From: tfs@gravity.gmu.edu (Tim Scanlon)
Subject: Re: CULTURE: Lawnmower Man
Date: Sat, 7 Mar 1992 11:35:31 GMT
Message-ID: <1992Mar7.113531.11586@newshost.lanl.gov>
Organization: George Mason University



	Ok after months of lurking on this newsgroup I finaly decided
that I had to say something on a topic... (BTW, this is great area to
learn about SOTA & issues.)

	I  went and saw this movie tonite, and frankly it worried me
I'm in suburban Wash. D.C. and I went to see it at the local multiplex
at midnite. The theater was packed. In fact the 12:20 showing had without
a doubt the highest attendance of any movie with 12 diffrent movies avalible
and 4 (or 3?) premiers tonight alone. This when frankly the other shows looked
completly dead, and in a cold pouring rain to get to the theater.

	My impression of audience reaction was that they were disturbed and
frightened to a degree by the technology, and it's potential that was being
presented. Perhaps fortunatly, the people whom I was with who were non to
semi computer literate took it as complete science fiction.

	When I pointed out to them after the movie what was being done and
what was "created" for hte movie they were really really surprised.

	A couple of things sprang to mind as being problematic immidiatly 
however. I fear that GIS, VR, and the simulation field in many aspects may
now be confused with intelligence enhancment and augmentation. While it's
been my impression (and hope) that VR will provide efficiency and augmentation
in a myriad of tasks, it seems to me that the movie is going to make it harder
to define that line to people completly outside the field. I think it may
be hard for them to seethe diffrence between the enhanced enviornment that
simulation offers, and an inhancment of "intelligence" or some such babble.

	The other thing that bothered me was the presentation of VR in a
relativly negative way. That somehow what is being done could be a force of
something that has the potential to be fundemantaly bad. All the debate that
took place & takes place in the field of bioethics comes to mind. Especially
the debate after the premire of the movie "The Andromeda Strain".

	Fortunatly, it seems that the movie had a saving grace in the 
presentation in the end, and throughout the movie...

		Tim Scanlon

(This is a disclaimer,
Not even I speak for myself,
in fact not only do I not represent 
anyone else, I refute my own opinons
catagoricly!)