Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: FaultLine who wrote (15219)	12/31/2001 6:42:16 PM
From: FaultLine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

There has been a lot of talk about making it world wide. Remember COLOSSUS: The Forbin Project? Here's a nice review (highlights mine and don't forget, I was a software engineer for 25 years...) :o) members.fortunecity.com COLOSSUS: The Forbin Project Plot: Dr Charles Forbin activates his creation, the super-computer Colossus, which is designed to take control of all US military installations. Once activated it is sealed into an impenetrable bunker. Moments later the Russians announce the existence of an identical computer Guardian. Colossus demands a line of communication and is granted it, but the two computers level of discussion soon goes beyond anything understood by man. But when the President orders their link terminated the two computers fire nuclear missiles and use their combined threat to impose a new order on mankind for its own good. Review: Colossus is a quiet but highly effective little film. It was poorly distributed in its time and never quite found the audience it should have. The film was made a year after 2001: A Space Odyssey and, although based on a 1966 novel by D.F. Jones, it could almost be a feature-length extension of the scenes aboard The Discovery with HAL 9000 conspiring against the humans. It was one of the foremost of the 1970s films that took up the theme of machines and our technological systems having become so perfected that they end up deciding they can run things better than we do. (See also The Andromeda Strain, 1971, THX1138, 1971, Westworld, 1978). Although probably the 1960s was the only point such a film as this could have ever been made. It is hard to think that such an incredulous premise would ever succeed in the 1990s and beyond where the computer has become seamlessly integrated into the everyday world. For a start not only Forbin does build a system that seemingly has no shutoff switch, but he seals it off inside an impenetrable bunker … and without it appears ever having turned it on or done any tests on it. Moreover, what seems almost impossible to believe, the military seem perfectly happy to turn over the running of the entirety of the US military complex to this untested machine. Not too surprisingly the machine starts exhibiting errors within moments of operation … yet the creator of this system has no means of being able to do anything about it. In a modern version Forbin would surely be regarded as the villain and lionized for his incompetence for designing such a system, however here he remains the hero of the show. Nevertheless on its own terms it is really one of the most unassuming and perfect of all lesser-budgeted sf films. It was directed by Joseph Sargent, a former director on tv series such as The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Star Trek and The Invaders. The script is a marvel of economy and Sargent directs with a tight precision where absolutely nothing is out of place. The interplays between computer and creator are wonderful. In what must be the most ingenious tying in of a love interest in an sf film, Forbin explains to Colossus the need to have his mistress Clark every night of the week for his mental health, in fact using her to relay messages to the CIA; the computer’s sarcastic reply is “I asked need, not want.” (Although this scene has been cut from the butchered print that screens on The Sci-Fi Channel). The ending has the machine triumphant, announcing to Forbin, “In time you will come to regard me with not only awe and respect but love.” Eric Braeden is great in the part, as is Susan Clark who balances Braeden with spry, charming wit. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yikes!!! But anyway...Happy New Year everybody! --k/fl EDIT: I guess that would pretty much wrap up foreign policy as a career...