CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Watching Computer Techies in The Background of TV Shows

Thursday, December 20, 2007

this entry brought to you by lcd soundsystem, "someone great"


You're watching a crime show, and the detective is trying every last lead he can find to get any evidence. Perhaps he ought to watch the surveillance tape again. He takes it down to the computer lab, and a techie sits at the keyboard while the detective stands behind him. The room is dark for absolutely no reason, and their faces are lit up that pale blue glow the monitor gives off. "Wait, go back!" the detective says, having noticed something for the first time. "Can you slow it down?" The techie types something in. "Right there. Stop it right there." The techie types something in. "What's that in the background?" The techie shrugs. "Can we zoom in?" The techie types something in, and the screen zooms in at the point of interest.

Exactly what is the tech guy typing to zoom in on that license plate off in the background? I'll admit that I've never used police crime enforcement ultra high tech computer equipment, but I have used graphical software with "zoom" technology, and generally speaking I click the mouse, highlight what I want, and zip the scroll wheel up-- I really don't have to type anything. And yet there he is, typing something that appears to be a whole sentence-- he's not just using one or two hot keys-- and it zooms where he wants. Perhaps he's typing "Zoom in on that blur back there in the background", and the computer, being high tech crime lab stuff, just knows what he's talking about.

If you ever watch any kind of drama where anybody uses any kind of computer technology to do pretty much anything, up until the turn of the century you'd see obvious gaffs like this all the damn time. But what's funny is, even though in today's world essentially everyone with the technology to watch television also knows how to use a computer, this kind of thing still happens on television and movies. Granted, you see a lot more people doing every day things like "clicking and highlighting" on modern shows, but there's still an inordinate amount of useless keystroking to do basic tasks, as if "random button pushing" equates to the viewer "Guy who knows what he's doing".

On a related note, this kind of thing is hightened to ridiculous degrees while watching Sci-Fi movies, but since it's in the future and pressing random doo-dads seems futuristic, we just let it slide. But if you think about it, it's no less ridiculous. For example, in Star Trek-- and I'm talking recent Star Treks, like Voyager-- the Enterprise will be under attack, and the captain will say "Arm weapons!" and an ensign in the corner will tap a few random lights on his screen and maybe zip his finger from somewhere to another point. "Fire!" the captain will say, and the ensign frantically taps out one or two more buttons and Kazaaam! Shouldn't "shoot bad guy" come up often enough that it should just be one button? Shouldn't there just be a "shoot" button? Am I mistaken in thinking that high-tech Air Force fighter jets in the current day just have a "trigger" that shoots bad guys? You mean in the future somehow, where we have the technology to vaporize planets, user interfaces have somehow gotten more complicated than the pre-historic "pull the trigger, shoot the bad guy" technology of a thousand years earlier?

But Star Trek isn't the only science fiction that has this problem. As recently as The Matrix Reloaded, there's this part where the Nebucunezzer is coming back in to Zion, and we see a shot of some random engineers in a white limbo with these really cool floating neon buttons instead of actual physical keyboards that they're all randomly tapping away at, and we hear over their headsets something to the affect of "The Nebuchannezer is home! Open up the doors for them!" And a friendly female engineer twiddles with a series of buttons and says "Welcome home, Nebuchnezzer!" Shouldn't there just be an "Open door" button? I own a 7 year old PC that's running Windows ME, and when I want to execute something, I just double click. In the Matrix, where anything is possible, they haven't yet figured out the "double click on door icon" technology.
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with love from CRS @ 10:33 AM 

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