Comment Re:Metaphors and Subject Translation (Score 2) 609
I think the problem here is not so much the inclusion of metaphor so much as it is the gross distortions and inaccuracies that find their ways into movies (and other forms of media) whenever technical or heavily-detailed subjects come up.
Disney, for example, is famous for taking a good story and distorting it horribly in order to make it into a children's movie. To them, it doesn't matter that the Hunchback dies, or that Hera was the cause of 99% of Heracles' problems, or that the Little Mermaid becomes sea foam at the end of the originals. What matters to them is that the kids get a happy ending, and so the original data gets massaged into forms that those familiar with the originals almost can't recognise. I have friends who refuse to watch Hercules because of what Disney did to the myths.
Similarly, movies that focus on technical things often distort and misrepresent the actual facts in an attempt to make a good story, and those of us that know how the originals work often find the movies based on them appalling if not downright offensive in their lack of accuracy. I could handle flashing lights and the like if there were some attempt made at preserving technical correctness, but Hollywood likes to treat computers and the Internet as a magic prop: they do whatever you need them to do and require no explanation.
"Independence Day" has the heroes upload a virus into the alien computer system and disable the shields. The hoi palloi sees this and says "oh, right, ok" and never thinks twice about the sheer absurdity of this proposal. That we could have acquired the level of knowledge that they'd have to have about the alien computer technology in order to do this inside the time alloted is rediculous, to say nothing of the prospect of uploading the same using a Mac Powerbook. :)
Now, just to show that it isn't ALL bad, there are movies like "Sneakers". It does a very good job of balancing technical detail and user viewability. There're several scenes of encrypted screens of data being magically resolved into meaningful text by connecting a decoder-chip on the fly. No reboots, no hardware manipulation, just attach the leads and voila! The explanation as to what the chip is and how data encryption works, however, is accurate if somewhat oversimplified.
I think that one could dump all this back into the study of "suspension of disbelief". The typical moviewatcher is not likely to have a high level of detailed technical knowledge, and so on heavily scientific matters, writers make little effort to be technically accurate because it doesn't pay off. This means that, unless the movie is a rare one, those who DO have in-depth knowledge of what's being distorted will find the holes much faster than those who don't. This is true of any field, not just computers.
Disney, for example, is famous for taking a good story and distorting it horribly in order to make it into a children's movie. To them, it doesn't matter that the Hunchback dies, or that Hera was the cause of 99% of Heracles' problems, or that the Little Mermaid becomes sea foam at the end of the originals. What matters to them is that the kids get a happy ending, and so the original data gets massaged into forms that those familiar with the originals almost can't recognise. I have friends who refuse to watch Hercules because of what Disney did to the myths.
Similarly, movies that focus on technical things often distort and misrepresent the actual facts in an attempt to make a good story, and those of us that know how the originals work often find the movies based on them appalling if not downright offensive in their lack of accuracy. I could handle flashing lights and the like if there were some attempt made at preserving technical correctness, but Hollywood likes to treat computers and the Internet as a magic prop: they do whatever you need them to do and require no explanation.
"Independence Day" has the heroes upload a virus into the alien computer system and disable the shields. The hoi palloi sees this and says "oh, right, ok" and never thinks twice about the sheer absurdity of this proposal. That we could have acquired the level of knowledge that they'd have to have about the alien computer technology in order to do this inside the time alloted is rediculous, to say nothing of the prospect of uploading the same using a Mac Powerbook.
Now, just to show that it isn't ALL bad, there are movies like "Sneakers". It does a very good job of balancing technical detail and user viewability. There're several scenes of encrypted screens of data being magically resolved into meaningful text by connecting a decoder-chip on the fly. No reboots, no hardware manipulation, just attach the leads and voila! The explanation as to what the chip is and how data encryption works, however, is accurate if somewhat oversimplified.
I think that one could dump all this back into the study of "suspension of disbelief". The typical moviewatcher is not likely to have a high level of detailed technical knowledge, and so on heavily scientific matters, writers make little effort to be technically accurate because it doesn't pay off. This means that, unless the movie is a rare one, those who DO have in-depth knowledge of what's being distorted will find the holes much faster than those who don't. This is true of any field, not just computers.
