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Monday, April 9, 2007

Things computers can only do in movies

The Programming Blog's list of things that computers can do in movies is like a requirements document for a Movie OS (there's almost certainly a Linux out there that has been engineered to act like a Movie OS already). Many movies -- even contemporary movies -- treat computers as plot devices, allowing them to do things that everyone in the theater knows is impossible. This is likewise true of other machines, of course. Think of all the cars that do impossibly things in pictures, but usually when a car leaps over a drawbridge, turns on a dime, and then reverses at 90mph, it's meant to be a moment of extraordinary accomplishment. On the other hand, when a computer beeps every time you press a key, that's just meant to be normal operations.

24. Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional active animation, photo-realistic graphics capabilities.
25. Laptops always have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and performance similar to a CRAY Supercomputer.
26. Whenever a character looks at a monitor, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto their face. (See “Alien” or “2001″)
27. Searches on the internet will always return what you are looking for no matter how vague your keywords are. (See “Mission Impossible”, Tom Cruise searches with keywords like “file” and “computer” and 3 results are returned.)

Link (Digg)

Update: Jeremiah sez, "I always liked Jakob Nielsen's Top 10 Bloopers in Movie Usability. They strike at core mythologies about how computers work and the great yearning we all have for them to anticipate our thoughts and desires and meld with our own minds. Examples: The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI; Integration Is Easy, Data Interoperates; Time Travelers Can Use Current Designs"

posted by Cory Doctorow at 07:25:31 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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