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Electronic Life
Crichton was already successful as a novelist, having published The Andromeda Strain, The Great Train Robbery, Congo, and other books. Several of these had already been made made into movies. Of course he would become vastly more famous later, with Jurassic Park and the television show E.R.
Electronic Life is written as a glossary, with entries like "Afraid of Computers (everybody is)" "Buying a Computer" "Computer Crime," and so forth. The book shows signs of being hurridly written, as few of the entries reflect any research. The computer crime entry, for example, is three pages long and contains only four hard facts -- specifically, that institutions were then losing $5 billion to $30 billion a year on computer crime, that Citibank processed $30 billion a day in customer transactions using computers, that American banks as a whole were moving $400 billion a year in the U.S., and that the Stanford public key code (not otherwise described) was broken in 1982. No examples of computer crime are given, though by 1983 such accounts were appearing in the mainstream press, and dedicated books on the topic had been around for at least a decade (I own one British example dating to 1973). Detailed descriptions of such capers make for good reading, so Crichton's failure to include any tells us that he did not take the time to visit the library when he wrote this book.
Electronic Life is of interest to modern readers in only two respects: first, Crichton's descriptions of then-current technology provide an amusing reminder of how far we have come. Second, and more significantly, Crichton's predictions for the future are worth comparing with what has actually developed.
As an example of the first sort of passage, on page 140 he points out that if you ask your computer to compute 5.01*5.02-5.03/2.04*100.5+3.06+20.07-200.08+300.09/1.10, there will be a noticable delay as it works out the answer. Later he suggests that a user would do well to buy a CP/M based system, because of all the excellent applications for that platform.
Crichton writes science fiction, and he knew very well that computers would soon do more than was possible in 1983. Such predictions are largely absent from this book, but a few entries do let us see what he expected for the future (other resurrecting dinosaurs, I mean). First, Crichton correctly expected that computer networks would increase in importance. He saw this as a matter of convenience -- computers can share pictures, which you can't do with a verbal phone call, and computer networks can operate asynchronously, so you can leave information for somebody and have have them pick it up at their convenience.
He also makes predictions for computer games, first explaining that there are several types of games:
- Arcade Games (which are in turn split into 'invader games', 'defender games', and 'eating games'.)
- Strategy Games (chess, backgammon, etc.)
- Adventure Games (text-based interactive fiction)
Most interestingly in his predictions, Crichton clearly expected that computers would soon be as normal as home appliances like washing machines. He never anticipated that, through vastly increased numbers and reduced cost, they would become omnipresent and perhaps invisible.
The book is little more than a collection of off-the-cuff musings, and as such the most interesting entry is probably "Microprocessors, or how I flunked biostatistics at Harvard" in which Crichton lashes out at a medical school teacher who had given him a 'D' fifteen years earlier.
This book is a curiosity, not worth buying at a garage sale unless you are a Crichton completist.
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This brings back memories of the old days when I was a UNIX sysadmin. Back when we used to write pacman for the terminals and run it in 2 in the morning.
I read Michael Crichton's book a few years ago and I'd just like to share my memories.
As an example of the first sort of passage, on page 140 he points out that if you ask your computer to compute 5.01*5.02-5.03/2.04*100.5+3.06+20.07-200.08+300.09 /1.10, there will be a noticable delay as it works out the answer.
Considering I got my first computer in 1980 (A 4Mhz Z80-based TRS-80), I think I can say with some credibility that there would not have been a delay computing that, even using interpreted Basic.
On the other hand, those systems were amusingly slow by todays standards. As evidence, I submit that under interpreted Basic, I had memorized how to produce a 1 second delay loop:
Yes, 500 empty loops took 1 second.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I can understand why Crichton predicted that video games were a fad. Around that time, Intel had lost pots of money on Intellivision, Coleco was on its way to going broke because of Colecovision, (and was only saved, incidentally, by the later success of Cabbage Patch dolls,) and Atari had started its long slide into the ground. Many arcades started to move the video games to the back and pinball machines to the front. Nintendo and Sega weren't on the radar yet, so it really seemed to a lot of people like video games were fading away. And as to PCs, it would be years before they had arcade-quality games which surpassed the Atari and Commodore lines of personal computers. PCs didn't typically have colour screens until the late 80s.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
It's not supprising that Crichton did his homework before writing the novel "Timeline". Timeline is a great novel that involves the mechanics of quantum computing. He does a great job of breaking down how a quantum computer (of more than 5 atoms) could work. It's also worth a read.
I know several 'non-technical' people, and dozens more technical and not with computers on their desks and they are still intimidated by them. That is one of the prime reasons [desktop] tech support people have some job security; and why most of the industry rag's "job market predictions" claim that tech support is the way to go if you want to keep feeding your kids with an IT-related salary. On the other hand, this book reminded me of the video game display I saw in the Baltimore Science Center (Museum?) at the Inner Harbor [my wife and I used to frequently trek there for weekend mini-vacations if we didn't have time for AC with her parents]. They had all sorts of old cabinets beginning with a copy of the original Pong; and of course history and some video on how a lot of these were developed, and a few transparent ones so that you could see the boards and ROM and so forth. I wish I remembered the name or they had a book to go with that.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
As the poster notes, this may not be a technically sound book, may not be worth owning, and shows signs of little research and quick writing but I think its still worth it. To compare and contrast predictions and attitudes from the past to the now is always interesting. It could have been anyone and it still would have been interesting. I remember my thoughts about computers at that time. I was fascinated by them, yet everyone was so paranoid because of the high cost noone wanted to touch them. I always got the impression of "We need to have a PC, but dont touch it, its too expensive". Id be interested to read it just to see what others thought at that time about PCs. Itd make an even more interesting read though if it included that, and then his opinions today on PCs.
"He was wrong here, of course, and missed entirely how games would eventually drive the high end of the home computer market.
Most interestingly in his predictions, Crichton clearly expected that computers would soon be as normal as home appliances like washing machines."
It's amusing to look back at how wrong he or others (Bill Gates with "nobody will ever need more than 64Kb" (paraphrase)) have been wrong about their predictions, but it all goes under the heading of "Hindsight is 20/20", and I don't think we can fault Crichton for that.
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
My grandma suffers from a number of ailments that restrict her movement. For a while my dad kept suggesting that she get a mac to play around with. My mom's mom got one, and loved using it.
Anyway. My grandma's problem wasn't that she was scared of using a computer. She'd say, "You don't know what you're talking about. I used to *run* a computer. I know all *about* computers. What the hell do I need a computer for?"
She used to be the administrator in charge of the computer for the Grand Rapids Police Department. In the 1950s. Punch cards. Hehe. Old people are funny.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
I have the book; it's okay. It has a lot of BASIC listings in the back. I love the way older media on computers just assumed that you'd need to be able to program, and to know how a microprocessor works to get any value out of the machine: I only wish it was still like that today.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
The development of robots is very similar to that of the personal computer in the 70s and the 80s. In 20 years we will remember this time as the last years without a robot assistant.
A more enlightened approach would have been to observe what people were actually doing and how a vastly faster computer of small size might be useable to them, in ways other than balancing their checkbook.
Science fiction and some really old comic books are amazingly on target, frequently, although they still depicted computers as being massive things.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It's only going to get worse. In a short span of time, I've seen home computers rise from Commodore 64's to massive gigahertz-driven monstrosities.
We live in interesting times. Where other sciences have reached maturity, and breakthroughs come slow and are profound, computer science is still young. There's so much to learn, so many ideas that haven't even been touched upon. Our breakthroughs will not change the world overnight, but they have and will continue to come much quicker.
In a best case scenario, I've only lived a quarter of my life. And I'm astonished. I sit back after playing the latest game and think, "Man, I remember back when everything was all pixellized.. And we thought the graphics were so realistic!"
I look at Windows XP, and think, "We wouldn't have dreamed some of these things were possible back then, now we take them for granted."
On a tangent, I think that's one of the lures of Linux. People who missed the original revolution due to being too young/too technically inept/etc., can take part in building something from the ground up.
Anyway, ten years ago, who the hell would've dreamed we would be able to watch movies on our PC?
Staggering.
All of the movie recreations of his books suck worse than most movie recreations of books. Somehow in JP2: The Lost World the black boy and the white girl got condensed into a black girl who has some relationship with Malcolm that I never fully understood because I was on a bus down to Fla when I was "watching" it.
Re Congo specifically: it has been said that the only way to enjoy that movie is, with a group of friends, have everyone pick a character. If your character survies, you "win". Win what, I don't know, but it at least keeps you paying attention.
All in all, I suppose this is why I own a crudload of books and about 5 movies, and the movies were gifts.
The first practical book on computers I ever saw: "Peter Norton's guide to DOS". I still remember his premise:
you show up to work one day and here is a computer sitting at your desk, you haven't seen one before, don't want one AND the boss is expecting you to become vastly MORE productive. now.
Anyway, that is the supposition he started the book from. Good book as I recall, no BS.So where some people saw panic, or hyped everything up others saw and siezed opportunity.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
Disclosure is all about hammering out the problems in CD-ROM drive production, but meanwhile, the fact that the same company has solved virtual reality doesn't get a comment.
Jurassic Park: Yeah, we can re-create extinct animals and basically fuck with genetics all we want. So what do we do with it? Open a zoo.
Having "solved" time travel, in Timeline, what's it going to be used for? Stock market speculation? Changing history in a big land grab? No, an amusement park.
Chrichton stories are all about getting super powers, and then using them to order a pizza.
It is not meant as a troll. Don't get me wrong, I like Gibson. But he tends to do a lot of hand waving - explaining how AI, surgical and cybernetic augmentation, private space stations and VR so immersive that it can kill you came to be common place are glossed over. It is left as an excerise for the reader's imagination how all this came to be. Crichton on the other hand ties all of his science fiction to science fact; insects in amber to DNA to supercomputing gene sequencers to overambitious developers and their patented living creations.
I don't fault Gibson at all, because the world he created was so far removed from the one that he actually lived in, but for me the suspension of disbelief is much more easily conjured when I start in the concrete and fact-based and am lead to the what-if through the narrative. Gibson had no choice but to start with the what-if, and for that reason I could never feel as immersed in his world as I can in Crichton's. At the same time, Gibson scores more points than Crichton for his prophetic prediction of the 'Net, and as of yet no T-Rex's or Compy's have shown up on the mainland ;)
As much catching up as reality has done since Neuromancer and its sequels were conceived, the reader has to invent for himselfs the paths that lead from the world as we know it to the world in which Gibson's characters operate. Crichton draws that path much more clearly, and for that reason I find it much plausible. I will be the first to admit that plausible doesn't directly equate to enjoyable, as I enjoy George Lucas' to no end, but in my mind.
Star Wars and Neuromancer are in my opinion great works of technologically themed fantasy, whereas I think of Jurassic Park and Andromeda Strain as great science fiction. The distinction between science fiction and fantasy have been as hotly debated on /. before. I don't consider myself on expert on either, but perhaps this better states my opinion on the matter.
"You can't dissect him, predict him, which of course means he's not a lunatic at all."
Brought to mind one thought... I got in computing in that era (built my own Sinclair ZX80) when you *had* to program yourself. That probablt isn't a good thing... But somewhere along the way it has become harder & harder to actually program computers (not in the sense it is more difficult as such, just you now have to try and search it out) When did they stop supplying BASIC as standard with computers ? Do kids who interested download free compilers these days instead ? Or do we encourage passive consumers ?