Computers spurred a filmic renaissance

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      "Open the pod bay doors" just wouldn't mean as much without our constant companions.

      We're all pretty used to having computers around us these days. Even if someone's desk and lap are clear of desktops and laptops, and their pockets remain free of enhanced portable telephones, computers still appear in almost every retail outlet and public building, and built into all kinds of unlikely devices. And all of that's happened within the past 30 years, which is about when bank machines started popping up. Before that, computers weren't something we interacted with. Most people saw them only in movies and on TV. I recently watched a bunch of shows from the days before computers ingratiated themselves so thoroughly into our lives. Made back in the 1960s and '70s, they suggest there was a fair bit of social anxiety about these new machines.

      Few people understood what computers really did, so there were lots of opportunities to make them into scary, all-powerful, malevolent intelligences. Little did the folks in those simpler times realize that the truly frightening thing about computers wasn't that they'd dominate humans by working so well, but rather, that a power failure or software glitch could wipe out hours of work. (Then again, maybe computers are playing the long game”¦)

      Anyway, many films back then involved computers smart enough to become self-aware and artificially intelligent, whether they were intended to or not. It's easy to spot these movies–usually the title is displayed in that awkward computer-card font and printed on-screen to the sound of a teletype machine, and the computer often speaks in a clipped voice, either sped up and squeaky or deep and deliberate. Billion Dollar Brain (1967) comes to mind, as do Our Man Flint (1966) and Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970). Westworld (1973) gets partial credit, but it includes robots, which some purists might consider a cheat. All these movies are probably best watched for their value as campy entertainment. Alphaville (1965) by Jean-Luc Godard is the artful exception from that era–the film, with its offbeat French take on science fiction and society, still holds up.

      Then there's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), in which a journey to meet some aliens is threatened by a computer breakdown–an emotional breakdown. HAL 9000 doesn't stop working, it just gets all mean and self-important. For operational faults like the ones computers really suffer from, I guess you can credit Fail-Safe (1964), although the computer doesn't get much screen time. (All I'll say about Demon Seed [1977] is that it's been 30 years and I still intend never to watch it.)

      If those mysterious computers weren't trying to run the world, then some smart person was using them to commit crimes, as in Hot Millions (1968), or some strange electrical surge was causing them to transfer their powers into somebody's mind, as in Disney's The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969). Almost the only positive portrayal of computers back then came in the original Star Trek TV series (1966–69). As has been pointed out before, that show seems to have strongly influenced the design of our current technology. Any modern computer has the ability to read files out loud, and you can talk back to it if you want, using software that interprets your voice. Marry that to Google or Wikipedia and you'll be just like Capt. James Kirk. You may even already have a really big TV in front of a comfy chair.

      By the 1980s, people were slightly more familiar with the limits of computers. Everyone owned a calculator, and a few folks even had computers of their own. It was clear these devices would not be getting together to take over Earth anytime soon–they could rarely get Pitfall to run correctly. Instead, the paranoia shifted to the new class of priests: the people who programmed computers. Thus, the hacker movie came into its own: WarGames (1983), The Armchair Hacker (1985), Terminal Entry (1986), Thrillkill (1986), Sneakers (1992), and the truly abysmal Smart Money (1986), a scarcely seen BBC effort that scores 1.6 out of 10 on the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com/). For comparison, the average person's maiden aunt's Prairie vacation slide show will generally score from 1.9 to 2.5 or so.

      Don't forget the romantic comedies, presumably the children of that tennis shoe–wearing computer: Electric Dreams (1984), Weird Science (1985), and D.A.R.Y.L. (1985). Let's finish with two notables. One is Terry Gilliam's remarkable Brazil (1985), in which 1940s technology, in all its steam-puffing, pneumatic-tube glory is extruded into a surreal 1984-type world. The second, the impressively ahead-of-its-time Tron (1982), didn't do well when it was released but has since attained a certain cult status. Sure, computers aren't anywhere near being able to scan humans, import them into their circuitry, and make them compete in video game–like challenges, but the film's story had a certain truthfulness in the casual way it tossed around jargon that was at the time practically unknown. I remember seeing it when it came out and thinking that one day these terms for computer hardware and software could well become commonplace. I just didn't think it would happen so quickly.

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