Sleeping pods

9 Oct 2018 by Christopher Noessel

Use

Joe and Rita climb into the pods and situate themselves comfortably. Officer Collins and his assistant approach and insert some necessary intravenous chemicals. We see two canisters, one empty (for waste?) and one filled with the IV fluid. To each side of the subject’s head is a small raised panel with two lights (amber and ruby) and a blue toggle switch. None of these are labeled. The subjects fall into hibernation and the lids close.

Collins and his assistant remove a cable labeled “MASTER” from the interface and close a panel which seals the inputs and outputs. They then close a large steel door, stenciled “TOP SECRET,” to the hibernation chamber.

The external interface panel includes:

A red LED display

3 red safety cover toggle switches labeled “SET 1” “SET 2” and “SET 3.”
A 5×4 keypad
- 0-9 numbers
- Letters A–F
- Four unlabeled white buttons

500 years later, after the top secret lab is destroyed, the pods become part of the mountains of garbage that just pile up. Sliding down an avalanche of the stuff, the pods wind up in a downtown area. Joe’s crashes through Frito’s window. At this moment the pod decides enough is enough and it wakes him. Clamps around the edge unlock. The panel cover has fallen off somewhere, and the LED display blinks the text, “unfreezing.” Joe drowsily pushes the lids open and gets out.

Its purpose in the narrative

This is a “segue” interface, mostly useful in explaining how Joe and Rita are transported safely 500 years in the future. At its base, all it needs to convey is:

Scienciness (lights and interfaces, check)

See them pass into sleep (check)

See why how they are kept safe (rugged construction details, clamped lid, check)
See the machine wake them up (check)

Is it ideal?

The ergonomics are nice. A comfortable enough coffin to sleep in. And it seems…uh…well engineered, seeing as how it winds up lasting 500 times its intended use and takes some pretty massive abuse as it slides down the mountains of garbage and through Frito’s window into his apartment. But that’s where the goodness ends. It looks solid enough to last a long long time. But there are questions.

From Collins’ point of view:

Why was it engineered to last 500 years, but you know, fail to have any of its interior lights or toggle switches labeled? Or have something more informative on the toggles than “SET 1”?

How on earth did they monitor the health of the participants over time? (Compare Prometheus’ hibernation screens.) Did they just expect it to work perfectly? Not a lot of comfort to the subjects. Did they monitor it remotely? Why didn’t that monitoring screen arouse the suspicions of the foreclosers?

How are subjects roused? If the procedure is something that Collins just knows, what if something happens to him? That information should be somewhere on the pod with very clear instructions.
How does it gracefully degrade as it runs out of resources (power, water, nutrition, air, water storage or disposal) to keep it’s occupants alive? What if the appointed person doesn’t answer the initial cry for help?

From the hibernators’ point of view:

How do the participants indicate their consent to go into hibernation? Can this be used as an involuntary prison?

How do they indicate consent to be awakened? (Not an easy problem, but Passengers illustrates why it’s necessary.)

What if they wake early? How do they get out or let anyone know to release them?

Why does the subject have to push the lid if they’re going to be weak and woozy when they waken? Can’t it be automatic, like the hibernation lids in Aliens?

How does the sleeper know it’s safe to get out? Certainly Joe and Rita expected to wake up in the military laboratory. But while we’re putting in the effort to engineer it to last 500 years, maybe we could account for the possibility that it’s somewhere else.

Can’t you put me at ease in the disorientating hypnopompic phase? Maybe some soothing graphic on the interior lid? A big red label reading, “DON’T PANIC” with an explanation?
Can you provide some information to help orient me, like where I am and when I am? Why does Joe have to infer the date from a magazine cover?

From a person-in-the-future point of view

How do the people nearby know that it contains living humans? That might be important for safekeeping, or even to take care in case the hibernators are carrying some disease to which the population has lost resistance.

How do we know if they’ve got some medical conditions that will need specialized care? What food they eat? Whether they are dangerous?
Can we get a little warning so we can prepare for all this stuff?

Is the interface believable?

Oh yes. Prototypes tend to be minimum viable thing, and usability lags far behind basic utility. Plus, this is military, known to be tough people expecting their people to be tough people without the need for civilian niceties. Plus, Collins didn’t seem too big on “details.” So very believable.

Note that this doesn’t equate to the thing itself being believable. I mean, it was an experiment meant to last only a year. How did it have the life support resources—including power—to run for 500 times the intended duration? What brown fluid has the 273,750,000 calories needed to sustain Luke Wilson’s physique for 500 years? (Maya Rudoph lucks out needing “only” 219,000,000.) How did it keep them alive and prevent long-term bedridden problems, like pressure sores, pneumonia, constipation, contractures, etc. etc.?
See? Comedy is hard to review.

Fight US Idiocracy: Donate to close races

Reminder: Every post in this series includes some U.S.-focused calls to action for readers to help reverse the current free fall into our own Idiocracy. In the last post I provided information about how to register to vote in your state. DO THAT.
If you accidentally missed the deadline (and triple check because many states have some way to register right up to and including election day, which is 06 NOV this year), there are still things you can do. Sadly, one of the most powerful things feels crass: Donate money to close campaigns. Much of this money is spent reaching out to undecided voters via media channels, and that means the more money the more reach.

There are currently 68 highly competitive seats—those considered a toss up between the two parties or leaning slightly toward one. You can look at the close campaigns and donate directly, or you can donate to Act Blue, and let that organization make the call. That’s what I did. Just now. Please join me.

Ministry of Art detector gate

25 Apr 2017 by Christopher Noessel

ChildrenofMen-Artgate-01

Jumping back in the film a bit, we’re going to visit the Ministry of Art. When Theo goes there to visit his brother, after the car pulls to the front of the secured building, Theo steps out and walks toward a metal-detector gate.

Its quite high, about 3 meters tall. The height helps to reinforce the notion that this is a public space.

This principle, that short ceilings are personal, and high ceilings are public, is I believe a well-established one in architectural design. Read the Alexandrian pattern if you’d like to read more about it.
Is it a public space? It is, since it’s a Ministry. But it isn’t, since he joins his brother in what looks like a rich person’s private dining room. I was always a bit confused by what this place was meant to be. Perhaps owning to The Dark Times, Nigel has cited Minister rights and cordoned off part of the Tate Modern to live in. If anyone can explain this, please speak up.
On the downside, the height makes the text more out of sight and harder to read by the people meant to be reading it.

The distance is balanced by the motion graphics of the translucent sign atop the gate. Animated red graphics point the direction of ingress, show a security stripe pattern, and provide text instructions.

Motion is a very strong attention-getting signal, and combined with the red colors, does all the attention-getting that the height risks. But even that’s not a critical issue, as there is of course a guard standing by to ensure his understanding and compliance.

ChildrenofMen-Artgate-05

Note that there is no interaction here (which is the usual filter for this blog), but since I’m publishing an interview with the designer of this and the Kubris interface soon, I thought I’d give it a quick nod.

Jasper’s home alarm

22 Mar 2017 by Christopher Noessel

When Theo, Kee, and Miriam flee the murderous Fishes, they take refuge in Jasper’s home for the night. They are awoken in the morning by Jasper’s sentry system.

A loud cacophonous alarm sounds, made up of what sounds like recorded dog barks, bells clanging, and someone banging a stick on a metal trash can lid. Jasper explains to everyone in the house that “It’s the alarm! Someone’s breaking in!”

They gather around a computer screen with large speakers on either side. The screen shows four video feeds labeled ROAD A, FOREST A, FRONT DOOR, and ROAD B. Labels reading MOTION DETECTED <> blink at the bottom of the ROAD A and ROAD B feeds, where we can see members of the Fishes removing the brush that hides the driveway to Jasper’s house.

The date overlays the upper right hand corner of the screen, 06-DEC-2027, 08:10:58.

Across the bottom is a control panel of white numbers and icons on red backgrounds.

A radio button control for the number of video feeds to be displayed. Though we are seeing the 4-up display, the icon does not appear to be different than the rest.
16 enumerated icons, the purpose for which is unclear.
Video control icons for reverse, stop, play, and fast forward.
Three buttons with gray backgrounds and icons.
A wide button blinking MASTER ALARM

The scene cuts to Jasper’s rushing to the car outside the home, where none of the cacophony can be heard.

Similar to his car dashoard, it makes sense that Jasper has made this alarm himself. This might explain the clunky layout and somewhat inscrutable icons. (What do the numbers do? What about that flower on the gray background?)

The three jobs of an intruder alarm

Jasper’s alarm is OK. It certainly does the job of grabbing the household’s attention, which is the first job of an alarm, and does it without alerting the intruders, as we see in the shot outside the house.

It could do a bit better at the second job of an alarm, which is to inform the household of the nature of the problem. That they have to gather around the monitor takes precious time that could be used for making themselves safer. It could be improved by removing this requirement.

If Jasper had added more information to the audio alarm, even so basic as a prerecorded “Motion on the road! Motion on the road!” then they might not have needed to gather around the monitor at all.
If the relevant video feeds could be piped to wearable devices, phones, or their car, then they can fill in their understanding at the same time that they are taking steps to getting the hell out of there.
Having the artificial intelligence that we have in actual-world 2017 (much less speculative 2027), we know that narrow AI can process that video to have many more details in the broadcast message. “Motion on the road! I see three cars and at least a dozen armed men!”

There is arguably a third job of an advanced alarm, and this is to help the household understand the best course of action. This can be problematic when the confidence of the recommendation is low. But if the AI can confidently make a recommendation, it can use whatever actuators it has to help them along their way.

It could be informational, such as describing the best option. The audio alarm could encourage them to “Take the back road!” It could even alert the police (though in the world of Children of Men, Jasper would not trust them and they may be disinclined to care.)
The alarm could give some parameters and best-practice recommendations like, “You have 10 minutes to be in the car! Save only yourselves, carry nothing!”
It could keep updating the situation and the countdown so the household does not have to monitor it.
It can physically help as best it can, like remotely starting and positioning cars for them.

This can get conceptually tricky as the best course of action may be conditional, e.g. “If you can get to the car in 5 minutes, then escape is your best option, but if it takes longer or you have defenses, then securing the home and alerting the police is the better bet.” But that may be too much to process in the moment, and for a household that does not rehearse response scenarios, the simpler instruction may be safer.

Cyberspace: Beijing Hotel

14 Mar 2017 by scifihughf

After selecting its location from a map, Johnny is now in front of the virtual entrance to the hotel. The virtual Beijing has a new color scheme, mostly orange with some red.

The “entrance” is another tetrahedral shape made from geometric blocks. It is actually another numeric keypad. Johnny taps the blocks to enter a sequence of numbers.

The tetrahedral keypad

Note that there can be more than one digit within a block. I mentioned earlier that it can be difficult to “press” with precision in virtual reality due to the lack of tactile feedback. Looking closely, here the fingers of Johnny’s “hands” cast a shadow on the pyramid, making depth perception easier.

Something is wrong, and Johnny receives an electric shock.

He reacts as if the shock is real, pulling his hands back and cursing.

In the 1980s and 1990s cyberpunk books such as Neuromancer and Hardwired and roleplaying games such as Cyberpunk and ShadowRun suggested that future virtual reality systems would be able to physically attack users, the dreaded “Black ICE”. While the more vigilant Internet copyright enforcers would probably be in favour, it seems unlikely that the liability lawyers at any computer manufacturer would allow a product that could electrocute users to be released, or that users would agree to put something like that on their hands. So this is most likely just Johnny expressing the same frustration as a current day video gamer who loses a life in a first person shooter.

The last necessary step before being granted access is, for some reason, to reshape the pyramid.

Here the pyramid serves as a combination lock or puzzle as well as a keypad. It’s not obvious, but Johnny does make a small 3D rotating gesture on the entire pyramid before pulling and pushing blocks around. You can also see a second layer of structure underneath the moving shapes.

Is this an effective security system? Not really. Two-factor authentication systems rely both on knowingsomething, here a numeric code, and either havingsomething, such as a specific mobile phone or token generator, or beingsomeone, with a specific fingerprint. Reshaping the blocks is just a second thing the would-be user must know, and is just as vulnerable to being guessed as the numeric code. On the other hand, it might be enough to keep out simple-minded attacks that only try the first step.

The floorplan

The “interior” of the hotel site is first displayed as a flat plan view. This builds up incrementally, a transition known among VR developers since the film Tron came out as “rezzing up”. The completed plan then rotates into a 3D structure.

We hear the voice feedback announce “General accounts selected” but don’t see how Johnny did this. A window expands out, and Johnny splits it in half to reveal some tabular data.

The fax and phone records are displayed in a simple tabular view, which would not look out of place on any 1995 or indeed current day desktop computer spreadsheet. There’s no need to use 3D graphics for such this.

There are new interface elements here, overlaying the tabular data in pink. At the top we can read SEARCH > FAX CHARGES: FOUND. And on the right is a set of inscrutable numbers with headings GRID, LEVEL, MENU, and XYZ. This could be some orientation within the data, but it doesn’t make sense. In the lower-left we see a label for elevation, with data as “coordinates in sector 4.”

Below that a 9-key arrangement with arrow shapes. Perhaps this is a navigation aid for people using conventional 2D desktop interfaces rather than full virtual reality equipment, allowing them to move around by clicking the onscreen arrows or pressing the equivalent keys. If the keys are similar to those used in computer games, the up and down arrow keys move forward or backwards and the left and right keys rotate, assuming movement is predominantly in the horizontal plane. The other keys might be for banking or vertical movement.

Johnny searches for the outgoing fax. He does not use any graphical gestures for this, instead specifying the search date and time ranges by speaking. Words and operators are more precise than graphic symbols for this kind of database query, but typing on a virtual keyboard would be more awkward than speech.

When the particular table cell is found, he uses the fingertips of both hands to expand the contents, one of the standard gestures described in the Make It So book.

Not surprisingly for a Beijing hotel, the internal records are not in English. Johnny again uses a voice command to ask for translation.

The hotel record is just the metadata, not the actual images he’s looking for, suggesting that “fax” system is fully digital and the faxes themselves are treated like modern email messages and deleted once sent. The metadata does tell Johnny that the images were faxed to a online copyshop in Newark. Since it is network connected, Johnny can jump straight to it in cyberspace.

Luke’s predictive HUD

3 Feb 2017 by Christopher Noessel

When Luke is driving Kee and Theo to a boat on the coast, the car’s heads-up-display shows him the car’s speed with a translucent red number and speed gauge. There are also two broken, blurry gauges showing unknown information.

Suddenly the road becomes blocked by a flaming car rolled onto the road by a then unknown gang. In response, an IMPACT warning triangle zooms in several times to warn the driver of the danger, accompanied by a persistent dinging sound.

It commands attention effectively

Props to this attention-commanding signal. Neuroscience tells us that symmetrical expansion like this triggers something called a startle response. (I first learned this in the awesome and highly recommended book Mind Hacks.) Any time we see symmetrical expansion in our field of vision, within milliseconds our sympathetic nervous system takes over, fixes our attention to that spot, and prompts us to avoid the thing that our brains believe is coming right at us. It all happens way before conscious processing, and that’s a good thing. It’s evolutionarily designed to keep us safe from falling rocks, flying fists, and pouncing tigers, and scenarios like that don’t have time for the relatively slow conscious processes.

Well visualized

The startle response varies in strength depending on several things.

The anxiety of the person (an anxious person will react to a slighter signal)
The driver’s habituation to the signal
The strength of the signal, in this case…
- Contrast of the shape against its background
- The speed of the expansion
The presence of a prepulse stimulus

We want the signal to be strong enough to grab the attention of a possibly-distracted driver, but not strong enough to cause them to overreact and risk control of car. While anything this critical to safety needs to be thoroughly tested, the size of the IMPACT triangle seems to sit in the golden mean between these two.

And while the effect is strongest in the lab with a dark shape expanding over a light background, I suspect given habituation to the moving background of the roadscape and a comparatively static HUD, the sympathetic nervous system would have no problem processing this light-on-dark shape.

Well placed

We only see it in action once, so we don’t know if the placement is dynamic. But it appears to be positioned on the HUD such that it draws Luke’s attention directly to the point in his field of vision where the flaming car is. (It looks offset to us because the camera is positioned in the middle of the back seat rather than the driver’s seat.) This dynamic positioning is great since it saves the driver critical bits of time. If the signal was fixed, then the driver would have his attention pulled between the IMPACT triangle and the actual thing. Much better to have the display say, “LOOK HERE!”

Readers of the book will recall this nuance from the lesson from Chapter 8, Augment the Periphery of Vision: “Objects should be placed at the edge of the user’s view when they are not needed, and adjacent to the locus of attention when they are.”

Improvements

There are a few improvements that could be made.

It could synchronize the audio to the visual. The dinging is dissociated from the motion of the triangle, and even sounds a bit like a seat belt warning rather than something trying to warn you of a possible, life-threatening collision. Having the sound and visual in sync would strengthen the signal. It could even increase volume with the probability and severity of impact.
It could increase the strength of the audio signal by suppressing competing audio, by pausing any audio entertainment and even canceling ambient sounds.
It could predict farther into the future. The triangle only appears once the flaming car actually stops in the road a few meters ahead. But there is clearly a burning car rolling down to the road for seconds before that. We see it. The passengers see it. Better sensors and prediction models would have drawn Luke’s attention to the problem earlier and helped him react sooner.
It could also know when the driver is actually focused on the problem and than fade the signal to the periphery so that it does not cover up any vital visual information. It can then fade completely when the risk has passed.
An even smarter system might be able to adjust the strength of the signal based on real-time variables, like the anxiety of the driver, his or her current level of distraction, ambient noise and light, and of course the degree of risk (a tumbleweed vs. a small child on the road).
It could of course go full agentive and apply the brakes or swerve if the driver fails to take appropriate action in time.

Despite these improvements, I believe Luke’s HUD to be well designed that gets underplayed in the drama and disorientation of the scene.

Door Bomb and Safety Catches

29 Dec 2016 by scifihughf

Johnny leaves the airport by taxi, ending up in a disreputable part of town. During his ride we see another video phone call with a different interface, and the first brief appearance of some high tech binoculars. I’ll return to these later, for the moment skipping ahead to the last of the relatively simple and single-use physical gadgets.

Johnny finds the people he is supposed to meet in a deserted building but, as events are not proceeding as planned, he attaches another black box with glowing red status light to the outside of the door as he enters. Although it looks like the motion detector we saw earlier, this is a bomb.

This is indeed a very bad neighbourhood of Newark. Inside are the same Yakuza from Beijing, who plan to remove Johnny’s head. There is a brief fight, which ends when Johnny uses his watch to detonate the bomb. It isn’t clear whether he pushes or rotates some control, but it is a single quick action.

This demonstrates an interesting difference between interface design for the physical world and for software systems. Inside a computer, actions are just flipping bits in storage and thus easy to undo. Even supposedly destructive actions such as erasing files can often be reversed. In the real world, the effects of, for example, explosions tend to be much more permanent.

We generally don’t want destructive actions to be too easy to perform, from guns and other things that go boom to formatting computer disks.

A widely used solution in the real world is the safety catch, as with guns, or arming switch, seen in countless thriller films with nuclear weapons. Another example are the two-hand safety switches used in high voltage electrical distribution panels. Activation of these requires two individual actions, separated in time and at least a short distance in space. Some systems, both real and in film, go even further and have covers on the arming switches, so even just preparing for activation requires two separate physical actions.

While the bomb is on his belt, Johnny doesn’t have to worry about accidentally pressing the “explode” button on his watch because the bomb is not active. Only after he has armed it and placed on the door can the watch activate the bomb, so he can take his time and verify whether or not it is necessary before doing so. And when it is active, he can do so very quickly even though he is in the middle of a fight.

But safety catches and arming switches introduce modes to an interaction, which have a bad reputation in interface design. Had the watch-bomb designers followed most conventional GUI design guidelines, there would be no arming switch on the bomb. Instead the watch would have popped up a “Do you really want to explode the bomb (Y/N)?” dialog, possibly with a short delay to ensure Johnny thought about his decision before answering. He would have been decapitated.

Compare to LoTek

Later on in the film we see an example of a poorly designed system without a safety catch. The LoTeks in their bridge home have a defensive “bug dropper”, so called because it drops ancient Volkswagens from a great height.

The bug dropper can be activated by pushing just a single handle. Because there is no safety switch, a guard accidentally drops a flaming VW Beetle onto the lead characters, nearly killing them.

Conclusion

From the description above it would seem that safety catches are the obvious solution. But of course it’s more complicated than that. Consider what would have happened if Johnny had met friends instead of enemies and settled down for a conversation. Thirty minutes later they’ve agreed on another meeting, and Johnny taps his watch to bring up the reminders app. Oops!

Should the bomb have disarmed itself after a given time period? If it did, how would Johnny be notified of this?

Most of us do not design interfaces for lethal hardware and life or death situations. There are however an increasing number of drones and other physical devices which are now remotely controlled from phone or tablet apps rather than dedicated hardware controllers as in the past. The “Internet of Things” will bring even more real world actions under computer interface control. In the future, we will most likely see more of these safety catches and arming switches in computer interfaces, and we need to figure out how to use them properly.

Airport Security

15 Dec 2016 by scifihughf

After fleeing the Yakuza in the hotel, Johnny arrives in the Free City of Newark, and has to go through immigration control. This process appears to be entirely automated, starting with an electronic passport reader.

After that there is a security scanner, which is reminiscent of HAL from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The green light runs over Johnny from top to bottom.

Looking at the picture, we can see that this green light is somehow making Johnny’s skeleton visible. It would be possible, by having an X-ray imaging system running at the same time and then re-projecting the X-ray image back onto the body, but why? Since there don’t appear to be any actual human beings on duty, I can only suggest that it is meant to look intimidating and impressive to encourage obedience. In the film Johnny appears to be alone and cannot see this himself, but it would be much more common for there to be multiple passengers, so each could watch the others being scanned.

There is also a screen showing another scan, a blurry body image, and text appearing on the right side. A voice repeats the text content. For the first time we see a blue background, the most common color for futuristic film interfaces.

The scanner detects Johnny’s implant, but whatever secrecy measures are present cause the system to decide that it is a registered dyslexia aid. The popup alert below includes the registration issuer and a domain name, so perhaps this is online verification over the Internet. Presumably Johnny can see this screen himself, if he cares.

The voiceover helpfully informs Johnny that there is “synaptic seepage”, and he should seek medical attention within 24 hours. This shows quite high level decision making by the system and an offer of assistance. Johnny says “thanks” in reply, an anthropomorphic response to this seemingly intelligent machine.

However, there seems to be a more detailed explanation in smaller text on the right of the display, and this isn’t announced. It’s not clear in this scene whether Johnny can see this display or not, but even if he could it would be difficult to read. Perhaps this is a legacy system from the days when airport security had actual staff.

At this point Johnny leaves the airport, riding in a taxi from the airport. It is a good time for the first review of a group of related interfaces, which will be the next series of posts.

Brain Upload

7 Dec 2016 by scifihughf

Once Johnny has installed his motion detector on the door, the brain upload can begin.

3. Building it

Johnny starts by opening his briefcase and removing various components, which he connects together into the complete upload system. Some of the parts are disguised, and the whole sequence is similar to an assassin in a thriller film assembling a gun out of harmless looking pieces.

It looks strange today to see a computer system with so many external devices connected by cables. We’ve become accustomed to one piece computing devices with integrated functionality, and keyboards, mice, cameras, printers, and headphones that connect wirelessly.

Cables and other connections are not always considered as interfaces, but “all parts of a thing which enable its use” is the definition according to Chris. In the early to mid 1990s most computer user were well aware of the potential for confusion and frustration in such interfaces. A personal computer could have connections to monitor, keyboard, mouse, modem, CD drive, and joystick – and every single device would use a different type of cable. USB, while not perfect, is one of the greatest ever improvements in user interfaces.

Why not go wireless? Wireless devices remove the need for a physical connection, but this means that anyone, not just you, could potentially connect. So instead of worrying about whether we have the right kind of cable, we now worry about the right kind of Bluetooth pairing and WiFi encryption password scheme. Mobile wireless devices also need their own batteries, which have to be charged. So wireless may seem visually cleaner, but comes with its own set of problems.

As of early 2016 we have two new standards, Lightning and USB-C, that are orientation-independent (only fifty years after audio cables), high bandwidth, and able to transmit power to peripherals as well. Perhaps by 2021 cables will have made a comeback as the usual way to connect devices.

2. Explaining it

Johnny explains the process to the scientists. He needs them to begin the upload by pushing a button, helpfully labelled “start”, on the gadget that resembles an optical disk drive. There’s a big red button as well, which is not explained but would make an excellent “cancel” button.

It would be simpler if Johnny just did this himself. But we will shortly discover that the upload process is apparently very painful. If Johnny had his hands near the system, he might involuntarily push another button or disturb a cable. So for them, having a single, easily differentiated button to press minimizes their chance of messing it up.

1. Making codes

He also sticks a small black disk on the hotel room’s silver remote control. The small disk is evidently is a wireless controller or camera of some kind. The scientists must watch the upload progress counter, and as it approaches the end, use this modified remote to grab three frames from the TV display, which will become the “access code” for the data. (More on this below.)

None of the buttons on this remote have markings or labels, but neither Johnny nor the scientist who will be using it are bothered. Perhaps this hotel chain tries to please every possible guest by not favouring any particular language? But even in that case, I’d expect there to be some kind of symbols on the buttons and a multilingual manual to explain the meaning of each. Maybe Johnny spends so much time in hotel suites that he has memorised the button layout?

Short of a mind reading remote that can translate any button press into “what the user intended”, I have to admit this is a terrible interface.

(There is a label on the black disk, but I have no idea what it means or even which script that is. Anyone?)

0. Go go go

Johnny plugs in his implant, puts on a headset with more cables, and bites down on a mouthguard. He’s ready.

The scientist pushes the start button and the upload begins. Johnny sees the data stream in his headset as a flood of graphics and text.

Why does he need the headset when there is a direct cable connection to the implant? The movie doesn’t make it explicit. It could be related to the images used as the access code. (More on this below.) Perhaps the images need to be processed by the recipient’s own optic nerve system for more reliable storage?

Still, in the spirit of apologetics we should try to find a better explanation than “an opportunity for 1995 cutting edge computer generated graphics.” Perhaps it is a very flashy progress indicator? Older computer systems had blinking lights on disk drives to indicate activity, copied on some of today’s USB sticks. Current-day file upload or download GUIs have progress bars. As processing and graphics capabilities increase, it will be possible for software to display thumbnails or previews of the actual data being transferred without slowing down.

Unfortunately there is an argument against this, which is that the obvious upload progress indicator is a numeric display counting gigabytes down to zero, and it makes a fast chirping sound as a sonic indicator as well. The counter shows the data flowing at gigabytes per second, the entire upload lasting about a minute. There’s also the problem that it’s not Johnny who is interested in knowing whether the upload is scientific data rather than, say, a video collection; but the scientists, and they can’t see it.

As the counter drops below one hundred, the scientist points the remote with black disk at the TV display, currently showing a cartoon, and presses the middle button. The image from the TV appears overlaid on the data stream to Johnny. This is a little odd, because Johnny assured the scientists that he wouldn’t know what the access codes were himself. Maybe these brief flashes are not enough time for him to remember these particular images among the gigabytes of visual content. But the way they’re shown to us, I’ll bet you can remember them when they come up again later in the plot.

Two more images are grabbed before the counter stops. When the upload finishes, the three images are printed out. (In the original film this is shown upside down, so I have rotated the image.)

Tagged:

So what are the images for? The script isn’t clear. I suggest that the images are being used as the equivalents of very large random numbers for whatever cryptography scheme protects the data against unauthorised access. Some current day systems use the timing of key presses and mouse movements as a source of randomness because humans simply can’t move their fingers with microsecond precision. Here, the human element makes it impossible to predict exactly which frame is chosen.

Humans also find images much easier to recognise than hundred digit numbers. Anyone who has seen the printout will be able to say whether a particular image is part of the access code or not with a high degree of confidence. In computer systems today, Secure Shell, or ssh, is a widely used encrypted terminal program for secure access to servers. Recent versions of ssh have a ‘randomart’ capability which shows a small ASCII icon generated from the current cryptographic key to everyone who logs on. If this ASCII icon appears different, this alerts everyone that the server key has been changed.

There’s one potential usability problem with the whole “pick three random images” mechanism. The last frame was grabbed when the counter was very close to zero. What would have happened if he had been too slow and missed altogether? Wouldn’t it be more reliable to have the upload system automatically grab the images rather than rely on a human? Chris suggests that maybe it secretly did grab three images that could have used without human input, but privileged the human input since it was more reliably random.

Quick aside: You may be asking, if images would be so wonderful, why aren’t we using them in this way already? It’s because our current security systems need not just very large random numbers, but very large random numbers with particular mathematical properties such as being prime. But let’s cut Johnny Mnemonic some slack, saying that by 2021 we may have new algorithms.

OK, back to the plot.

-1. Sharing the codes

The access codes are to be faxed from Beijing to Newark, although this gets interrupted by the Yakuza intruders. This is yet another device with unmarked buttons.

This device makes the same beeps and screeches as a 1990s analog fax machine. Since we’ll later learn that all the fax messages and phone calls are stored digitally in cyberspace, this must be a skeuomorphism, the old familiar audio tones now serving just as progress indicators.

As with other audio output, the tones allow the user to know that the transmission is proceeding and when it ends without having to pay full attention to the device. On the other hand, there is potential for confusion here as the digital upload is (presumably) much faster. Most current day computer systems could upload three photos, even in high resolution, well before the sequence of tones would complete. Users would most likely wait longer than actually necessary before moving on to their next task.

-2. Washing up

During the upload Johnny clenches his fists and bites his mouthguard. When the upload finishes, he retreats to the bathroom in considerable pain. At one point blood flows from his nose, and he swipes his hand over the tap to wash it down the drain. The bathroom announces that the water temperature is 17 degrees. We’ll come back to this later.

As Make It So emphasises in the chapter on brain interfaces, there is nothing in our current knowledge to suggest that writing or reading memories to or from a human brain would be painful. On the other hand, we know that information in the brain isthe shape of the neurons in the brain. Who knows what side effects will happen as those neurons are disconnected and reconnected as they need to be? We don’t know, so can’t really say whether it would hurt or not.

-3. Escaping the Yakuza

As mentioned in a prior post, while he is in the bathroom, the motion detector Johnny installed on the hotel door isn’t very effective and the Yakuza break in, kill everyone else, and acquire the second of the three access code images. Johnny escapes with the first image and flies to Newark, North America.

Motion Detector

30 Nov 2016 by scifihughf

Johnny, with newly upgraded memory, goes straight to the hotel room where he meets the client’s scientists. Before the data upload, he quickly installs a motion detector on the hotel suite door. This is a black box that he carries clipped to his belt. He uses his thumb to activate it as he takes hold and two glowing red status lights appear.

Once placed on the door, there is just one glowing light. We don’t see exactly how Johnny controls the device, but for something this simple just one touch button would be sufficient.

A little later, after the brain upload (discussed in the next post), the motion detector goes off when four heavily armed Yakuza arrive outside the door. The single light starts blinking, and there’s a high pitched beep similar to a smoke alarm, but quieter.

Analysis

A sonic alarm is good, because it is omnidirectional. But being omnidirectional it might also notify the would-be attackers that they have been detected. Here the designers have erred too far on the side of caution. The alarm is so quiet that none of the scientists notice, and Johnny himself is lucky to be within a few metres when it goes off. The Yakuza burst in and slaughter the unaware scientists. It would almost certainly have been better for the alarm to be configured as loud as possible, ensuring everyone who needed to hear did so. And while the attackers would have been alerted, they might have been deterred by the thought of witnesses arriving.

The Memory Doubler

23 Nov 2016 by scifihughf

In Beijing, Johnny steps into a hotel lift and pulls a small package out his pocket. He unwraps it to reveal the “Pemex MemDoubler”.

Johnny extends the cable from the device and plugs it into the implant in his head. The socket glows red once the connection is made.

Analysis: The jack

The jack looks like an audio plug, and like most audio plugs is round and has no coronal-orientation requirement. It also has a bulbous rather than pointed tip. Both of these are good design, as Johnny can’t see the socket directly and while accidentally poking yourself with a headphone style point is unlikely to be harmful, it would certainly be irritating.

The socket’s glow would be a useful indicator that the thing is working, but Johnny can’t see it! Probably these sockets and jacks are produced and used for other devices as well, as red status lights are common in this world.

There are easier and more convenient fictional brain plug interfaces, such as the neck plugs previously discussed on this website for Ghost In The Shell. But Johnny doesn’t want his implant to be too obvious, so this not so convenient plug may be a deliberate choice. Perhaps he tells inquisitive people that it’s for his Walkman.

Analysis: The device

The product name got a few chuckles from audiences in the 1990s, as the name is similar to a common classic Macintosh extension at the time, the Connectix RAM Doubler. This applied in-memory lossless data compression techniques to allow more or larger programs to run within the existing RAM.

The MemDoubler is apparently a software or firmware updater, modifying Johnny’s implant to use brain tissue twice as efficiently as before. It has voice output, again a slightly artificial sounding but not unpleasant voice. This announces that Johnny’s current capacity is 80 gigabytes. As the update is applied, a glowing progress bar gradually fills until the voice announces the new capacity of 160G.

(Going from 80G to 160G seems quaint today. But we should remember that the value of a mnemonic courier is secrecy, not quantity.)

Why does the MemDoubler need voice output? For such a simple task, the progress bar and a three digit numeric counter would seem adequate. But if there are complications—which for something wired into the brain might have an all too literal meaning for “fatal error”—a voice announcement would be able to include much more detail about the problem, or even alert bystanders if Johnny is rendered unconscious by the problem. (Given how current software installers operate, Johnny is fortunate that the MemDoubler did not insist on reciting the entire end user license agreement and warranty before the update could start.) Maybe the visual should be the default (to respect his professional need for secrecy), and the voice announcement adopted in an alert mode.

It’s also interesting that Johnny installs this immediately before he needs it, in the lift that is taking him to the hotel room where he will receive the data to be stored. Suppose someone else had been in the lift with him? In this world of routine body implants doubling your memory is probably not a crime, but at the time of writing diabetics will inject themselves in private even though that is harmless and necessary. Perhaps body-connected technology will be common enough in 2021 that public operation is considered normal, just as we have become accustomed to mobile phone conversations being carried out in public.

Sci-fi interfaces

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