Tag Archives: beep

Deckard’s Front Door Key

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I’m sorry. I could have sworn in advance that this would be a very quick post. One or two paragraphs.

  • Narrator
  • It wasn’t.

Exiting his building’s elevator, Deckard nervously pulls a key to his apartment from his wallet. The key is similar to a credit card. He inserts one end into a horizontal slot above the doorknob, and it quickly *beeps*, approving the key. He withdraws the key and opens the door.

The interaction…

…is fine, mostly. This is like a regular key, i.e. a physical token that is presented to the door to be read, and access granted or denied. If the interaction took longer than 0.1 second it would be important to indicate that the system was processing input, but it happens nearly instantaneously in the scene.

A complete review would need to evaluate other use cases.

  • How does it help users recover when the card is inserted incorrectly?
  • How does it reject a user when it is not the right key or the key has degraded too far to be read?

But of what we do see: the affordance is clear, being associated with the doorknob. The constraints help him know the card goes in lengthwise. The arrows help indicate which way is up and the proper orientation of the card. It could be worse.

A better interaction might arguably be no interaction, where he can just approach the door, and a key in his pocket is passively read, and he can just walk through. It would still need a second factor for additional security, and thinking through the exception use cases; but even if we nailed it, the new scene wouldn’t give him something to nervously fumble because Rachel is there, unnerving him. That’s a really charming character moment, so let’s give it a pass for the movie.

Accessibility

A small LED would help it be more accessible to deaf users to know if the key has been accepted or rejected.

The printing

The key has some printing on it. It includes the set of five arrows pointing the direction the key must be inserted. Better would be a key that either used physical constraints to make it impossible to insert the card incorrectly or to build the technology such that it could be read in any way it is inserted.

The rest of the card has numerals printed in MICR and words printed in a derived-from-MICR font like Data70. (MICR proper just has numerals.) MICR was designed such that the blobs on the letterforms, printed in magnetic ink, would be more easily detectible by a magnetic reader. It was seen as “computery” in the 1970s and 1980s (maybe still to some degree today) but does not make a lot of sense here when that part of the card is not available to the reader.

Privacy

Also on the key is his name, R. DECKARD. This might be useful to return the key to its rightful owner, but like the elevator passphrase, it needlessly shares personally identifiable information of its owner. A thief who found this key could do some social hacking with the name and gain access to his apartment. There is another possible solution for getting the key back to him if lost, discussed below.

The numbers underneath his name are hard to read, but a close read of the still frame and correlation across various prop recreations seem to agree it reads

015 91077
VP45 66-4020

While most of this looks like nonsense, the five-digit number in the upper right is obviously a ZIP code, which resolves to Arcadia, California, which is a city in Los Angeles county, where Blade Runner is meant to take place.

Though a ZIP code describes quite a large area, between this and the surname, it’s providing a potential identity thief too much.

Return if found?

There are also some Japanese characters and numbers on the graphic beneath his thumb. It’s impossible to read in the screen grab.

If I was consulting on this, I’d recommend—after removing the ZIP code—that this be how to return they key if it is found, so that it could be forwarded, by the company, to the owner. All the company would have to do is cross-reference the GUID on the key to the owner. It would be a nice nod to the larger world.

(Repeated for easy reference.)

The holes

You can see there are also holes punched in the card. (re: the light dots in the shadow in the above still.) They must not be used in this interaction because his thumb is covering so much of them. They might provide an additional layer of data, like the early mechanical key card systems. This doesn’t satisfy either of the other aspects of multifactor authentication, though, since it’s still part of the same physical token.

This…this is altered.

I like to think this is evidence that this card works something like a Multipass from The Fifth Element, providing identity for a wide variety of services which may have different types of readers. We just don’t see it in the film.

Security

Which brings us, as so many things do in sci-fi interfaces, back to multi-factor authentication. The door would be more secure if it required two of the three factors. (Thank you Seth Rosenblatt and Jason Cipriani for this well-worded rule-of-thumb)

  • Knowledge (something the user and only the user knows)
  • Possession (something the user and only the user has)
  • Inherence (something the user and only the user is)

The key counts as a possession factor. Given the scene just before in the elevator, the second factor could be another voiceprint for inherence. It might be funny to have him say the same phrase I suggested in that post, “Have you considered life in the offworld colonies?” with more contempt or even embarrassment that he has to say something that demeaning in front of Rachel.

Now, I’d guess most people in the audience secure their own homes simply with a key. More security is available to anyone with the money, but economics and the added steps for daily usage prevent us from adopting more. So, adding second factor, while more secure, might read to the audience as an indicator of wealth, paranoia, or of living in a surveillance state, none of which would really fit Blade Runner or Deckard. But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it.

Bike interfaces

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There is one display on the bike to discuss, some audio features, and a whole lot of things missing.

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The bike display is a small screen near the front of the handlebars that displays a limited set of information to Jack as he’s riding.  It is seen used as a radar system.  The display is circular, with main content in the middle, a turquoise sweep, and a turquoise ring just inside the bezel. We never see Jack touch the screen, but we do see him work a small, unlabeled knob at the bottom left of the bike’s plates.  It is not obvious what this knob does, but Jack does fiddle with it.

While riding, the bike beeps loud enough for Jack to be able to listen to and understand changes in the screen’s status.  At slower speed and at a stop, the beeping is quieter, as if the bike adjusted the sound level to shout over the wind-noise at speed.  On screen, pulsing red dots representing targets.  After he stops, Jack removes his goggles to look at the screen, but we see him occasionally glance down at the screen while riding with goggles on.  It appears like the radar is legible in either case.

After most of the bike-related events in Oblivion, Jack gets the bike back when it has been ridden.  At one point we see an alternate display that shows large letters that says “Fuel Low”.  At that point the turquoise ring has only a sliver of thickness left.

There are several things that riders of modern motorcycles would expect to be included in a dashboard display, such as a speedometer and temperature gauge. But, we see neither an indication of speed nor some sense of whether the engine is getting too hot.  Similarly, we see no indication of running lights. Where are these things? How are they not needed?

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Basically useable…

Yes, the bike’s display shows very basic information that Jack needs for short range exploration and riding.  Jack is able to tell by the loud beeps which direction he should be going, and whether he’s on the right track.  These tones appear to change based on distance to target (hot/cold), with the screen acting as the directional finder.  He only needs to glance down at the display to confirm what the audio feedback is telling him and get a map view of the terrain.

…But is it enough?

This bike would not be road legal today, as it has only the most basic information Jack needs to go exploring: Where to head, and how much fuel he has left. There’s a lot missing.

The most obvious missing piece is the distance to go.  The beacon shows up on orbital scans, so Vika should have an approximate location and distance to go off of.  Jack would then know how long it would take to get there, and whether he had enough fuel for the trip.

He’s also missing a good terrain view in front of him.  On a bike, he isn’t able to traverse just anywhere.  A map and terrain display would let him plan out a route that the bike could handle, instead of guessing and hoping he doesn’t run into a sheer cliff.

Given that Jack is exploring far away from civilization, medical help, the Bubbleship, or even some kind of storage area for first aid or food would be useful.  A bike like this should also have some sort of safety gear.  Jack appears to dislike things like helmets or bulky armor, so the bike should have some indication of built-in safety systems like a deployable, wrap-around airbag.

Given the presence of Scavs, the bike should also have some kind of anti-theft mechanism on it. A lock that only allows Jack to operate the bike, or automatic locking of the wheels would make it difficult for the Scavs to steal it and use the TET technology inside.  Instead, we see that the bike is stolen after Jack descends into the cave, leaving Jack stranded.

To improve the wayfinding, the TET, Vika, or Jack could plot a general course that is relatively safe, fuel efficient, and on the way to the target for the bike.  The bike could then use Jack’s already-present communications system to guide Jack along the route using purely auditory feedback and artificial surround sound (or real surround sound if the earbud is advanced enough).

Why Waste Jack?

Jack is probably expensive in time and material to create, and giving him some protection would save the TET resources.  Even if the TET didn’t care about its crews, it should care about valuable technology that can be used against it.

Aside from the safety factor, which is probably due to the TET’s underlying lack of care about individual Jacks, Jack’s bike is able to navigate him where he needs to go and get him back.  The bike’s radar works even at full speed to point Jack in the right direction thanks to noise-adjusted audio feedback.  Only the addition of some simple anti-theft devices would make the bike more effective for both Jack and the TET.

The bike is not a good example for real-world bikes of the future, but does help set Oblivion in a world where the “employer” doesn’t care about the “employee” beyond their basic ability to get the job done.

Injection radiocarbon dater

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Prometheus-148

Shaw uses a handheld device to perform a real-time carbon dating on an alien cadaver. This device is a cylinder with thick-gauged needle. White rings around the base and a big button on its side indicate power. When pressed into the alien tissue, the date appears on a small screen along its side along with four beeps. Shaw then turns it off with the press of the button.

Though the device has a very little screen time, it seems simple to use, suited to purpose, and with nothing extraneous. A simple device that as far as we see is well done.