finn@pur-ee.UUCP (07/06/83)
Jacob is a computer that can learn from its mistakes (highly intelligent!).
Previously, everything that had been taught to him, indicated that he could win
a nuclear war and that it was possible to do so, because THAT WAS WHAT
HE HAD BEEN TOLD! Because tic-tac-toe was not on the
games list, he had never played it, and never learned it. It was
the only game on that list that could be easily proven to be a no win
situation, and in this case it was used to show Jacob that it was possible
to have a no win situation, after which he relearned his nuclear war game
looking at it in a new light. Jacob's whole purpose was to win; the concept of
no-win was brand new to him. When asked what the purpose of the game was, he
replied: "To win, of course." He was learning something new and either delayed
the missile launches because of that or because he was using all of his
capacity to play and learn this new concept, or both. This is of course, all
speculation, but it does make sense.
The message of Wargames was not "Computers are bad" or "think twice before
giving up control to a computer", although those may have been part of the
overall message. Rather, it was that "there are no winners in nuclear war"!!!
A very important message that most people don't seem to understand. The whole
movie led up to this simple message and put it across rather effectively (or so
i thought).
David Hesselberth, Purdue University Computer Center
{harpo, decvax, ucbvax} !pur-ee!finn (or) !pur-ee:pucc-h:adrrst@houxu.UUCP (07/07/83)
I think that I have now seen every male name that starts with the letter 'j'. The name of the computer in WARGAMES is 'Joshua' not Jason,Jacob etc. etc. Scott Thompson