Technology in movies.
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Captain_Bob — 14 years ago(December 21, 2011 08:20 AM)
Yet nobody remembers the movie for thatrather than drama and the plot. The gee-whiz techno stuff was a mere diversion, a filler really.
Disagree, in fact the "technology" is what I remember most of all from this movie (In 1994 when the technology was so in-transition). The hilarious dramatic arrival of an e-mail (oooh!) the "cutting edge" huge clunky display monitors, the "do it kill all" command line, the cheesy trampoline VR getup (used to search a database instead of say, er um, gaming which has since proved to be a billion dollar industry) the tweep tweep Digicom sound effects, etc. A lot of movies from the mid/late-90s seem to suffer from these dated technology goofs.
Of course the other memorable giggle is watching Meredith (Demi) get burned at the end. Sweet justice! -
sgammans — 19 years ago(November 07, 2006 07:50 AM)
** mild spoiler alert **
To me the most dated aspect of
Disclosure
is how everyone is worrying about production quality problems
on a CD-ROM drive!
Those things sell these days for what, $10? $20? Ah yes, the good ol' days of pre-Windows 95. -
CTReviews — 19 years ago(March 13, 2007 06:26 AM)
I remember a Jeopardy episode from around the time the movie came out, and Alex Trabec pronounced it CD-ROME.
Also, they would have been purchasing all their CD ROM components from Phillips or Sony so this should never have been an issue. -
trickard — 13 years ago(September 16, 2012 02:33 PM)
Not just the actual technology, but the key plot item is about deleting files and backup. Even in 1994 (or in my case from 1978), processes for handling/retrieving backup, deleting files, etc, were much tighter and none of that stuff could have happened. That said, I did enjoy the movie - the plot was really good.
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MBiker80 — 19 years ago(March 28, 2007 09:12 AM)
This reminds me of Meredith's speech during the presentation. Unfortunately, I can't locate actual text from the film, but here's a direct quote from the book:
Meredith Johnson's presentation was flawless, the images blending and flowing across the screen, her voice confident, no hesitation, no pauses. As she continued, the room became quiet, the atmosphere distinctly respectful.
"Although this is not the time to go into technical matters," she said, "I want to mention that new CD-drive seek times under a hundred milliseconds, combined with new compression algorithms, should shift the industry standard for CD to fullres digitized video at sixty fields per second. And we are talking about platform independent RISC processors supported by 32-bit color active-matrix displays and portable hard copy at 1200 DPI and wireless networking in both LAN and WAN configurations. Combine that with an autonomously generated virtual database especially when ROM-based software agents for object definition and classification are in place and I think we can agree we are looking at prospects for a very exciting future." -
mandrake62 — 17 years ago(June 11, 2008 08:25 AM)
In the late 80s I was sourcing CD-ROM players for a proposal. At that time it was and emerging technology and it was difficult to find player units for under a $1000 even in quantity. CD-ROM was a highly competitive technology as depicted in the film.
Even though some of the technology depicted was over the top such as the virtual reality corridor, the film did capture the heady atmosphere of that era when everything seemed possible. But the VR corridor with such resolution and interactivity, is orders of magnitude beyond the technology of a CD-ROM unit. Showing them as contemporary top-of-the-line technologies is over the top. But it wasn't just gratuitous since it was an became an integral part of the plot and made for a good scene. -
Bush_Pilot — 13 years ago(August 05, 2012 12:29 AM)
Hey, my oldest brother was a project engineer for Digital Equipment Corp in the 80's and 90's and his bosses bet everything on main frames and only a little on their own proprietary pc, precluding any possibility of being compatible with the personal computer revolution until it was too late. One of the largest computer companies is just a memory. A prime example of how fast technology evolves I do remember playing the first ever dungeons and dragons game on a DEC computer. The one that was text only written at MIT in the late seventies or early eighties I think. I still have the program.
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/improvisations/2011/02/17/lessons-from-ken- olsen-and-digital-equipment-corp/#.UB4f9aPo7Is -
trvolk — 19 years ago(November 20, 2006 11:40 PM)
A 'guest' logs into a 'demo' of a 'prototype' 'user interface' and has full and immediate access to sensitive company records. No, not even in 1994 would such a glaring security hole be allowable, not even by Meredith in her cost-cutting ways. Perhaps in the early 80s, when virtually every computer geek knew the backdoor to DEC mainframes was user: field pass: service, but not by the mid-90s.
Crichton constantly amazes me like this; he gets the minor details right, those little bits that flesh out the story but have nothing to do with the plot, however he misses the big picture and makes huge glaring mistakes.
I can think of numerous ways for the Manager of Manufacturing to hack into a system, the most obvious of which would be guessing Meredith's password. A simple explanation that audiences in 1994 would have swallowed without question.
(True, having 2 Merediths in the system would be problematic, but just think along the lines of a catfight with the Angel as referee.) -
nyc1298 — 19 years ago(January 09, 2007 05:28 AM)
I'm surrounded by technology everyday at work at home. I'm a network engineer in fact so I can't escape it. But for some reason, absurd technology in movies don't bother me at all. 10 years ago when I was younger it did bother me, but now that I realize that everything in a movie is a fabrication by someone who isn't super technical, who cares? I guess I look at it like what a laymen would envision as being the next big thing or some cool technology.
Joe / NYC -
soruht — 17 years ago(May 16, 2008 11:40 AM)
"Dad you got this E-MAIL! You really should stop what you're doing and come read this E-MAIL on the COMP-YOOO-TER! It's an E-MAIL because it's ELECTRONIC MAIL! Read the E-MAIL dad! It's this new thing called E-MAIL! It's really cool, dad, this E-MAIL! E-MAIIIIL!"