Strongly recommend watching ‘Metropolis (1927)’ if you’re into film history. It’s one of the oldest science fiction movies ever, and is still a good watch. It’s about a humanoid robot and an authoritarian government.
I saw it this week and was baffled by the insight and the scale of it.
> It’s about a humanoid robot and an authoritarian government.
you really think so? it's true that the government in the film was authoritarian, but the plight of the workers seemed far more salient than the structure of power that was keeping them in their place.
Spoilers: I found the movie's portrayal of a social conflict quite disappointing.
The movie goes as far as showing that oppressed workers will lash out in a violent protest, but then it deflects this anger towards the mad scientist, and the conflict kind of fizzles out? And I think it ends with the owner of the factory promising not to oppress them as much, and the owner's privileged son promising to upkeep this, basically reinforcing the existing social order.
Doing anything else would stray dangerously towards socialism, though, so as a product of its time it's understandable.
Metropolis is actually about the fear of the mass industrialization and the class struggle. Fritz Lang was Austrian, but the movie was produced in Germany in a period were things were quite grim there.
The protagonist of Metropolis is in the title: Metropolis, the city, from the greek μητρόπολις, meter = mother, polis = city (or state).
Metropolis is proof that big, unsubtle Special Effects Pictures go back to the silent era.
The movie's Big Philosophical Statement is people should be nice to each other, but the visual effects were unmatched at the time and hold up well even now, assuming you find a good restoration. It's truly a marvel of its era, in every possible sense.
Welt am Draht also directly inspired the Matrix also-ran The Thirteenth Floor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Floor). The Thirteenth Floor is not better than The Matrix as a cross-media series with a lot to say in later chapters, but I still think The Thirteenth Floor is a better whole movie than the first film called The Matrix. (Though I'm also in a weird minority that I think Matrix 2/3/4 are all individually better than the first film.)
Read the book. It has a very twisted bend on the movie. I saw the 13th floor on opening day... the theatre was empty and the movie was fantastic. D'Onforo played both roles brilliantly.
Also Colossus was filmed at Berkeley hall of science where I learned to program computers.
I still have the game in the original box on my shelf - could not part with it when I gave away my DOS gaming collection - it was one of the games that made me think a lot as a teenager.
Watched this recently and was pleasantly surprised. I found it pretty gripping, and the 70s tech actually plays right into that. The communication with the computer via text is really well handled to build tension.
It was ok until they got to the point where Forbin tells the computer that he needs to sleep with the female engineer (who works for him) and that the computer can't listen in. That was very hokey and very 70s, I guess. Now it just sounds like sexual harassment.
They planned the whole idea out in a grassy area near the parking lot... why couldn't they just keep meeting out there to conspire?
The book has much worse terrible treatment of women than the movie. If I recalled correctly there was some plot point about the computer trying to understand human behavior related to sex I guess, so it sets up some terrible scenario.
I am a tremendous fan of this film and could never explain the frission I felt when Colossus and Guardian began their mutual acceleration. It's in that short list of cerebral, glacial science fiction of a particular era that somehow never lost your attention, like The Andromeda Strain and such.
Demon Seed is also up there but in a different way.
In principle impersonation is what "secret codes in a locked briefcase" defends against.
Given PAL was allegedly all zeroes at one point, I assume the secret codes have at various times been 12345 and the birthday of the then-sitting president's current mistress; if so, it's only helping in principle.
The Machine Stops, 1909 by E M Forster (room with a view/Howard's end) could almost be a sequel to this. Ideas are often older than we think. (Short story/novela length. Not a gripping read but a nice quick length and interesting for the age)
Pretty good short story, I didn't know it was more than a century old. If you haven't read it yet, don't read the plot on Wikipedia, it spoils everything.
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I saw it this week and was baffled by the insight and the scale of it.
you really think so? it's true that the government in the film was authoritarian, but the plight of the workers seemed far more salient than the structure of power that was keeping them in their place.
The movie goes as far as showing that oppressed workers will lash out in a violent protest, but then it deflects this anger towards the mad scientist, and the conflict kind of fizzles out? And I think it ends with the owner of the factory promising not to oppress them as much, and the owner's privileged son promising to upkeep this, basically reinforcing the existing social order.
Doing anything else would stray dangerously towards socialism, though, so as a product of its time it's understandable.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.
Now in the plot "the robots revolt and cause the extinction of the human race".
Also there is his older brother, the Golem. He has his own movie from 1915.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golem_(1915_film)
The protagonist of Metropolis is in the title: Metropolis, the city, from the greek μητρόπολις, meter = mother, polis = city (or state).
The movie's Big Philosophical Statement is people should be nice to each other, but the visual effects were unmatched at the time and hold up well even now, assuming you find a good restoration. It's truly a marvel of its era, in every possible sense.
Stumbled across this movie as a youngster, very much thanks to a certain iconic scene:
“Burn’s wetware matches her software.”
Also Colossus was filmed at Berkeley hall of science where I learned to program computers.
They planned the whole idea out in a grassy area near the parking lot... why couldn't they just keep meeting out there to conspire?
I think it makes perfect sense. How else could he send/get information unless he had a plan to convince Colossus to not observe him.
My big issue with this whole thing is that they actually believed Colossus wouldn't listen in because it said so.
Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35957944 - May 2023 (78 comments)
Demon Seed is also up there but in a different way.
I also made up a quip long ago from it: Don't let your AIs control nuclear weapons.
But then a sufficiently sophisticated AI could just impersonate the president and tell the meat jarheads to fire the weapons. What then?
Given PAL was allegedly all zeroes at one point, I assume the secret codes have at various times been 12345 and the birthday of the then-sitting president's current mistress; if so, it's only helping in principle.
1. don't give your robot a gun.
2. don't teach it how to put more bullets into the gun you just gave it.
3. don't teach it how to make bullets after teaching it how to reload the gun.
I don't know if you wanna entrust the safety of our country to some silicon diode.
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