read his other articles and download his free guide How To Tune Up Windows here. You can reach him
at contactfci at the domain
name of sbcglobal (period) net. Disclaimer — this article is intended to be humourless humorous and comments should not be taken seriously.
Are you saying that HAL is a descendant of Clippy?
I am sorry dylansmrjones. This question cannot be answered. It’s the best for the mission. Why don’t you just take a pill? Relax? Everything will be fine. There’s nothing you need to know.
And this in turn reminds me to the robot “officers” in THX-1138 – beating people with sticks, electroshocking them and asking them to be calm and happy.
I’d like to repeat my pointer to “Starring The Computer” at http://starringthecomputer.com/ where you’ll find a nice list of (1st) computers shown in movies, as well as (2nd) movies showing computers.
Of course, the Imsai of “War Games” is in there as well as the Apple II of “Tron”, as well as the Burroughs of “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes”. Sadly, there’s no mentioning of Proteus IV and its (his?) terminals. And don’t miss Doctor Strangelove’s IBM 7090!
And whenever you feel safe, remember: “There is a terminal available.”
I believe an excellent example can be seen in the recent Doctor Who episode “Let’s kill Hitler” (overall a delicious moment of pure craziness). This episode introduces the Antibodies. They always move in groups of three, look like flying metallic jellyfishes with absurdly long vibrating tentacles ( http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-cy2SaJ5Miy8/Tlv6X6koN3I/AAAAAAAAC2E/AifAq… ), and greet visitors with the following words :
“Welcome.
You are unauthorized.
Your death will now be implemented.”
*exhibits huge electric sparks http://doctorwho.bbcamerica.com/files/downloads/doctorwho_wallpaper… *
“You will experience a tingling sensation and then death. Remain calm while your life is extracted”
Edited 2011-10-14 06:41 UTC
It’s always funny to see how old films tread computers as mysterious living machines. Like the episode “Whoever Shot Poor George Oblique Stroke XR40” (I know that title by hearth…neh, I looked it up) from the Avengers. A computer doctor needs to perform surgery on a computer so he can tell who murdered another computer.
I think I remember them calling it a computor in that episode.
In real life I was got hit by a teacher because I clicked on an icon while the cursor was still an hourglass. It was very bad because the computer was still thinking and it could damage from stress if I ordered it around to much.
Edited 2011-10-13 23:57 UTC
That’s real life right there. As I am a support person I would hazard a guess that 90% of people that call me for support “actually” believe that their computers need to warm up and have time to think.
How old were you at the time?
While it is possible that the teacher was completely ignorant, it was also very easy to lock-up old software. Which, in turn, could mean powering it down without shutting it down. Which, in turn, could lead to data corruption.
So, if you were very young, they may have simplified their explanation.
I was very young at the time, about eight but she wouldn’t hit me if that was the case because she’d be aware that the thing I did was harmless. Also the same women thought, when the mouse broke down, that the pointer got out of the edges of the screen somehow and that you had to try and search it back. She’d spend quite some time randomly moving the mouse in vain.
Edited 2011-10-14 00:33 UTC
It is really hard to judge what was going on here because I don’t know how old you are now. But I feel that it is worth mentioning that computers were very fragile during the 80’s and early 90’s and that very few people had the ability to fix them. That includes people who we would now think of as relatively competent with computers. Think of it this way. There weren’t journalling file systems on personal computers. Worse yet, people didn’t know about buffering (since the buffering that was done was trivial compared to what is done today). So if you just turned off a computer (because there were no software controlled power supplies) a corrupted file system was a very real possibility. And the only chances of recovery were through partial solutions like the Norton Utilities (which is just one example among many). Oh, and it’s worth mentioning that such disaster recovery tools were very common until 2000 or so, when consumer operating systems (and that includes Linux) started picking up the slack.
There were other complications too, since operating systems were much more varied back then. I remember being petrified after crashing a school Mac in my teens, mostly because I was familiar with ProDOS and MS-DOS and a bit with Windows. But Mac OS was totally foreign. And I was a pretty intense computer geek even back then.
So in a lot of ways I have a hard time blaming your teacher for her relative ignorance, though hitting you as a consequence of that was totally inappropriate (by any standards in our modern world — it is, after all, just a machine, no matter how indecipherable and expensive it may have been).
If I recall correctly, they used an IMSAI because it is something that he could have gotten surplus. After all, computers like the Apple II were extremely expensive back then. Especially when you throw in upgrades like floppy drives, an 80 column card, a speech synthesizer, and (of course) a modem.
The scale of other sets and props(?) in them – missile bunker for example or, most notably, the command centre – make such budget crunch rather unlikely?
I think IMSAI was chosen largely because it was very “photogenic” – a prominent object, with lots of lights and switches to toggle. Also “niche” & “legendary” & suggesting an “‘old’ school hacker” …or maybe also partly because the nerds at hand, among the crew, were able to quickly come up – specifically for this machine – with the required “typing application” (showing the proper, scripted commands and sentences whichever key was hit by the actors; this was used during the filming of Wargames)
Remember, it’s a film – so whatever is in it, is not strictly a tool of [the real-life purpose of object], but of cinematography. A film prop meant to look good, be impressive for the audiences, that’s its role. A way for actors to… act, to depict the story in a way conductive to mass-consumed, pop-cultural video medium.
Heck, some of the “upgrades” (whichever machine is used) could easily be non-functional – not surplus, but broken trash. There were also less expensive computers at the time, VIC-20 or C-64 for example – but this leads to another possible reason: why would they make free product placement for big companies of the era? (not only Commodore) IMSAI was convenient, it was virtually gone by then already. And much less familiar, much more mysterious.
Edited 2011-10-14 00:50 UTC
I agree with what you said and you raised many excellent points.
When I was talking about the expense of the computer, I meant that it was a tad unrealistic for a teenage boy to have an up-to-date computer. To pick on the over priced Apple II: a couple of thousand for the computer, a few hundred dollars for each of the monitor, disk drive, printer, and modem. We’re talking $4,000 or up in 1983 dollars (about $8000-$9000 in current dollars).
Not the film budget of course, but the budget of the high school hacker. In 1983, a school kid couldn’t have afforded an Apple or IBM, if his parents didn’t own one. I think it’s quite believable he then used an IMSAI.
Any chance of movies and TV that are NOT US-only? (even if Star Wars and 2001 were filmed in the UK)
I thought the only movie to ever come from outside the U.S. was Harry Potter??
Am I wrong??
You chose a prop because is visually interesting and helps tell the story.
The IMSAI in War Games looks like a miniature version of WOPR and the systems used throughout Cheyenne Mountain.
That tells the audience that this kid is in over is head.
They won’t recognize the machine. They don’t know its limits. How could they? The IMSAI was only in production for three years — a bare 20,000 units.
What they will know is that it is something quite diffrent from the Apple II they have all seen sitting on a desk in a grade school classroom.
I remember seeing this movie recently on the AMC channel. I guess it was more about the characters than computers. The movie was made in 1957.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050307/
“The mysterious man hanging about at the research department of a big TV network proves to be engineer Richard Sumner, who’s been ordered to keep his real purpose secret: computerizing the office.”
Uh, no tribute to Electric Dreams and Moles, the best home automotion software login name ever!?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Dreams_%28film%29
Regarding WarGames, his accoustic-coupled modem was very fast to sniff phone numbers! Oh, and the hacker didn’t know how to swin ’cause, you know, no time.
Old memories…
Edited 2011-10-14 14:11 UTC
They were actually (other than the AI droids) very believable and realistic, and that is why you didn’t see them. Remember that R2-D2 plugged into the port and checked on the status of things? Remember that at each work station there was a console? Remember the 3D view of the Death Star as it came around the moon to blow up Alderdon?
Fully integrated with the systems of the ships, and everywhere being used for getting real things done without being a central fixture. That is fairly realistic.
Eh, HAL might kill ya, but I think it (he?) would still be less frustrating to use than Windows.
“I’m sorry, Dave, I am unable to continue because an error has occurred.”
“Dave, an update to ‘Chess’ has been downloaded, would you like me to reboot in order to apply the update?”
“I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that until you insert the CD labeled ‘HAL 9000 Setup Disk 1’.”
Which is nowhere near as bad as applying a service pack, that may take an hour to apply (during which time, the environmental subsystems will be down).
I read Dean Koontz’ original 1973 “Demon Seed” years before I saw the movie. The first version of the book was much more sexually explicit, and Proteus much creepier.
I agree. I’d recommend the book over the movie. The film was kinda lame.
While there’s obviously AI here, it’s for the androids rather than the computers. But look how an old Commodore PET made it in the command room for the nuclear arms program. Dates the technology of the program doesn’t it?
http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/misc/Misc.htm
http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/misc/T3_PET2.jpg
http://www.commodore.ca/gallery/misc/T3_PET4.jpg
Are you telling me my IMSAI is obsolete?
Let’s Hack the Gibson!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113243/