“You mean this isn’t real?”
I suppose it’s because I know a little about technology, but I tend to get quickly annoyed by “sucked into the computer / Internet” stories. To start with, there’s no “there” to be sucked into, mainly – it’s all numbers, words, and pictures constantly copied from A to B and back; and there’s no technology on the horizon that can copy & paste your consciousness like an MS Word file. Moving the story ahead several technology levels helps a bit, as does tossing in blatant magic (if a character is sucked into a painting, no author ever tries to convince us that it’s a glitch in the painting). Still, to simulate *everything* about a world, one needs information storage, processing, and display greater than the sum of the information to be simulated. If you plan to build an virtual planet with a convincing ecosystem and 6 billion people, that can be a heck of a challenge.
Ironically, one of the movies that did the best jobs of this was actually Tron. The hero was sucked into the computer by a device specifically designed to suck physical objects into computers – there was no “I put my cell phone on my low-bandwidth acoustic modem and I suddenly ended up here!” crud. And the simulation he arrived in was clearly crude and basic – there was no pretense of complete realism. Maybe the plot and characters didn’t hold up, but at least there was some underlying logic.
On the other hand, a compelling plot and interesting characters can easily make up for technological BS. The world of the Matrix movies is extremely technologically suspect, but at least during the first movie, we didn’t mind. Just be aware that if you have an “in the computer” story you have to tell, make sure something’s distracting us from the technology, please?
Dinner with Captain Paisley
Saturday night I had dinner with Tom Monaghan and his wife, Donna. We had a good time catching up on stuff, seeing what the other’s been up to, trading trivia found on Slashdot, that sort of thing. Tom’s even posted some new Wiikii strips on his website, Wiikii Paradise. I think he (or maybe Wiikii) should get a LiveJournal.
Other than that, it’s been a slow week. All this week, I get home at 7, eat dinner, and just don’t feel like doing much besides reading. As soon as I get my next paycheck, I’m going to get some model supplies and build and review the Klingon ship model for Jerry. Of course, tomorrow night I’ll be back on I-64 / I-81 for the trip to Blacksburg (with stopovers in Salem both ways).
While I still believe that 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the most beautiful and realistic space movies ever made, I think I become more critical of its other aspects upon every viewing. I’m beginning to agree with the folk who say that Hal 9000 actually has far more personality than the two human astronauts on Discovery. Guys, you could be out-acted by Thunderbirds puppets – come on!
We should rewrite the script so we win
All three completed Space Rogues episodes, plus the blooper reel, have now been posted on the movies page of my website. Yes, they are QuickTime, and yes, they are huge files so you’ll need broadband. I tried MPEGing them and DivXing them, and they didn’t get smaller either way. One day, I hope to generate new movies from cleaner originals.
I’ve only been meaning to post these for years.
Yeah, sometimes I’m no fun.
Saw “The Matrix Reloaded” again last night. Like a lot of modern action movies, there’s parts of it I just can’t enjoy as much as the filmmakers intended me to.
In the Matrix trilogy, both the good guys and the bad go through a lot of bystanders. We do get a pious little speech from Morpheus in the first film discussing that some of the village may have to be burned down to save it, but I don’t think that improves the freedom fighters’ moral ground much. From the perspective of the ordinary, unknowing inhabitant of the Matrix, those from Zion would indeed seem like terrorists in a lot of their actions.
But the freeway scene is the bit that always gets me. True, most of the random destruction in that scene is caused by the “bad guys”, but it doesn’t make it much better for me. Live though one near-fatal car accident in real life, and one’s attention moves from the cool kung-fu move that Agent did off the hood of a car, to the poor driver who was just trying to get home from work and is now chunky salsa all over the road. Boom – the sequence is not fun for me anymore, and now I just want it over. 🙁
You know, the Machines seem disorganized and barely in control of their own creation in these movies. We saw in Mouse’s death how the Machines can hack the Matrix for their own use. Why not just make the small tweak [set ZION_VEHICLE_GAS to “0”] in that sequence? There’d be a lot less mass destruction, ghostly apparitions, and Agent possessions to explain away later.
Even better – don’t want to fight Morpheus and Trinity, who’ve gone through a lot of your Agents as it is? [set ZION_VEHICLE_FUEL_TYPE to “fighter aircraft fuel”] – as soon as a little of that hits the spark plugs, the KeyMaker and the Zion rebels won’t be a problem. Maybe the Machines just aren’t very creative on their own.
From something jdunson said
Matrix@Home – the screensaver where YOU are the OS!
Initial download free with signed slavery contract. Kung-fu package and cellphone plan sold separately. Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Monica Bellucci, and other expansions priced by customer pupil dilation.
If you would like information about adding “The One” option, please stay on the line and our agents will be with you shortly. Really.
Unfortunately, you’ll be back.
Saw T3 last night, and I can’t say I really liked it, mainly because it practically screamed, “T4 – coming soon!”
Office conversation
“Microscopic bugs in your hair, mites on your skin – do you have any idea what’s in your blood?”
“Ummm… a tiny submarine carrying Raquel Welch?”
“Or worse, Chris Rock and David Hyde Pierce…”
Ooo, hit me again Agent Smith
You know, if I were one of Morpheus’ freedom fighters for Zion, I’d spend a *lot* of time researching electronic ways to block the ‘pain’ and ‘damage’ signals the Matrix wanted to send to my meat body.
Imagine if you hacked the connection ever so slightly to redirect the pain signals so they’d send a tiny jolt to the pleasure center of your brain instead. Agents could shoot you all day and it would just make you giggly. Your Matrix body might end up looking like The Crow, but that might be turned to your advantage; and you can always get another the next time you jack in.
I’m played by Omar Epps.
Who is Omar Epps?
I did the LiveJournal sitcom thing, but only to see the casting results.
Of mild interest – rhaps is played by Bebe Neuwirth, rainbowsaber by John Malkovich, nviiibrown by Janeane Garofalo, and ypawtows by Albert Brooks.
