sorceror@LL.ARPA (06/24/83)
Message-ID: <SORCEROR.$1753713@LL.ARPA>
Lauren's flaming over WARGAMES very accurately echoes my own reactions.
Thank you, Lauren.
***** FLAME ON *****
I would add that this film is genuinely pernicious, because its unrealistic
portrayal of electronic automation facilitates a message which encourages the
uninformed public's fear and loathing of this technology. The opening vignettes
make it clear that WARGAMES intends to deal with the topic of replacing human
agents with a computer controlled system. The plot developments, aided and
abetted by the film's distorted concepts of computer systems technology, imply
that such systems are disastrously unreliable. The issue of human fallibility,
which led to the implementation of the WOPR, is conveniently ignored, after the
first five minutes. The film attempts to distract the viewer from this fallacy
of selected evidence, by raising the prospect of nuclear holocaust and evoking
hysteria about the anticipated consequences. It reinforces its judgment about
"man vs. machine" by blaming the computer and its affiliated personnel for this
state of agitation. This sort of emotional manipulation is a most dishonest and
improper technique of argument, which should be recognized and deplored. Despite
the strength of its purely dramatic elements, I found this film objectionable,
because of this sleazy Luddite pandering.
***** FLAME OFF *****
Enjoy,
Karl Heinemann
(SORCEROR at LL)
P.S. Just this morning, I heard a radio ad for WARGAMES, where a person
leaving the theater says "This is the most important movie of the
year". This reaction exemplifies my misgivings about the film, that
people will see it as a serious argument against implementation
of computer control technology, including AI. AAAAAAAAARRRRRGGH !!
bstempleton@watmath.UUCP (06/27/83)
We read that the "humans are fallible and should be replaced by computers" issue is only dealth with in the first 10 minutes of War Games. This is true directly, but underneath I don't think it's hard to understand why you don't want a computer capable of launching all the missiles. And it particular why you don't want a russian one. Let's face it - there are bugs everywhere. Bugs crop up on code you "know" to be bug free. War Games could not get this message through to the public which doesn't understand programming, so the routine they chose (this is fantasy, remember) was to have a dormant AI program resident in the computer which was given missile control. A movie where they give missile control to a computer and a bug causes a big launch would provide no drama, and they have to have drama or they have no movie. Instead we got what I thought was a much better than expected treatment of computers. Sure AI is not that advanced (and wasn't in the seventies) and sure they would not use the games computer as the missile control computer, but that's the SF part. For those of you who wonder about the ability to login with just a single name, I have heard the DoDs concept of a secure computer is one in a locked room with armed guards and no remote logins. At this point, no passwords needed either, except for priviledged accounts. War Games tries to point out that this was the case, and they ordered TelCo to remove all incoming lines, and they screwed up. -- Brad Templeton - Waterloo, Ont. (519) 886-7304