Slashdot Mirror
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
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!"
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).
Come on, this is Slashdot. Anyone who utters that statement here should explode from the sheer redundancy of that statement.