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From: turner@rand-unix@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: WARGAMES
Message-ID: <3364@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 22-Jul-83 18:57:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.3364
Posted: Fri Jul 22 18:57:00 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 24-Jul-83 04:20:23 EDT
Lines: 28


The writers for WARGAMES came by the other day to do some research
on expert systems.  Their next movie ("Sneakers") is about an expert system
that NASA builds which is subsequently stolen by the Mafia.  Or some such
crazy thing.  At any rate, that is probably only a germinal idea.

While they (two fellows, one older, one younger, didn't get their names)
were here they made an interesting statement:  they claimed that the more
technically aware a person was, the more possible they believed the WARGAMES
plot was.  I chuckled politely under my breath.

When I heard they were coming, I prepared to run off copies of all the
recent SF-LOVERS comments on WARGAMES, but the idea was pooh-poohed by
one of my bosses.  Since I'm only a summer intern, I meekly agreed.  [ To
be fair, I was also uncertain about the legal problems of re-distributing
writing from mailing lists. ]

The writers seemed fairly intelligent, but technically ignorant.  The
younger one was also an "accident watcher".  He was always most interested
in what might go wrong. "But this can't handle anything unusual, can it?"
was a typical question.  He also didn't believe that an expert system could
be as good as a human expert.

All in all, I wasn't too impressed.  I didn't stay for the whole encounter,
since it was clear that the writers were only hearing what they wanted to
hear.
				-- Scott Turner
					turner@v.ucla --