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Computer Interaction in Science Fiction Movies
MidVicious writes "From futuristic 'Punch Cards' to Voice Recognition HoloDeck Interfaces, human/computer interactions have always mirrored the base concepts of our emerging technologies. An article from a Saarland University CS Seminar highlights Hollywood history with UI, ranging from the moderately feasible (Total Recall's television/scenery display wall) to the often ridiculous (Swordfish's 6-flat screen monitor setup complete with 3-D virus-hacking environment). An interesting read, especially considering some of the technology is on its way to becoming a reality."
The computer in Alien (the first in the series) was unrealistic - not because of the artificial intelligence or natural-language processing, but because of the cumbersome way commands were entered and the unnecessary tekno-futurism of the computer room. Still, it was really good at helping the conspiratorial mood of the movie, and it is still one of my favorites in terms of fictional computers. I think the Star Trek TNG computers were probably the best depiction of how computers should be.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
Am i the only one who notices punching keys is all they do in movies? even tho they have a graphical UI
which consists of 6 flatscreen monitors of common size put together and probably supposed to be used as an enhanced display.
Great speech from a guy who can't count past 6!
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
"The conceptual fault here is that the controls of the machine are exactly the opposite of a human-centered design, since user has to work for the device to make it run."
That's the God DAMN POINT, fool.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yeah, because there's nothing better for my visual cortex to do than filter out background crap from my display. Call me when there's *near-opaque* free-space displays...
A mildly nightmarish array of pins that extended from hyrdraulic cylinders, connected to a mux and central pump system, would probably work just fine. The naieve implementation would have all pins either extending or receeding at once, but if you had two valves per pin, you could simultaneously raise and lower individual pins. Encoders could check the height of each pin, and then the whole thing would just be a representation of a heightmap.
I don't think the X-Men display features any color, so this is probably doable today. If memory serves, this kind of display was also in the original Myst game.
Given the title of the "paper" and given that he knows how to use references, he could at least admit which luminary in the field of HCI he has stolen the idea from.
In all these movies, they are a joke.
I mean, I cannot find a proper cable and even then I need to dig out 3 gender changers and a break-out box. These guys can I/F with some computer port from a different civilization using the same RS-232 port and a TTL voltage. Amazing! If only we the same interoperability here on planet Earth.
As sad as this is... Ive actually thought about that too. What follows is my attempt to justify the technology and what must be going on, with what you would see on the screen.
Lets say that Picard(on the bridge) taps his badge to ask for Riker(not on the bridge). This is how that might work;
1)Picard taps the badge to initiate the comm link.
2)Picard begins the link by stating who he is, and who he is attempting to contact.
3)With just a few second delay, the computer could derive from the audio who the intended recipient is.
4)Having cached the entire audio to determine who is the recipient, the ships comm system then forward this cached audi(mith a few second delay) to the recipient.
5)When the recipient hears the request come through on their badge, the link is already established, and there is no more need for a delay.
6)conversation proceeds as normal.
And no fair to the guy who said "you need to get laid". To that I say... "You need to stop getting laid, we have enough friggin people here!"
I don't know about the /. summary, but the setup in Swordfish was silly because it was only supposed to look cool. There was no HCI behind it: the monitors are arranged such that it would hurt your neck unnecessarily. The technology was superficial—it was a prop.
here's what the stupid article says about Metropolis : "The conceptual fault here is that the controls of the machine are exactly the opposite of a human-centered design, since user has to work for the device to make it run."
Duh ! That was the point of the movie !
Something tells me that they didn't quite grasp the concepts at work in some of these films, like criticising the metropolis interface for making the 'user' work. The workers in metropolis weren't users, and they didn't interface with the machines, they were slaves to the machines and just carried out the machines instructions, they didn't have any input, they just performed physical labour acording to the machines instructions. The clock thing was like a relay, but with a person doing the physical labour. They seemed to miss the whole point of that scene.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
I know, I know... I am as comfortable in front of csh and piping through awk and sed as most folks are with playing video games. Today, as part of the normal day-to-day crap, I wrote a 15 line perl script without referring to a manual, that formatted a bunch of data and made it all pretty for a browser. My co-workers can all do this.
I'm also big into making films. Much as I want to join the chorus and laugh at the totally unrealistic interfaces, I do realize something: most people don't know and don't care. To them, this is how they see computers. When I type up some bizarre iptables ruleset it's about as clear to them as Swahili is to a goat in Uganda. For the director it's a matter of balancing the telling of the story with realism. This is *tough* to do.
BTW, someone once said that it's better to blame stupidity/laziness/ignorance than malice. I realized this all too clearly when I had to shoot 4 actors. One was *extremely* difficult to light because of his skin tones to the point that I ended up cutting him out of the shot entirely. My ignorance probably contributes to the idea that directors/producers don't highlight certain actors. It's not malice, just that I'm not experienced enough to do it properly. Certainly not an excuse for professionals though... The same thing with computers.. Film guys are not necessarily computer guys (though there's a lot of overlap).
I agree, multimonitor is old news. I remember many years ago digging up a lot of cords and spare parts so I could see if I really could fill all my PCI slots with graphics cards and have it work. 6 monitors later, I did. :)
... 7 monitors. /. editor.
Heck, I'm pretty sure I was running Win98SE back when I had 3 monitors running.
Also, I found it humourous that the blurb complained about 6 monitors, directly over a picture of
Great proofreading there guys. Can't wait for you to be a
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
And they NEVER tap the badge to end the conversation.
...". How was the computer supposed to know when they had finished?
And in the original ST, they always began with "Computer
Come on, this is Slashdot. Anyone who utters that statement here should explode from the sheer redundancy of that statement.
For the first year after I had MS Windows on my computer, I did not have a mouse on my system. It is entirely possible that they know what they are doing with keyboard shortcuts, and therefore do not need a mouse.
Two observations: On the Aliens IV "breath" authentication; I think more credit needs to be given besides novelty. Feasibility notwithstanding, this would be one of the few biometric methods where the authenticator needs to be alive and *breathing*. I found this concept intriguing and it does show some thought on how to have a system that at least cannot be fooled by a chopped off hand, plucked eyeball, or easily recorded voice. OTOH not being able to get through a door because of your last, garlic laden, meal does pose some problems. :D Second, with the Nebuchadnezzar approach scene in "The Matrix: Reloaded" I understood the controller to be jacked into a mini-matrix enviroment (like the training scenes) with the 'display' being a VR. I think the article implies they think it was some sort of 3D display.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/virus-the-ga me
The worst hollywood interface im>ho was minority report's. His arms are flailing this way and that over a basically 2D screen. It was wide and things were stacked, but the size is the only part that is novel. How tired would you be if you spent a day, even an hour doing those gyrations. Imagine using that interface with just one arm, or sitting in a wheelchair. He could have just as easily been sitting down and clicking and dragging with a mouse up on the wide projection screen. Pretty, yes. But not practical for anything longer than the scenes we saw him use it. There was a Micheal Douglas movie that had a equally stupid interface. He put on a VR helm and gloves to control VR hands open VR drawers and sift through VR folders. Why make an interface that mimics the OLD way of doing something?
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