Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!turner@rand-unix 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 --