11–20 of 80 posts
In Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 a space odyssey, in the book, he describes a flat handheld device that is used for reading the New York Times. He can’t remember the exact details but the ergonomics he describes perfectly encapsulate the tablet devices we have today. I’m pretty certain he wrote it before the 1969 moon landing.
> It's the design mock up from the final presentation to Motorola for the iRadio (name later changed to Envoy). > The head of frogdesign, Hartmut Esslinger met Spielberg on a plane and showed him this mockup. Steven asked if it could be used as a prop in the film, and Hartmut gave it to him.
It’s mind-blowing to me that the actual guy who designed it chimed in. Assuming it’s not a fake comment, what are the odds!?
In Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 a space odyssey, in the book, he describes a flat handheld device that is used for reading the New York Times. He can’t remember the exact details but the ergonomics he describes perfectly encapsulate the tablet devices we have today. I’m pretty certain he wrote it before the 1969 moon landing.
It's astonishing to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey today and reflect on how well the production design has aged. That movie is coming up on 60 years old now!
The portrayal of AI has held up extraordinarily well too.
> It's the design mock up from the final presentation to Motorola for the iRadio (name later changed to Envoy). > The head of frogdesign, Hartmut Esslinger met Spielberg on a plane and showed him this mockup. Steven asked if it could be used as a prop in the film, and Hartmut gave it to him.
Very cool. I saw Jurassic Park in the cinema and remember thinking that the Unix system that they used was some Hollywood fancy, but I learned much later that it was actually a prototype of a gui [0]. It appears that Spielberg was well-connected to tech people at the time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_System_Visualizer
I mean actually the FSV that you refer to is a clone of the SGI IRIX utility, fsn , that was actually depicted on a live computer in the film. SGI was well-known to the film industry, because their IRIX systems were basically the sine qua non of graphics workstations and powerhouses. SGI invested heavily in the graphical capabilities, including 3D rendering, and therefore when the industry graduated from Amigas with…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean actually the FSV that you refer to is a clone of the SGI IRIX utility, fsn , that was actually depicted on a live computer in the film. SGI was well-known to the film industry, because their IRIX systems were basically the sine qua non of graphics workstations and powerhouses. SGI invested heavily in the graphical capabilities, including 3D rendering, and therefore when the industry graduated from Amigas with…
They had at least one Cray on site in the novel, a few SGI workstations seems very plausible.
It is important to remember that nobody who operated a Cray did it in isolation. The supercomputers always require some extra workstations arrayed around it in order to get stuff done. Of course, there were remote connections too, but often there would be at least one sort of "dedicated user console" that was closely coupled to the supercomputer itself. I believe that some supercomputers of that era were poorly equipped to actually handle interactive user sessions, and that's why.
In Arthur C Clarke’s 2001 a space odyssey, in the book, he describes a flat handheld device that is used for reading the New York Times. He can’t remember the exact details but the ergonomics he describes perfectly encapsulate the tablet devices we have today. I’m pretty certain he wrote it before the 1969 moon landing.
The movie itself predates the moon landing - it came out in 1968. It's astonishing to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey today and reflect on how well the production design has aged. That movie is coming up on 60 years old now! The portrayal of AI has held up extraordinarily well too.
it's interesting to think that many of our current AIs were trained on our fiction in a weird self-fulfilling strange loop.
of course the portrayal aged well, the damn things are using the material as a mimicry source.
I love Jurassic Park, the movie, because it was so wildly ahead of its time in so many ways. Also, mandatory https://jurassicsystems.com .
Very cool. I saw Jurassic Park in the cinema and remember thinking that the Unix system that they used was some Hollywood fancy, but I learned much later that it was actually a prototype of a gui [0]. It appears that Spielberg was well-connected to tech people at the time. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_System_Visualizer
I mean actually the FSV that you refer to is a clone of the SGI IRIX utility, fsn , that was actually depicted on a live computer in the film. SGI was well-known to the film industry, because their IRIX systems were basically the sine qua non of graphics workstations and powerhouses. SGI invested heavily in the graphical capabilities, including 3D rendering, and therefore when the industry graduated from Amigas with…
It's strange to think that alternative architectures were possible though and could get such a foothold in some industries. The specificity is mind-blowng. Everything is "PC"s today.