Tag Archives: programmer

Internet 2021

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The opening shot of Johnny Mnemonic is a brightly coloured 3D graphical environment. It looks like an abstract cityscape, with buildings arranged in rectangular grid and various 3D icons or avatars flying around. Text identifies this as the Internet of 2021, now cyberspace.

Internet 2021 display

Strictly speaking this shot is not an interface. It is a visualization from the point of view of a calendar wake up reminder, which flies through cyberspace, then down a cable, to appear on a wall mounted screen in Johnny’s hotel suite. However, we will see later on that this is exactly the same graphical representation used by humans. As the very first scene of the film, it is important in establishing what the Internet looks like in this future world. It’s therefore worth discussing the “look” employed here, even though there isn’t any interaction.

Cyberspace is usually equated with 3D graphics and virtual reality in particular. Yet when you look into what is necessary to implement cyberspace, the graphics really aren’t that important.

MUDs and MOOs: ASCII Cyberspace

People have been building cyberspaces since the 1980s in the form of MUDs and MOOs. At first sight these look like old style games such as Adventure or Zork. To explore a MUD/MOO, you log on remotely using a terminal program. Every command and response is pure text, so typing “go north” might result in “You are in a church.” The difference between MUD/MOOs and Zork is that these are dynamic multiuser virtual worlds, not solitary-player games. Other people share the world with you and move through it, adventuring, building, or just chatting. Everyone has an avatar and every place has an appearance, but expressed in text as if you were reading a book.

guest>>@go #1914
Castle entrance
A cold and dark gatehouse, with moss-covered crumbling walls. A passage gives entry to the forbidding depths of Castle Aargh. You hear a strange bubbling sound and an occasional chuckle.

Obvious exits:
path to Castle Aargh (#1871)
enter to Bridge (#1916)

Most impressive of all, these are virtual worlds with built-in editing capabilities. All the “graphics” are plain text, and all the interactions, rules, and behaviours are programmed in a scripting language. The command line interface allows the equivalent of Emacs or VI to run, so the world and everything in it can be modified in real time by the participants. You don’t even have to restart the program. Here a character creates a new location within a MOO, to the “south” of the existing Town Square:

laranzu>>@dig MyNewHome
laranzu>> @describe here as “A large and spacious cave full of computers”
laranzu>> @dig north to Town Square

The simplicity of the text interfaces leads people to think these are simple systems. They’re not. These cyberspaces have many of the legal complexities found in the real world. Can individuals be excluded from particular places? What can be done about abusive speech? How offensive can your public appearance be? Who is allowed to create new buildings, or modify existing ones? Is attacking an avatar a crime? Many 3D virtual reality system builders never progress that far, stopping when the graphics look good and the program rarely crashes. If you’re interested in cyberspace interface design, a long running textual cyberspace such as LambdaMOO or DragonMUD holds a wealth of experience about how to deal with all these messy human issues.

So why all the graphics?

So it turns out MUDs and MOOs are a rich, sprawling, complex cyberspace in text. Why then, in 1995, did we expect cyberspace to require 3D graphics anyway?

The 1980s saw two dimensional graphical user interfaces become well known with the Macintosh, and by the 1990s they were everywhere. The 1990s also saw high end 3D graphics systems becoming more common, the most prominent being from Silicon Graphics. It was clear that as prices came down personal computers would soon have similar capabilities.

At the time of Johnny Mnemonic, the world wide web had brought the Internet into everyday life. If web browsers with 2D GUIs were superior to the command line interfaces of telnet, FTP, and Gopher, surely a 3D cyberspace would be even better? Predictions of a 3D Internet were common in books such as Virtual Reality by Howard Rheingold and magazines such as Wired at the time. VRML, the Virtual Reality Markup/Modeling Language, was created in 1995 with the expectation that it would become the foundation for cyberspace, just as HTML had been the foundation of the world wide web.

Twenty years later, we know this didn’t happen. The solution to the unthinkable complexity of cyberspace was a return to the command line interface in the form of a Google search box.

Abstract or symbolic interfaces such as text command lines may look more intimidating or complicated than graphical systems. But if the graphical interface isn’t powerful enough to meet their needs, users will take the time to learn how the more complicated system works. And we’ll see later on that the cyberspace of Johnny Mnemonic is not purely graphical and does allow symbolic interaction.

Drone Programmer

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A close-up of a hand wearing a glove holding a futuristic device with a screen displaying a holographic globe and various data interfaces.

One notable hybrid interface device, with both physical and digital aspects, is the Drone Programmer. It is used to encode key tasks or functions into the drone. Note that it is seen only briefly—so we’re going off very little information. It facilitates a crucial low-level reprogramming of Drone 172.

This device is a handheld item, grasped on the left, approximately 3 times as wide as it is tall. Several physical buttons are present, but are unused in the film: aside from grasping, all interaction is done through use of a small touchscreen with enough sensitivity to capture fingertip taps on very small elements.

Jack uses the Programmer while the drone is disabled. When he pulls the cord out of the drone, the drone restarts and immediately begins to try and move/understand its surroundings.

A person stands facing a large, futuristic robotic head with multiple cameras and sensors, while two armed figures are positioned nearby in a dimly lit environment.
When Drone 172 is released from the Programmer cable, it is in a docile and inert state…
A person standing in front of a large, futuristic robotic machine with glowing lights and mechanical arms, set in a dimly lit environment.
…but it quickly becomes aware, its failsafes shut down and its onboard programming taking over.

From this we understand that drones are controlled via internal software; this is the only time we see them programmed or their behavior otherwise influenced by a human. This reprogramming requires an external device wired into the drone in direct physical proximity, which suggests an otherwise high level of autonomy for each drone.

(Narrative implications) Following Orders

The Drone Programmer, and the way it interacts with Drone 172, suggests useful information about the Drones’ default states—namely, that their default state is autonomous, aggressive, and proactive, depending upon their orders and programming.

Drone 172 does not attack at this stage, and we have seen through Jack’s eyes on the screen that this is due to an overriding primary objective, implanted directly into the Drone’s firmware / low level programming: Rendezvous with the Tet.

Low Level Controller: Handle With Care

A gloved hand holding a futuristic device with a digital screen displaying various readings and graphs.

Its suggestion of a provisional or failsafe role is reinforced by warning text above the display, (legible at high resolution,) reflective of its power: “Electric Hazard Do Not Touch Terminals on Both Lines at Same Time: Lead Ends May Be Energized…”

Between this and the sparks ignited when the cable is detached from the Drone, one gets the sense of a device somewhere between a terminal and a jumper cable. Potent, hazardous, direct.

A close-up image of a hand holding a wire while interacting with the interior of a mechanical object.
A close-up of a male astronaut in a futuristic suit, focused on a mechanical device above him, set in a dimly lit environment with sparks and steam.

Jack is clearly at ease with the Programmer and its usage from repair sessions at home and in the field. This ease suggests either that his training (or memory replacement) is thorough, or that such low level work is needed frequently enough to be quite familiar.

The latter explanation, along with the Programmer’s nature as a physical device requiring direct proximity, would reinforce the interpretation that Tet places a remarkable amount of trust in instances of the human Maintenance team, and that the equipment in question is nearly symbiotic with the Team(s) in its need for frequent recovery.

Thus through this one seemingly incidental device, and its low level role in the chain of command, we can deduce that the combination of Drones and Team(s) is much more effective than either could be individually. Jack was reprogrammed by his time spent in curious wandering, crossed with the opportunity presented by the book quotation mentioned as a trigger. In the case of Jack, the book and its couplet is the low-level reprogramming device, shocking in its directness.

Dialogue within the film reinforces the analogy directly: We learn during this sequence that the first invasion phase entailed many instances of a short-lived (non-learning) Jack as soldier. We also learn that phase two is this symbiotic maintenance arrangement between human and machine. When it is suggested that Drone 172 is the weapon, Jack corrects that it is he himself—its user and maintainer—who is the weapon. Without his role as user and maintainer, the machine would ultimately be a neutralized mechanical husk.

Lessons:

  1. Low level interfaces suggest fundamental programming and activity.
    (NOTE: Compare to interfaces such as the Nostromo Self Destruct pulls in Alien, etc.)
  2. Use of low level interfaces suggests familiarity and/or “grace under pressure”, as well as systemic trust in the user.
  3. Low level interfaces suggest a deep symbiosis between the user and the machine, to the point of interdependence.
    (NOTE: Compare to failsafe systems and manual overrides in aeronautics and (a few realistic moments in) space films such as Sunshine. In an alternate universe, I have the time to cover/analyse Sunshine to uncover this very dynamic…)
  4. Bonus Lesson (Oblivion-centric): By analogy, in highly technological or post-apocalyptic settings, books are, for humans, a low level interface, forcing the user to slow down and absorb sometimes startling, unexpected, or course-changing information.