Stuff I Learned From A Bad Movie On TV

The world was not dainty. The 1983 world was still substantial.

You’re asleep now. That means you’re missing the telecast of Jaws 3 on Movieplex.

Yeah, I didn’t know there was a Jaws 3 either.

I’m not going to watch the movie, but I do want to point out some cultural differences that are quite obvious in this 1983 production.

The world was not dainty. The 1983 world was still substantial.

Everything looks like it was built to take some punishment. Nowadays everything is brittle or flimsy or both (is that possible?). A computer-communications room was filled with large pieces of equipment each having oodles of unused panel space. Things needed to be bigger back then.

Now very complex systems are built as a single chip! Some equipment is already as small as possible while remaining controllable. A tiny phone is no good if it’s too small to dial. New ways of using equipment will lead to the next diminution of size.

A few computers were shown. They all had large tape reels on top. That kind of storage today would seem glacial.

Cue the meaningless flashing lights. They had lots of flashing lights and none of the steady ‘confidence’ lights most equipment today has.

One more thing about this flick. Bad acting is timeless.

3 thoughts on “Stuff I Learned From A Bad Movie On TV”

  1. Have you seen Wargames lately? Accurate depiction of the technology, but Broderick made hacking look easy. Love the telephone receiver placed into the modem. Dabney Coleman was at the height of his prowess.

    Geoff, would you like to play global thermonuclear war?

  2. I miss the REAL blinky light loaded panels on big iron ‘real computers’…you could actually tell what was going on all the time. Now, its a guess at best.

    And the big reels of tape were part of my world at one time, too.

    (sigh) The current small, silent boxes are just not as much fun, but you gotta admire the light-years of progress in the past 40 years or so.

  3. I remember seeing Jaws 3(D) back in that summer of ’83. The most memorable part of that experience back in my misspent youth was that there wasn’t enough alcohol or herbal supplement to make it go away. Believe me, we did try!

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