Old Pcs in the movies

[Se87]

Every time I'm watching a show I'll suddenly shout out the model name of a computer or smartphone I recognize (if it's an uncommon/old one. I don't bother shouting 'iPHONE!' all the time). Middle of a movie and you'll just hear "IBM PS/2 Model 30!" or "Tandy 1000 series!" or maybe "Samsung Blackjack II!".

Annoys the hell out of my parents

I do that all the time, in Pirates of Silicon Valley they zoom out and show some other computer booths, I shouted them all out, pretty impressive to make it that accurate. I know for sure Heathkit was in there, maybe even Commodore (would have been right for a Pet 2001). I also couldn't resist naming the other 20 computers in the movie .

 

[bettablue]

Going away in a tangent, I always found it funny that in the Ci-Fi movies of the '60s, where the "future" is displayed, there is not a glimpse of the "personal computer concept".

For example, take "2001: A Space Odyssey" ( 1968 ): HAL9000 is a super-mainframe, there are no personal computers at all in that movie. :D

Peppini, you hit the nail on the head with you're response. I've been wanting to respond to your reply, but things kept getting in the way. But since someone else "woke" it up again, I thought I would offer my thoughts on your insight. And, possibly open this thing up to a whole new level of confersation. So since it was awakenned I thought, why not?

You know, for all of HAL's abilities in the Odessy movies, Hal9000 really wasn't all that powerful. The only thing that would have really taken any real computing prowess was in his interaction with humans. Everything else could have been done with any number of other solutions.

We sent man to the moon with computers that didn't have the power of a 1980s calculator. The Hubble tellescope was originally sent into space with a 286 processor and only later later upgraded to a 396 as part of NASA's Optical issue fix. (Another dubject for another place and time)

Any way, back to HAL. Given what we know today, Hal could have been as simple as a 286, or maybe even an 8088. For the most part, Hal's job was to monitor the status of the ships sensors, and of course, monitor the crew, which is what caused his mental meltdown. I won't go into the millions of other discussions on having a computer that sense of leadership and decision making abilities. The simple point here is that HAL9000 really didn't need to be the humoungus mainframe they made it out to be. Of course, at the time Space Odessy was written, that's pretty much all we had were mainframes. But elsewhere in the movies, they had walls with interactive TV screens imbedded into them. There were hints of other things too.

I'm going to go out on a limb here. I really would like to take this conversation as far as we can, but not here, unless the mods have a good place to keep it, and don't mind if it gets going a bit before we close it off for good. Does anyone have an idea on where to post this thread, maybe move the entire thing to another forum or something?

 

[IBMMuseum]

Peppini, you hit the nail on the head with you're response. I've been wanting to respond to your reply, but things kept getting in the way. But since someone else "woke" it up again, I thought I would offer my thoughts on your insight. And, possibly open this thing up to a whole new level of confersation. So since it was awakenned I thought, why not?

You know, for all of HAL's abilities in the Odessy movies, Hal9000 really wasn't all that powerful. The only thing that would have really taken any real computing prowess was in his interaction with humans. Everything else could have been done with any number of other solutions.

We sent man to the moon with computers that didn't have the power of a 1980s calculator. The Hubble tellescope was originally sent into space with a 286 processor and only later later upgraded to a 396 as part of NASA's Optical issue fix. (Another dubject for another place and time)

Any way, back to HAL. Given what we know today, Hal could have been as simple as a 286, or maybe even an 8088. For the most part, Hal's job was to monitor the status of the ships sensors, and of course, monitor the crew, which is what caused his mental meltdown. I won't go into the millions of other discussions on having a computer that sense of leadership and decision making abilities. The simple point here is that HAL9000 really didn't need to be the humoungus mainframe they made it out to be. Of course, at the time Space Odessy was written, that's pretty much all we had were mainframes. But elsewhere in the movies, they had walls with interactive TV screens imbedded into them. There were hints of other things too.

I'm going to go out on a limb here. I really would like to take this conversation as far as we can, but not here, unless the mods have a good place to keep it, and don't mind if it gets going a bit before we close it off for good. Does anyone have an idea on where to post this thread, maybe move the entire thing to another forum or something?

Within the entire Star Trekdom there is always a dominant theme of a central computer too, with even personal logs being recorded there (and seemingly going back to the "cloud" instantaneously). The concept of a "personal computer" is lost, unless the tricorder is viewed as a replacement. In Star Wars, the PC's seem to follow you around. :D

At least for "Dune", Frank Herbert (with an aside that he died in 1973, before primary concepts of a personal computer were well established) was able to maneuver around why computers would be absent by weaving it into his plotline....

 

[ziloo]

....... Hal9000 really wasn't all that powerful........... Hal could have been as simple as a 286, or maybe even an 8088. For the most part, Hal's job was to monitor the status of the ships sensors, and of course, monitor the crew, which is what caused his mental meltdown....... The simple point here is that HAL9000 really didn't need to be the humoungus mainframe they made it out to be.

Hal had to look-up in an enormous list of options he had (in a very paranoid way) to find way/s to
prevent his ill fate of being shut down. Hal needed tremendous computational power and should
have been a mighty computer........... and finally Hal decided to cheat !

There are nice conversations on the web about Hal's chess game with
Frank Poole in which Hal cheated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poole_versus_HAL_9000_(chess)

http://www.chess.com/article/view/2001-a-chess-space-odyssey

ziloo

 

[Pepinno]

You know, for all of HAL's abilities in the Odessy movies, Hal9000 really wasn't all that powerful. The only thing that would have really taken any real computing prowess was in his interaction with humans. Everything else could have been done with any number of other solutions. (...)

Any way, back to HAL. Given what we know today, Hal could have been as simple as a 286, or maybe even an 8088. For the most part, Hal's job was to monitor the status of the ships sensors, and of course, monitor the crew, which is what caused his mental meltdown.

It's one thing to be a computer with domotic functions. But it is another thing altogether to be an Antificial Intelligence Entity. HAL was both things. Or, to be more precise, HAL was an Artificial Intelligence Entity whose task was to care for the domotic functions of the starship.

The interesting thing about HAL is not the complexity of what he does (domotic functions), but the complexity of what he "undestands" (or does not understand).

---

That said, I think the "Alien" (1979) movie deserves a citation, when Sigourney is about to activate the autodestruction device, and screams to "Mother", the hidden but ubiquitous heart of the space ship: the central computer.

Also, the central computer in "Resident Evil" (2002), is a sight to behold! That one is probably heavily inspired in HAL 9000.

 

[IBMMuseum]

...Frank Herbert (with an aside that he died in 1973, before primary concepts of a personal computer were well established) was able to maneuver around why computers would be absent by weaving it into his plotline....

Correcting myself, that Herbert died in 1986, it was Tolkien that died in 1973...

 

[ProfessorK]

I was watching "Wayne's World" last night with a few friends and noticed a Commodore PET on a desk in the background. I shouted "Whoa! He has a PET!" and everyone either gave me an odd look, or just said "wh...what?". I took the easy way out and just replied with a "Uh, nevermind." Haha