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6 January, 2009
SHALL WE PLAY A WARGAMES?
Professor Julian Bleecker has us watching WarGames (IMDB | Wikipedia) in Critical Studies of Interactive Media class -
It's a movie rich with shorthand about networks, computer hacking and video games, from an era when those technologies were just coming in to popular consciousness. There's a steady supply of hacking payoff moments - Broderick hacks the school computer, hacks the military industrial complex supercomputer, but also physical hacks: Broderick hacks a phone, hacks his way past a keypad, social hacks where he outsmarts people and systems. It has a wit, evident still years later, that plays like "Ferris Bueller's Day Online."
The computers are the primary objects here, but the technology is all around us - phones, keypads, identification systems. The protagonist is fluent in this world, causing disarray with his curiosity and then coming to be Cassandra, predicting doom to deaf ears. The solution? An understanding of the stakes of the games we play - Finite and Infinite Games. A computer-enhanced hallucination!
Here's Roger Ebert's 1983 review. Four stars! And this line: "Note - I do not claim the movie is accurate about computers -- only convincing." Technology aside, the soundtrack and sound effects are very convincing.
Broderick wardials, plays Galaga, he uses an IMSAI computer. There's many sound clips, including delicious speech-synthesized bits. "SHALL WE PLAY A GAME?" is probably the first famous machine voice for my generation. Much as the HAL 9000 was famous for a generation before ("Sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that").
It was appropriate fun to watch all of this in the Interactive Media Division context; moments of group Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Posted by justin at November 11, 2004 6:01 PM
Comments
you are kidding me. MST3K on wargames? one of the most prophetic and factual movies of the 1980s? Those who cracked wise are obviosly ignorant of perhaps the most prophetic compter movies ever.
Posted by: jewbaby smith at November 15, 2004 9:32 AM
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