[00:00.000 --> 00:01.120]  I'm not sure where this is going.
[00:04.180 --> 00:06.360]  Yeah, we just... Yeah, we just plugged it in.
[00:13.540 --> 00:15.780]  This is an aesthetic critique of fictional media.
[00:16.200 --> 00:17.920]  And I'm a graphic designer.
[00:18.160 --> 00:19.120]  He's a developer.
[00:19.520 --> 00:26.480]  And our project today is going to be talking about how fictional media has a relationship with real design.
[00:26.680 --> 00:29.520]  And how they go back and forth.
[00:29.800 --> 00:35.760]  And also, I'm just going to give you a visual tour of how visual media has evolved in film.
[00:35.980 --> 00:39.140]  And how that's kind of keeping pace with technology.
[00:40.260 --> 00:48.620]  And sort of beginning with the origins where maybe most of the audience had no idea about the way media worked.
[00:48.880 --> 00:53.180]  To today, where almost everyone who watches film has a sort of basic literacy.
[00:54.180 --> 01:00.520]  So, how many people here have seen the movie Hackers?
[01:01.800 --> 01:02.720]  Probably everyone.
[01:02.720 --> 01:05.880]  Now, everyone who's seen it probably has a pretty strong opinion.
[01:06.100 --> 01:08.120]  They either hate it or they love it.
[01:08.220 --> 01:09.660]  And it's probably for the same reason.
[01:10.040 --> 01:14.100]  And it's because it's so very much a moment in time.
[01:14.160 --> 01:17.340]  And it's either so cheesy that it's like fun.
[01:17.760 --> 01:23.400]  Or it's so, you know, of a particular mindset that it fits them perfectly.
[01:23.400 --> 01:39.660]  And I think the thing to remember is that as a critical audience, it's useful to remember that when something's being demonstrated in a film, it has decorative elements, it has a functional element, and it also has a narrative element.
[01:39.660 --> 01:51.420]  So, when we talk about something in a film, this scene here was sort of the, like, cyber arcade, which was like a very, like, 90s fantasy.
[01:51.800 --> 01:54.900]  And this really only served a narrative purpose.
[01:54.900 --> 02:04.860]  So, we can kind of disentangle that from other elements like the very first scene where the character is, you know, trying to hack into a system to accomplish something.
[02:05.080 --> 02:06.540]  And in this scene, it's very practical.
[02:06.700 --> 02:13.080]  He's using just a terminal with, like, I think a monochromatic screen and he's trying to do a very specific task.
[02:13.080 --> 02:28.600]  And so, that's the first sort of point I want to make, which is to say that these other elements, which are very, you know, decorative, don't really decry or diminish the ideas put forth in the more serious elements.
[02:28.780 --> 02:39.540]  So, I guess that's something to remember when we look at all these films, because as a person who loves technology, we probably see science fiction films and people, the first thing they want to say is, oh, that was so fake.
[02:39.540 --> 02:41.880]  Look how fake that interface is.
[02:42.040 --> 02:43.520]  No one would use a computer like that.
[02:43.700 --> 02:47.320]  That's not necessarily the only thing you can get out of it.
[02:47.540 --> 02:49.780]  It's not just the most sensational part.
[02:49.920 --> 02:51.540]  There are also other elements.
[02:52.200 --> 02:53.220]  So, yeah.
[02:53.460 --> 03:04.420]  I just wanted to bring up, to go along with Sean's point, this particular screen right here, where Penn Jillette is the sysadmin, and he sees that somebody with the password God logs in.
[03:04.580 --> 03:09.320]  This is probably one of the most impractical looking command centers you could have.
[03:11.600 --> 03:17.600]  Nobody would be able to digest that kind of information on all these, like, walled screens or anything like that.
[03:17.740 --> 03:22.380]  But in the movie, the purpose of it is to show, look at how cool this place is.
[03:22.540 --> 03:34.780]  Like, this is really high tech, because at the time, in, like, 95 when it came out, lots of screens that are big and huge and, like, computers that seem big, that is, like, that means that it's cool.
[03:34.780 --> 03:37.300]  Because that's what the thinking was at the time.
[03:38.040 --> 03:42.820]  But in real life, when you take a step back, you're like, that doesn't really work.
[03:43.140 --> 03:44.800]  Like, that would be distracting.
[03:44.800 --> 03:52.020]  And also, I wouldn't just see the password God, and that would just be how I know who's online.
[03:52.420 --> 03:57.300]  Like, we know from people who are tech-savvy that that's impractical.
[03:57.420 --> 04:04.000]  But at the time this movie came out, not everybody was as tech-savvy as most audiences are today.
[04:04.000 --> 04:12.960]  So, that's why this is there, just as for, like, the narrative decorative point of view of, like, look at how cool Pendulet is being the sysadmin.
[04:13.800 --> 04:14.720]  That's, yeah.
[04:15.220 --> 04:27.620]  So, in that vein, we have the antagonists of the film using some sort of personal virtual reality system, which maybe you would play at Dave and Buster's at that point, but it wasn't really a practical technology people were using.
[04:28.280 --> 04:34.760]  And it also, it's kind of like, when you see this screen, this was like a login screen of one of the hackers in the movie.
[04:35.160 --> 04:42.120]  I want to make the point that there's something very special about the graphic design of media, because it can be whatever you want.
[04:42.240 --> 04:45.260]  So, if someone is to look at the screen and say, oh, well, that's not very realistic.
[04:45.320 --> 04:48.220]  It's really a matter of taste of the personal user.
[04:48.420 --> 04:54.080]  So, if they want to put something that has skulls and bombs on it, you can put that in your interface.
[04:54.080 --> 04:58.340]  You can use screen caps from something from the 90s, and it would still work functionally.
[04:58.840 --> 05:04.000]  So, it's very much a matter of taste, and it makes things happen very quickly.
[05:04.360 --> 05:06.420]  This is another telling element from this time.
[05:06.640 --> 05:13.160]  They basically just sort of glued together circuit boards, and this was supposed to demonstrate, like, going into cyberspace.
[05:13.400 --> 05:27.060]  And so, one thing that is very common in science fiction movies is this tendency to really celebrate the aesthetic of circuit boards and monochromatic text screens, and you'll see these things happen over and over again.
[05:27.160 --> 05:32.680]  There's, like, maybe a series of ten kind of tropes that every film uses to different degrees and makes small tweaks.
[05:33.480 --> 05:42.600]  This image, too, of the sort of zooming into cyberspace is something that maybe first kind of entered consciousness from 2001 A Space Odyssey.
[05:42.600 --> 05:48.400]  And, in fact, the designer who put that together also made another film called Brainstorm.
[05:48.560 --> 05:52.080]  And it's sort of a scene that you'll see in almost any science fiction film.
[05:52.160 --> 05:56.280]  When you're entering into the immediate environment, it's sort of like a light warp speed, like in Star Wars.
[05:56.680 --> 06:11.020]  And so, once again, here's just an element where it's showing this is a visualization of what a computer might look like, what cyberspace might look like for an audience who really doesn't know what technical specifications something has.
[06:11.240 --> 06:12.440]  And this is interesting, too.
[06:12.520 --> 06:20.480]  You see a figure in this screen, and it's sort of like this is supposed to be the inside of a computer, and this is a user inside of a network, and it's, like, identical.
[06:20.980 --> 06:23.720]  There's a sort of misunderstanding of the way computers work.
[06:24.380 --> 06:30.740]  You wouldn't really want to get information off these cylinders of text, the same sort of variations.
[06:31.440 --> 06:39.240]  And once again, this is just, like, something narrative to sort of, for an audience who knows nothing and wants to look at something interesting, this is something for them to look at.
[06:39.680 --> 06:47.640]  And this final image from Hackers in 1995 is sort of interesting because he's using this sort of goggle interface in place of a computer screen.
[06:47.860 --> 06:54.280]  And that is something that we are very interested in nowadays, like that Google Chrome is trying to develop that.
[06:54.280 --> 07:01.260]  And so there's, as you can see, there's elements which are just sort of decorative fancy and very much fashionable of a time.
[07:01.360 --> 07:06.380]  And there are elements that you could see as, well, if someone did have that, how would they use it?
[07:06.480 --> 07:08.440]  And that there's, like, an idea being suggested.
[07:14.830 --> 07:17.330]  So that sort of leads to The Matrix.
[07:17.710 --> 07:24.970]  And I'm going to talk about The Matrix and Johnny Mnemonic at the same time, because it kind of shows a very important kind of transition in audience.
[07:24.970 --> 07:27.910]  So everyone's pretty familiar with The Matrix.
[07:28.150 --> 07:31.370]  It's sort of like a really a bellwether film.
[07:31.610 --> 07:38.590]  And you see this transition of the circuit board imagery to monochromatic screens.
[07:38.670 --> 07:46.070]  And then it's interesting to counterpoint that with Johnny Mnemonic, which was a very similar film in terms of plot.
[07:46.230 --> 07:47.570]  And it even had the same protagonist.
[07:47.570 --> 07:54.890]  You had Keanu Reeves playing this sort of special hacker that sort of invaded cyberspace and manipulated it.
[07:54.890 --> 08:14.690]  But the point I want to make is that these images from Johnny Mnemonic show a unsophisticated concept of computers where people believed back then that our virtual spaces would have to be some sort of, you know, computerized, modified world where they would be made polygons.
[08:14.710 --> 08:21.770]  And you see that his interfaces, he has goggles and glasses, and that he flies through this weird cyberspace that looks like glittering lights.
[08:21.770 --> 08:28.910]  And then what transitions to a more savvy audience is you enter cyberspace through this jack in your head.
[08:29.050 --> 08:31.050]  And then it is as real as reality.
[08:31.770 --> 08:33.330]  What years were the two films?
[08:33.770 --> 08:36.950]  It was the first film, Johnny Mnemonic.
[08:37.530 --> 08:38.870]  I'll check to make sure.
[08:41.150 --> 08:43.470]  We had 1995 to 2009.
[08:44.010 --> 08:44.650]  Ninety-nine.
[08:44.730 --> 08:45.150]  Ninety-nine.
[08:45.510 --> 08:45.590]  Sorry.
[08:47.710 --> 08:59.390]  So, what's interesting about it to me is that as people who've lived through this time, you probably remember that resolutions weren't as good and now they're better.
[08:59.570 --> 09:00.510]  And now we have HDTVs.
[09:01.350 --> 09:07.190]  And it's sort of interesting to think that we can sort of extrapolate that what's the end result?
[09:07.190 --> 09:15.910]  You start trying to make something as real as you possibly can, whatever the specifications of your graphical software, and eventually you want to have something that's just as real as reality.
[09:16.150 --> 09:22.950]  So, the transition is this monochromatic technical screen.
[09:25.230 --> 09:32.530]  But the sort of punchline to that sort of idea would be maybe the movie Inception, where there is no technical stuff going on.
[09:32.530 --> 09:38.590]  You just have to take it for granted that they're an architect creating a media environment and then it's just as real as real life.
[09:39.530 --> 09:45.190]  Now, another film that is sort of very useful because it talks about lots of ideas at once was Iron Man.
[09:46.950 --> 09:59.670]  And Iron Man is sort of the quintessential model for modern design because in 1950 there was a designer named George Nelson and he came up with this idea of the Wound Man.
[09:59.850 --> 10:05.950]  That all design is technically driven by the need to be competitive in war.
[10:06.170 --> 10:16.850]  And so, he had this famous speech where he had a robot come out and do the speech for him and it talked about how some of the first graphic design was showing an image of the man with like arrows in him showing weak points.
[10:17.250 --> 10:23.350]  And that that evolved to, you know, when you make swords, how do you make a sword perfectly to kill a person?
[10:23.350 --> 10:27.210]  How do you make a bow and arrow extra efficient in hitting someone from far away?
[10:27.430 --> 10:28.750]  And they even talk about in that movie.
[10:30.630 --> 10:33.130]  So, Tony Stark is the Wound Man.
[10:33.490 --> 10:41.210]  And in his bedroom, you see this technology of his glass window is showing a computer screen where it's like superimposed.
[10:41.290 --> 10:44.270]  He can see the time, he can use the Internet in his space.
[10:44.430 --> 10:45.730]  And you'll see that in multiple films.
[10:45.830 --> 10:48.390]  You see the Total Recall, you'll see it in many different films.
[10:49.370 --> 10:54.670]  And here's another classic trope of science fiction media is the multiple screen arrays.
[10:55.050 --> 11:02.230]  And as you can see, this is like his laboratory and he has like different screens showing different imagery of what he's working on.
[11:02.610 --> 11:06.950]  And then you have the screen of him, like what he's seeing in his suit.
[11:08.330 --> 11:17.390]  And so, you'll see in all these different examples that this is just supposed to be one person's experience.
[11:17.390 --> 11:21.950]  And he has multiple different media environments, which is sort of what we've grown accustomed to.
[11:22.050 --> 11:27.690]  So, he has his computer screen which he sees, you know, maybe this is the closest to our computer screens.
[11:27.690 --> 11:30.510]  Although it's like a big screen and it's semi-transparent.
[11:30.850 --> 11:33.650]  And he has this like holographic display.
[11:34.090 --> 11:40.090]  And this is another like sort of hallmark of science fiction films.
[11:40.090 --> 11:46.850]  It's where they show these really gaudy holographic displays.
[11:47.050 --> 11:50.090]  And this is an example of something that's actually fairly productive.
[11:50.930 --> 11:54.310]  Like we could look at this and say, this isn't just to look pretty.
[11:54.450 --> 12:03.050]  This is something that's useful because if you're an engineer and you want to see multiple different parts of a schematic and can see how they overlap, it can be very useful.
[12:03.270 --> 12:08.730]  In fact, there's a graduate student that was working on a battery, a new battery.
[12:08.910 --> 12:16.490]  And he said that he used... one of the inspirations he had was that he built his prototype in Photoshop layers.
[12:16.630 --> 12:18.910]  So, he could look at how they overlap simultaneously.
[12:19.290 --> 12:26.170]  And so, in lieu of his holographic system, he was trying to emulate that idea in his normal working practice.
[12:29.800 --> 12:36.460]  And this is sort of like a really funny moment in contemporary film where you see these in...
[12:36.460 --> 12:39.420]  This is from the Avengers, but you'll see these screens which are transparent.
[12:40.260 --> 12:46.220]  Now, anyone who uses monitors would probably... the first thing they would think is, well, why would I want to be distracted with something in the background?
[12:46.220 --> 12:47.420]  I'm trying to look at the monitor.
[12:47.720 --> 12:50.540]  What extra benefit would I have from a see-through screen?
[12:50.720 --> 12:55.900]  And that's like, once again, where it comes in to be more about the narrative in that particular case.
[12:55.900 --> 13:00.920]  So, in this scene, you want to be able to see the actor and know that they're looking at computer screens.
[13:01.300 --> 13:06.820]  So, this is one way for the camera to look through the screen is to say, well, the screen's transparent.
[13:07.420 --> 13:12.720]  Although, in practical use, you wouldn't really have any reason to have your screen be transparent.
[13:17.210 --> 13:24.070]  So, this is a few examples from real life where it just reminds us that these things aren't just science fiction.
[13:24.070 --> 13:31.830]  So, for someone who maybe has a very perfunctory knowledge of technology, they might go see a film and think, oh, well, that's just science fiction.
[13:32.030 --> 13:33.250]  It's not real life.
[13:33.350 --> 13:34.170]  It might be in the future.
[13:34.350 --> 13:38.910]  But a lot of these ideas with our current technology are being implemented.
[13:38.910 --> 13:41.230]  And some people are using them already.
[13:41.230 --> 13:51.270]  So, Leap Motion came up with this screen or this environment where they're able to navigate using videos capturing hand motion.
[13:51.470 --> 13:55.770]  And this is something that's already practical, although it's not evenly distributed.
[13:56.250 --> 14:04.810]  Similarly, people are working on virtual design systems or virtual reality design systems where you can interact with something in a 3D space.
[14:04.810 --> 14:06.730]  I mentioned before, Google Glass.
[14:07.870 --> 14:13.650]  These are technologies where people, sometimes hackers, will see something in a film and they'll just build it.
[14:13.810 --> 14:15.730]  And we have the available components.
[14:16.010 --> 14:19.870]  It's sort of where it comes to being like present day.
[14:20.010 --> 14:25.630]  It's sort of when we can finally make it mass produced and very affordable.
[14:25.630 --> 14:27.010]  That's when everyone will have it.
[14:27.090 --> 14:29.170]  But it's not a matter of can this happen.
[14:29.290 --> 14:30.610]  It's a matter of when will this happen.
[14:37.770 --> 14:39.710]  So, that leads me to my next point.
[14:39.850 --> 14:46.010]  There's a theoretical mathematician who's very influential in current programming named Philip Wadler.
[14:46.170 --> 14:48.690]  He's at the University of Edinburgh.
[14:49.430 --> 14:58.890]  And he has this theorem where he says, a programming language will be adopted if and only if it permits users to do something and it can't be done in any other way.
[14:58.890 --> 15:04.990]  So, this is sort of a good way to think about new media environments and technology.
[15:05.550 --> 15:12.310]  Where, you know, I've noticed a lot of people at these conferences use their iPads to take a picture of the screen.
[15:12.670 --> 15:19.210]  And iPads sort of proliferated so quickly because it was able to do something they couldn't do before.
[15:19.210 --> 15:21.850]  It was like this tablet that they can interact with.
[15:21.910 --> 15:23.030]  They don't need a separate screen.
[15:23.190 --> 15:23.850]  It's very small.
[15:24.090 --> 15:25.230]  They can use it as a camera.
[15:25.370 --> 15:26.170]  They need these other things.
[15:26.770 --> 15:35.330]  And so, in the film 2001, you'll see that they had these things which people point to and say like, 2001 predicted the iPad.
[15:36.390 --> 15:40.010]  So, it's not really the idea that's so important of these things.
[15:40.010 --> 15:45.390]  It's sort of like when you can make it do something that people want to do, that's when it will get adopted.
[15:45.590 --> 15:47.050]  And it will get adopted very quickly.
[15:47.470 --> 15:52.530]  And so, just while we're on this page, this is like another multiple screen array from 2001.
[15:53.530 --> 16:03.370]  And that's sort of one of the most reoccurring images in science fiction is these different examples of multiple screen arrays.
[16:03.910 --> 16:05.570]  And it looks very cinematic.
[16:05.830 --> 16:07.510]  You see this is from Watchmen.
[16:07.770 --> 16:09.130]  You see all these TV screens.
[16:09.130 --> 16:11.030]  This is from the movie 12 Monkeys.
[16:11.790 --> 16:14.130]  You'll see these different... and this is from the net.
[16:15.770 --> 16:21.950]  Multiple screens are important in the sense that you can have a screen for whatever type of signal you want.
[16:22.130 --> 16:23.950]  So, this is the most practical example.
[16:24.210 --> 16:30.630]  In Watchmen, which was set in the 80s, the character wanted to have every news channel on a different TV.
[16:30.810 --> 16:31.810]  So, you just have a different TV.
[16:31.950 --> 16:32.550]  It's very practical.
[16:32.670 --> 16:34.350]  You just have a different screen for a different signal.
[16:34.350 --> 16:39.890]  But the interesting thing is that they also sort of look really nice.
[16:39.890 --> 16:41.410]  They look really theatrical.
[16:41.770 --> 16:46.310]  So, people get distracted by that idea and they think like, well, I'll have a wall of TVs.
[16:46.310 --> 16:49.550]  That's very... that will be a very useful way to look at things.
[16:49.730 --> 16:52.330]  But really, it's a matter of screen space.
[16:52.330 --> 17:01.970]  And since our resolutions on screens are so powerful, if you have just one screen, but you can put multiple windows, you're accomplishing the same goals.
[17:02.210 --> 17:07.310]  So, in some cases, that's an example where it's very theatrical.
[17:07.490 --> 17:12.190]  In other cases, it's very practical depending on its particular usage.
[17:13.650 --> 17:17.710]  This is a screen from a clockwork arch.
[17:17.990 --> 17:27.230]  And it's a kind of pivotal scene in the movie where they devise this Ludovico effect where they had an individual forced to watch a film environment.
[17:27.630 --> 17:35.330]  And it's sort of interesting because there's no practical reason why these sorts of things can't happen.
[17:35.330 --> 17:36.390]  In fact, they have happened.
[17:36.530 --> 17:50.310]  And it's actually a sort of tongue-in-cheek jab at CIA techniques or mind control ideas where you would have this individual who's forced to watch a series of flashing imagery.
[17:50.750 --> 17:55.650]  And it would sort of potentially brainwash the user.
[17:55.650 --> 18:16.890]  And so, this combined with images like this where in the movie Blade Runner where you see these sort of index database screens are sort of snapshots of things that do exist in real life.
[18:17.030 --> 18:23.010]  And it's just a matter of who's implementing them as far as like whether or not they're futuristic or not.
[18:23.010 --> 18:35.650]  And so, on that point of multiple screens, this is like a screen cap of surveillance.
[18:36.310 --> 18:48.570]  And so, surveillance is one of those times where in real life people are using these really expensive, really big imagery walls to look at multiple scenes and see like is someone doing something shady.
[18:50.150 --> 18:53.830]  So, you can see that art imitates life pretty directly in this case.
[19:02.650 --> 19:05.270]  So, this is the movie Brainstorm that came out in 1983.
[19:05.650 --> 19:14.490]  And this was sort of another to go back to that idea of when we had the movie we were talking about that had flashing imagery.
[19:14.710 --> 19:16.710]  It was the same graphic designer as 2001.
[19:16.710 --> 19:24.690]  And what's interesting about this was it was right before our common usage of digital and wireless technology.
[19:24.690 --> 19:30.870]  So, you see these individuals using these helmets and they're all connected to the central wire.
[19:31.090 --> 19:38.390]  And so, it's interesting that in the past it was very... in this scene you see like the physical tape.
[19:38.390 --> 19:49.370]  So, we had a sort of display of the current technology of the day being what supposedly the future would look like.
[19:49.530 --> 19:58.430]  And that's sort of an interesting thing that occurs over time where all we can do is explain things in the term of the language of the day.
[19:58.430 --> 20:07.150]  So, if you show an imagery of someone wearing goggles and it's not attached to a wire in 1980, people will know what it is.
[20:07.250 --> 20:08.210]  They'll just think, oh, what is that?
[20:08.290 --> 20:08.850]  Just glasses?
[20:09.210 --> 20:11.510]  They won't understand the implication.
[20:12.210 --> 20:28.350]  So, the importance of film is such that when you introduce an audience to an idea like in the much maligned minority report where everyone knows the scenes where he's using an interface where he swishes his hands around and he's not using a mouse.
[20:29.510 --> 20:34.050]  Everyone, even if they're not very tech savvy at all, they can say, oh, like in minority report.
[20:34.250 --> 20:35.450]  And it's in their consciousness.
[20:35.650 --> 20:39.010]  It enters the possibility of what interfaces they can sell.
[20:39.190 --> 20:45.210]  And as we all know, companies will sell whatever they want to sell, not necessarily the best thing.
[20:45.450 --> 20:47.850]  They'll only sell what people are buying.
[20:47.850 --> 20:52.710]  So, if people are most comfortable with mouses, they're going to keep on making computers with mouses.
[20:53.110 --> 21:00.910]  If people really, really want to buy an environment where they can use just their finger, like on an iPad, they'll make iPads.
[21:01.090 --> 21:10.030]  So, that's sort of an interesting role for film where you come up with an idea and it's so interesting, people want to experience it.
[21:10.150 --> 21:11.990]  And then it moves the actual market.
[21:13.090 --> 21:20.410]  This is the film by Terry Gilliam, the same person who did 12 Monkeys, called Brazil.
[21:20.730 --> 21:26.370]  And he's very interested in filming film, filming multiple screen arrays in real life.
[21:26.790 --> 21:36.010]  And this is an interesting kind of critique of culture because, as you can see, these people are using these miniature screens.
[21:36.010 --> 21:40.010]  And it's sort of a commentary on the economy.
[21:40.870 --> 21:46.810]  Like they're saying, well, in this future world, people are so maybe poor or the system is so beleaguered.
[21:46.970 --> 21:50.470]  All they can afford are these monochromatic small screens, but people still need to see them.
[21:50.590 --> 21:56.770]  So, in an office environment, they make these magnifying glasses so they can see their small screens.
[21:56.770 --> 22:04.770]  Well, this is not too far from reality because everyone's used to their iPhones and they're so portable or so useful.
[22:05.010 --> 22:09.770]  And then if you go online and look at the third-party accessories, they have all sorts of things that sort of seem impractical.
[22:10.450 --> 22:14.250]  Like, you know, you can put your iPhone in a dock and all of a sudden it's a stereo.
[22:14.390 --> 22:24.230]  You can put a handy cam holder on your cell phone and make it like a camera that you could use to film a TV show.
[22:24.230 --> 22:31.750]  And we all know it's like you should use the best technology you can for your specific role.
[22:31.870 --> 22:45.530]  But it's just there's a certain level of practicality to if everyone has iPhones and everyone knows how to use them and everyone's making apps for them, well, we'll just stick with that small thing and then add peripherals to it to make it useful again.
[22:45.530 --> 23:05.950]  But it's sort of like an interesting sort of like the Star Wars like gritty future where even though it could be better because it's the future, we take these kind of weird lateral or backward steps because of whatever is popular and there's like this fashion element that it's throughout both these films and reality.
[23:06.430 --> 23:08.830]  So this is from the movie Gamer.
[23:09.150 --> 23:11.230]  And this is like a contemporary future.
[23:11.430 --> 23:17.590]  And I think it's an interesting transition now, like I said, how everyone's become more savvy and they're used to seeing screens.
[23:17.690 --> 23:19.170]  They're used to seeing screens in everyday life.
[23:19.170 --> 23:20.310]  You see digital billboards.
[23:20.590 --> 23:25.250]  That we've finally been able to give up on the sort of down-talking.
[23:25.370 --> 23:30.030]  Like, I'm going to make it look like the screens looked ten years ago so I know everyone knows what I'm talking about.
[23:30.030 --> 23:36.250]  Now we can finally say, we'll make the screen look as interesting as possible because everyone gets the idea that it's a screen.
[23:36.870 --> 23:44.550]  So, you know, you see these multiple images of screens within screens which is sort of the way that we navigate the Internet now.
[23:44.750 --> 23:46.750]  This is the way we use a computer.
[23:46.930 --> 23:50.010]  You know, we have multiple applications running at once.
[23:50.350 --> 23:58.070]  And so this is Inception which I said is sort of like an interesting conclusion to the linear progression.
[23:58.070 --> 24:03.650]  Where at first we wanted to tell you it was a computer by showing you actual computer chips.
[24:03.790 --> 24:03.890]  See?
[24:04.010 --> 24:04.550]  It's a computer.
[24:04.710 --> 24:05.410]  It's computer chips.
[24:05.650 --> 24:10.210]  And then we had Johnny Mnemonic where it was sort of like a cyber world where we have polygons.
[24:10.790 --> 24:11.890]  So now you can tell it's a computer.
[24:12.130 --> 24:17.010]  And that it's telling that this character, Arianna, is the architect.
[24:17.010 --> 24:19.130]  But you never see her building.
[24:19.370 --> 24:21.450]  You never see her interacting with her interface.
[24:21.450 --> 24:29.950]  It's sort of now so accepted that like this is supposed to be within someone's mind in a world that she might be generating.
[24:30.170 --> 24:33.790]  But it's just sort of bypassing interfaces altogether.
[24:34.450 --> 24:44.070]  But even still in this scene in which the main character has entered his own mind and is seeing something he's projecting himself.
[24:44.070 --> 24:51.330]  You'll see that in this bedroom there's this line work, this grid, which is reminiscent of almost maybe Tron.
[24:51.610 --> 24:55.750]  Where on an almost subconscious level we're still telling people, see?
[24:55.970 --> 25:00.550]  Like, well this is a generated media environment because we're giving you this grid work.
[25:00.570 --> 25:05.590]  That proves that it's not... that it's a computer or that it's in someone's mind.
[25:05.710 --> 25:07.950]  That it's not... it's not real life.
[25:09.850 --> 25:20.070]  So this is Minority Report, which I said is sort of like the seminal example of the hands-free media environment that is sort of the direction people are going.
[25:22.110 --> 25:30.230]  Interestingly too, you see at the bottom of the screen, as part of the plot, that they were thinking they could use a computer interface to predict the future.
[25:30.230 --> 25:33.410]  That was sort of how the plot of the movie came together.
[25:33.570 --> 25:39.950]  That one of the people was making a Minority Report a different example of what they thought the future would be.
[25:40.210 --> 25:53.610]  But I point out too that when we talk about Inception, the Matrix, Tron, these other things, it's very evident that we think that the ultimate goal is that there will be no separation from human beings and their interface.
[25:53.850 --> 25:56.170]  That it's sort of like we're going to enter a computer world.
[25:56.250 --> 25:57.830]  We're going to be using our minds to interact.
[25:57.830 --> 26:04.030]  But right now, there's a sort of competitive element of like, how would you actually enter that world?
[26:04.270 --> 26:07.150]  So like in this film, there's a sort of like weird water bath.
[26:07.510 --> 26:09.950]  In the Matrix, they have that sort of mind jack.
[26:11.530 --> 26:13.850]  And in Inception, they have a sort of injection.
[26:15.030 --> 26:16.670]  That part's up for grabs.
[26:17.070 --> 26:20.190]  Now, I mentioned the idea of the multi-screen.
[26:20.950 --> 26:27.730]  And this is a fun example of where the movies get it wrong because they're just trying to be decorative.
[26:29.610 --> 26:40.110]  When you see the manipulator, the film director working on his simulated person, he's using three screens to look at the same image.
[26:40.490 --> 26:43.310]  Now, this is an example of where it might look good on film.
[26:43.470 --> 26:47.210]  Like, we're showing this really high-tech looking thing.
[26:47.390 --> 26:51.950]  But as an actual user, he's not getting any benefit from his multiple screens.
[26:53.230 --> 26:55.470]  So, it's sort of in how you use it.
[26:55.590 --> 27:03.270]  And this is a very good example of where it seems really high-tech, but it's not a very good application of the tool.
[27:03.570 --> 27:10.350]  Because what he's getting is a picture of a face that is as big as maybe 10 feet tall.
[27:10.590 --> 27:13.350]  But he's missing information in between the different parts.
[27:13.350 --> 27:17.030]  So, we can obviously build a gestalt in our head that's a face.
[27:17.210 --> 27:21.210]  But why would you want to not see the spaces in between of the face?
[27:21.410 --> 27:22.850]  It's sort of just decorative.
[27:32.700 --> 27:34.980]  So, this is a movie called The Thirteenth Floor.
[27:35.380 --> 27:38.400]  And it sort of was in that same era as The Matrix.
[27:38.760 --> 27:43.320]  And it was about this designer who was able to build a virtual reality.
[27:43.840 --> 27:47.940]  Sort of very similar to The Matrix, but with their own stylistic twists.
[27:49.580 --> 27:51.640]  And I think that this is an interesting point.
[27:51.800 --> 27:55.540]  That if you see this imposed grid, it's sort of like that shot we just saw of Inception.
[27:56.300 --> 28:01.820]  How do you inform people that they're looking at a mediated environment if it looks as good as reality?
[28:02.140 --> 28:05.580]  And they do it here by showing this grid superimposed on it.
[28:05.840 --> 28:13.980]  Now, if anyone watches football or basketball maybe, when they show it instant replay, we have the technology to show it in real time.
[28:14.060 --> 28:16.740]  We can make it look as real as if it was a live broadcast.
[28:16.740 --> 28:20.220]  But they'll very subtly slow it down.
[28:20.240 --> 28:27.320]  So that on some perceptual level, you can make a difference between, Oh, that was reality I was watching and this is fake.
[28:27.600 --> 28:30.020]  Or this is like a mediated experience.
[28:30.460 --> 28:38.820]  So, right now the way we handle that is maybe as a leave over from our history of knowing that resolution wasn't that good.
[28:38.820 --> 28:45.140]  that we show like some things resolving from a grid to their actual shapes.
[28:45.860 --> 28:48.540]  That's like our current understanding of it.
[28:48.740 --> 28:54.200]  So, imagine we see a cat in real life.
[28:54.340 --> 28:56.420]  Say that in our media environment, we see a person walking.
[28:56.640 --> 29:02.860]  To show that it was a mediated environment, maybe you show it like sometimes shaking out of existence.
[29:02.860 --> 29:06.040]  Sometimes you see it as a grid and then popping into full resolution.
[29:06.340 --> 29:09.440]  That's our current concept of the way things work.
[29:12.340 --> 29:17.660]  So, to come back to my original point of how these things feed back on each other.
[29:17.900 --> 29:25.300]  That same guy, there was an engineering student who watched the movie Iron Man and then he got ideas from it.
[29:25.300 --> 29:30.880]  One of the ideas was that he was thinking, well, there's a real problem about energy.
[29:31.060 --> 29:35.320]  And that the protagonist comes up with this battery device, this arc reactor.
[29:35.620 --> 29:43.760]  So, he didn't create an arc reactor, but he sort of reexamined the notion of how to make a really powerful small battery.
[29:43.960 --> 29:46.280]  That maybe that could power a car.
[29:46.560 --> 29:53.940]  And so, he used the example based on the question posed by a movie to make a real life prototype.
[29:53.940 --> 30:06.820]  So, this is a demonstration of how the questions and the ideas brought to light in film are very, very important for how we as a society make our choices.
[30:07.120 --> 30:08.020]  What's important?
[30:08.300 --> 30:09.340]  What's a problem?
[30:11.240 --> 30:17.820]  And this is an example of a school room from a colleague of mine in England at Durham University.
[30:17.820 --> 30:25.860]  They have a synergy lab where these kids are actually using these tables, these computer tables for their everyday activities.
[30:26.160 --> 30:31.840]  So, they're actually interacting with this environment which seems very high tech or in the future.
[30:31.860 --> 30:34.720]  But this is the way that they're getting their daily exercises.
[30:35.080 --> 30:39.820]  So, once again, this is an example of how the future is not completely evenly distributed.
[30:39.820 --> 30:47.220]  So, it's not a matter of chronological time where, oh, in 2008 I was supposed to get my hoverboard.
[30:47.300 --> 30:48.120]  Where's my hoverboard?
[30:48.540 --> 30:55.300]  It's more of a matter of when can we get the phenomenon to happen based on our request.
[30:55.500 --> 31:02.040]  You know, when we come up with an idea, enough people have to work on it and clamor for it for it to be executed.
[31:02.040 --> 31:12.260]  So, there are people like this professor who says, oh, well, we see that people are going to use these light tables in the future because it's useful for some reason.
[31:12.400 --> 31:13.940]  Now, let's start testing it.
[31:14.020 --> 31:14.920]  Let's see how it works.
[31:15.660 --> 31:22.120]  And so, as a sort of conclusion, I sort of give this thing to remember.
[31:22.120 --> 31:36.140]  that when you're making an argument, the philosopher Hegel had this concept, you know, you have a thesis, an idea, and then you come up with antithesis, where you come up with all the things that maybe disagree with that or the opposite.
[31:36.400 --> 31:42.000]  And then you put it together and you get the most correct answer, the synthesis of both parts of ideas.
[31:42.220 --> 31:57.220]  So, that's a good way to think about the critical elements in film where we have a reality, the contemporary possibilities of science, where we can do things like make table screens, we can make Google glasses.
[31:57.580 --> 32:05.200]  But we also know things like, from the movie Brazil, we know what is at a possible failing, we know what's the dangers.
[32:05.520 --> 32:08.140]  So, all those things are being reflected in film.
[32:09.840 --> 32:14.120]  We, like the director Ingmar Bergman, he said, films reflect reality.
[32:14.360 --> 32:18.120]  That's really what they do, whether it's a movie set in the future, the past, or the present.
[32:18.120 --> 32:21.840]  They're really addressing our everyday interests and needs.
[32:22.140 --> 32:30.640]  So, when you see a film, it's really making a statement about this is the way we live our lives, this is the way we should live our lives.
[32:30.820 --> 32:43.180]  So, people take the reality, they reflect on it in film, and that comes up with this aesthetic phenomenology, which is to say, we all have seen people build a computer that looks like R2D2.
[32:43.180 --> 32:50.300]  We've all seen people that make their iPhone look like a character's phone in a movie.
[32:50.500 --> 32:57.960]  That we are actively and self-consciously mimicking the things we put in film.
[32:58.160 --> 33:18.420]  And that it's important to remember that even when it seems like a film is cheesy, like the movie Hackers, where that the technology is really dated, that we can still remember to strip out the parts that are decorative or narrative-based, and remember what parts of this film are actually making a suggestion,
[33:18.440 --> 33:21.760]  or making an interesting commentary on the way we use technology.
[33:22.060 --> 33:33.740]  So, maybe we don't all want to wear cut-off leather jackets and skateboard, but we do want to have these Google Glasses, so we don't have to carry around a screen.
[33:37.160 --> 33:37.720]  Thank you.
[33:42.250 --> 33:44.610]  It's all anonymous and stuff, you don't have to sign up for anything.
[33:44.830 --> 33:46.370]  So, it's very Wiki-style.
[33:46.650 --> 33:51.010]  So, anyway, if you want to continue, we'll be on there, like, adding to the conversation.
[33:51.230 --> 33:54.470]  We have more examples that we didn't talk about in the talk.
[33:54.690 --> 33:57.530]  So, yeah, that's it for us.
[33:57.650 --> 33:57.870]  Thanks.