Re: Query: Computers on film (5 responses)

From: Leo Enticknap <[email protected]>

'Alphaville' is an obvious one, surely. It's a weird combination of
science fiction (the computer, Alpha Soixante, is given a personality),
and actuality footage of a computer room containing what looks to me
like components of an IBM 7090 mainframe.

1960s and '70s vintage
mainframes also feature in the villains' lairs of many Bond films from
that period. I'd speculate that as a general rule, mainframe computers
were generally portrayed negatively (sinister machines being used to do
you harm) in mainstream cinema during this period.

Leo

Leo
Enticknap
Institute of Communications Studies
University of
Leeds
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk
http://leeds.academia.edu/enticknap

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From: "A. Bowdoin Van Riper" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Query: Computers on film
Date: 5 October, 2012 4:44:41 PM EDT
To: H-NET List for Scholarly Studies and Uses of Media <[email protected]>

The most striking example I can think of is the Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn film "The Desk Set" (1957), which involves a room-filling mainframe named EMIRAC installed in the research department of a TV network. Having spent weeks "feeding it information" (how does that work again?) from the department's collection of reference books, the operator is then able to input plain-language queries directly through a teletype keyboard and receive instant plain-language responses.

The Honeymoon Machine (1961) and That Touch of Mink (1962) also feature scenes revolving around mainframes -- the latter actually using punch cards as an input device -- though my memory of both the films and the real thing is hazy enough that I don't know if they'd be useful for this project.

Bow



Dr. A. Bowdoin Van Riper
Independent Scholar
Series Editor, "Science Fiction Television" (Scarecrow Press)
[email protected]
http://independent.academia.edu/ABowdoinVanRiper

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From: Robert Lindsey <[email protected]>

I really only watch old movies and TV shows and frequently am amazed at how computers were portrayed.  

Probably one of the prime 
examples is Desk Set (1957) with Hepburn and Tracy.  At the end when the skeptical librarian (Hepburn) types a question into the computer and it spits out the answer, she exclaims "Why it would take months to 
research something like that!"  

In the TV show Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983-87), which deals with the CIA, they frequently reference a search in the computer/database that turned up nothing, so then, that's that.  Nothing more can be done. No other information is available.  

I recently watched How to Frame a Figg (1971) with Don Knotts and, being a comedy, they play up punch cards flying out the machine when a button is hit, things like that.  And a section of the computer gets buried in a coffin.

In The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969) the memory of a computer is transferred to a human (Kurt Russell) through an electrical shock.

There's an episode of MacGyver (1985-92), in season two I think, where a security computer "takes over" and over secures, threatening to kill MacGyver and the woman who built it.  Something similar happened in the Six Million Dollar Man.  Or maybe it was The Bionic Woman.  

If you want to go the whole AI direction (like the above paragraph), there's probably a lot of example is this vein. Like War Games (1983).  And Knight Rider (1982-86).  And the very end of The Ghost at Dragstrip Hollow (1959) where some AI shows up which was particularly bizarre and out of nowhere.

And robots would open up a whole other direction also.  I think both SMDM and BW tackled them.

The old Batman TV show (1966-68) was pretty ridiculous with the computer.  As it was with everything.

You might look at this list: http://www.imdb.com/keyword/computer/?sort=release_date


Robert M. Lindsey
Pittsburg State University, KS

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From: "Henry M. Taylor" <[email protected]>

moviecliches.com lists the following - maybe not entirely current - weird behaviours of computers on film:

Word processors never display a cursor.
You never have to use the space-bar when typing long sentences.
Movie character never make typing mistakes.
All monitors display inch-high letters.
High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces.
Those that don't, have incredibly powerful text-bases command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain english.
Corollary: you can gain access to any information you want by simply typing "ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES" on any keyboard
Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing "UPLOAD VIRUS" (see "Fortress")
All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain's desktop computer, even if it's turned off.
Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn't go faster than you can read. The *really* advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer.
All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backwards.
People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.
A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.
Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function (see "Demolition Man" and countless others).
Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. Movie modems usually appear to transmit data at the speed of two gigabytes per second.
When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.
If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen (e.g Clear and Present Danger).
If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automagically asked for a password when you try to access it.
No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it'll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms.
The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has (Aliens). However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren't labelled.
Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, active animation, photo-realistic graphics capability.
Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY Supercomputer.
Whenever a character looks at a VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face (see "Alien", "2001").


Henry

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MODERATOR'S NOTE: This is certainly an interesting topic, and the temptation is to cite examples such as those above. Or 2001, War Games and especially Colossus: The Forbin Project, where humans place their faith in the artificial intelligence of computers only for it to have dire consequences. Of course, in many of these examples, it's not so much that the computers merely think for themselves, but respond as they were programmed by humans. In the case of 2001 (at least as detailed in the sequel 2010) the behaviour of HAL is discovered to have been a product of its conflicting programming. Similarly, in the arguably more fascinating Colossus, the computer takes to its programming so literally that it ultimately enslaves mankind.

In a way one could say these are good examples of naive use -- believing that an "intelligent" computer could understand the subtleties of morality, the imperfections of human thinking, and need independence -- but I don't assume this is what Steve is looking for.

The only example I can think of -- somewhat in reverse -- is the scene from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in which the engineer Scotty tries to talk to Mac computer in the year 1986. He assumes it responses to voice commands, like the computers on the Enterprise. When instructed to use the mouse, he tries talking to it again as if the mouse was a microphone. Finally he relents to use the keyboard, though how he could so easily master its 80s programming language strains logic, but it's not like the sci-fi genre embraces much of that. 

So it would seem a good search strategy is to think of either time-travel tales, where people encounter computers from an era different from theirs, or fish-out-of-water tales where perhaps someone raised in the wilderness, away from the comforts of modern living, suddenly find themselves dealing with this new technology. Further examples escape me at the moment, but I'm sure some are there.

But as Henry's list points out most effectively, all-too-often cinematic portrayals of computers bear little or no resemblance to their reality.

There's also quite an unintentionally amusing Lifetime movie called Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life (2005) in which a worried mom discovers her teenage son is addicted to internet porn. She has to get assistance from a co-worker to find out how to search browser history, and later needs assistance from her younger son in order to install Parental Guard software. There's also a bit where the parents look at their son's computer and are suddenly inundated with porn pop-ups, provoking hysterics because they don't know how to make them stop - dw.