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Date: Tue, 22-Jan-85 13:17:44 EST
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Posted: Tue Jan 22 13:17:44 1985
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From: augeri%regina.DEC@decwrl.ARPA

>From: redford%doctor.DEC@decwrl.ARPA  (John Redford)
>Subject: movie request
> 
>I heard from a friend about a movie or TV version of "The
>Adolescence of P1".  Does anyone know anything about it?  The book
>was about a system cracking program which gets loose in the net and
>eventually attains consciousness.  It was unusually accurate for
>this kind of thing, unlike, say, "Wargames".

There was a movie on the Boston PBS station (WGBH, channel 2) last week
titled "Hide and Seek" that was based on the  book "The Adolescence of
P1". The movie was done by the Canadian Broadcasting Company (don't
remember the year), had a cast of unknowns (probably Canadian), and was
only about 55 minutes long. The ending credits of the movie gave credit
to the book for the story. In the movie the program was created by a
high school hacker playing a game that looks like "Life".  The kid
explains to a friend that the patterns being generated by the game
looked like computer programs. So, he tried to run one of these
patterns that he had saved, and bingo, he had created this incredibly
intelligent program. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book and the
movie, but from my memories of the book, the creation of the program
was more believable than the way it was depicted in the movie, even
though I can't remember the details of the book. In the movie, the
program gets into a computer that is controlling a nuclear power plant
and creates a situation where the reactor is about to go critical. In
the book I remember the program getting into some super-powerful
defense computer, but my memory fades after that. In both stories the
attempt to destroy the program fails, so the program is still around
somewhere...

	Mike Augeri

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