Actually a lot of the laughable things they were doing with technology (which totally wasn't possible back then) are a reality now. The idea of someone hooking up all that stuff to their home computer was pretty much a pipe dream back then. Their pretty much talking about what USB does for us now. The film is pretty stupid though, how quickly miles goes from being a total novice to setting up such a complex network.
It's also pretty laughable how fast his old acoustic modem is transmitting (ridiculous speeds for back then, graphic AND text information?). Then the HUGE goof where his champagne only goes over the keyboard (easily replaced, why bother with the hair dryer - it should be covered under your guarantee). The whole "computer playing music" was a joke, it was a CAD package for crying out loud! Any sequence where the CAD package "reacts" to sound. It JUST WOULDN'T! The computer itself doesn't even have speakers (apart from the rubbish internal piezo speaker which would never be that loud) so it's output would be minimal (actually it'd be beeps and nothing more).
The "musical" radio pager is totally laughable, it just didn't have the ability to do anything even close to what their showing on the screen. The PC screen "watching" TV. Again, impossible. So much of this is the idea of the "Ghost In The Machine", we were more innocent about the ability of computers back then but we're all far more technology savvy now and aren't taken in by these very implausible ideas that are shown in this film. The idea that it could sample his speech (from a different room? even most modern Mic's aren't that good) is totally ridiculous. And the even more ridiculous idea it could "hear" his voice and "answer" back with any kind of sense? OK, we know about AI but we were far from it then.
The computers statement of "don't touch", like it knew where he was? Please, give me a break! The whole keyboard typing itself, by now I just want to kill the writer who thought he could get away with this travesty. The "creating a song from nothing", takes very complex software. It actually creates something akin to a modern day rap tune (incredibly sexist, degrading to women. Sir Mix A Lot would be proud of him.
Possibly the most painful tech howler is the sending of 40,000 volts by telephone. Somebody really didn't do their research about phone lines (that'd melt the then copper cabling before it got more than an inch) and you'd never get that much voltage back if it'd been routed as far as the computer claimed (around the world on copper cable? maybe 1 or 2 volts would come back, if anything). Today we can tear holes in this film without even trying. I guess back then we lived in a more innocent time and writers got away with murder.
It shows its age and you're better off not re-watching this. Leave it as a pleasant memory.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment