War Games. It’s probably been at least six or ten years since I’ve watched that movie.
It’s still a fantastic movie.
But I came away from it this time marveling at the moral of the story, as told by Joshua, the semi-sentient computer: “Greetings Doctor Falken. That was a strange game. The only way to win is not to play.” That was good advice to a Nuclear-War threatened country in the early 80’s. Sadly, this is not the thought behind this post.
I had to marvel at the way the world has changed, and the way we, as a country have changed over the last 25 years since this movie was released. Advances in medical and computer science have changed the public’s opinions on what is acceptable in our movies. For instance:
- Jennifer (Ally Sheedy) gives Lightman (Matthew Broderick) a ride home on her moped. Neither of them is wearing helmets or protective clothing.
- Dr. McKittrick (Dabney Coleman) is a smoker. You see him smoking in pretty much every scene in the movie. No health warnings are provided anywhere in the movie
There’s also that wonderful early 80’s staple of modern society, the pay phone. Not only that, but it was a
rotary dial phone as well! Heck, shortly after that movie was released the rotary dial pay phone all but disappeared. And today, you’d be hard pressed to even
find a pay phone. More and more, the pay phone just can’t <cough> pay </cough> for itself anymore. Most of the major communications companies in the US have pretty much removed them completely. I know ATT doesn’t have any anymore – there was a big thing in the news a few years back that they were discontinuing their venerable pay phone service.
After all, who needs a pay phone when you have a cell phone, huh?
Several of the other things that geeks will point out to you are also long gone:
- Floppy Disc – Lightman uses 8″ floppies in this movie. They were already obsolete when the movie was released. Nowadays, it’s a USB fob if you need something small and portable.
- Acoustic Coupler – That’s the thing with the rubber cups that he puts the receiver in. That was also pretty much obsolete when this movie came out.
- CRT monitor – Does anybody use these anymore? (other than professional digital photographers, that is!)
It could just be me loving these movies I grew up with, enjoying a trek to the past, but I have to say WOW! Seeing these things that were a part of my childhood in the movies really takes me back. I’ve never really been one for nostalgia (yes, this is a blatant lie to anybody who’s read my blog over the last several months, but let me lie a little…), but seeing these things really lifts my spirits. It’s amazing how far we’ve come in the last 25 years.
The only downside to all this digitization that we have these days is that there will be no paper trail for archeologists to look back to in the coming decades. Fifty years from now, who will remember the 80’s? If the older generation were to die out today – and I mean anybody 30 and over – what would the kids be able to find out about us? I think we’re on the verge of what happened with the Greeks and Romans. Nobody really knows anymore for sure how things were, so we have to take our best educated guesses. I don’t think there’ll be enough left of our civilization when we’re gone for the historians to learn from.
…or I could just be a huge pessimist.
That’s all from me for now. Thanks for visiting and
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Jeez . . . you must be gettin =old!=
I thought only old farts like me were supposed to reminisce about things like dial phones, etc, etc, etc.
However, your comments about what future generations will have to learn about us from highlights a story posted recently on BBC — about handwriting.
The claim was that, in the not too distant future, if your grand or great grand children find a letter in the attic written in cursive, they may have to take it to a specialist somewhere and pay to have someone decipher it for them!
Scary!
Love ya’!
Ol’ Dad
Yeah, I see this as the way of the future. At least I have handwriting that’s fairly legible. 🙂