Science Fiction movies have always been a medium for speculation about the future of technology. The most visible part of technology often is its interaction design. The motion picture industry is a major entertainment sector with a considerable impact on the general public mindset throughout all social classes. Most of these movies expose their own unique vision of the future, with new technologies commonly being the most noticeable change in these hypothetical worlds. Besides visions regarding all kinds of technologic and scientific areas, human-computer interfaces are an important recurring component as they visualize otherwise abstract and possibly invisible technologies.
In this blog we provide a survey of prominent science fiction films and analyze them regarding their references in real life human-computer interaction (HCI) research, outlining similarities to ongoing research. We observed an interesting development in the history of science-fiction movies, beginning with films unrelated to technological tendencies This phase was followed by movie makers taking current trends into account and by ideas of movies inspiring researchers, At first some key factors which determine or influence the design of HCI in movies will be discussed. Starting from this viewpoint, numerous examples from selected movies will be discussed in mostly chronological order. Main part introduces visionary interaction design which attempts to catch up with contemporary technologies, divided into different fields of HCI, followed by movie elements that might have inspired research.
Literature survey:
Aaron Marcus in his paper “The History of the Future: Sci-Fi Movies and HCI” gives extensive information about Human computer interaction, its history and the movies that adopted HCI technology over the course of many years. Paper concludes that “Sci-fi movies and videos can serve as interesting, valuable material on which to run heuristic evaluations of the designs, to study future personas and use scenarios, and to inform designers of possible future technological, social, or cultural contexts”. Michael and Christophe in their paper “ A survey of human -computer interaction design in Science Fiction movies”. This paper presents a survey of human-computer interaction designs in Sci-Fi movies during the past decades and it relates the techniques shown there to existing technologies and prototypes in research. Different types of interaction are categorized according to their application domain in real life and compared to current research in human-computer interaction. Jeffrey Barzdzell in the article discusses various HCI technologies and the movies which are adapting these techniques.
Factors affecting interaction with computers in movies
Before discussing selected cut-outs, we will briefly examine the key factors that contribute to the resulting interaction techniques: Special effects (FX) technologies, budget and importance of technology in the movie the most important aspect is the availability of special FX technologies at all, since this is limiting the subset of the directors’ imaginations which can actually be satisfactorily implemented. While the availability of Special FX at a given time is certainly a basic requirement, often the general budget determines the commercial success of a movie. Average budgets in the movie industry have increased substantially during the past two decades, such that more realistic versions of future technology became feasible. We also have to consider the importance of the interaction technique or the device itself for the movie as a whole. The technology could be totally unimportant or play an important role for the plot. It can be observed that there are two kinds of approaches to staging futuristic human-computer interactions: Some have a clean, idealized design that appears very smooth and error free whereas others introduce flaws and drawbacks to add realism.
In this section we will review movies which lack any concept of HCI whatsoever or which just adapted common technology of their time without adding new ideas beyond them. Even in these adaptations, however, several levels of creativity can be found. In the very first science fiction movies, there was obviously little or no use of contemporary computer like technology.
1) Metropolis, 1927, Directed by Fritz Lang Metropolis
It is considered a classic of sci-fi, one of the first to show HCI extensively. The movie depicts the use of mechanical controls in future factories, (female) robots as a factory solution to rowdy workers, the use of videophone (television-like) displays about 20 to 40 years before their commercial introduction (introduced in the film without fanfare), and scenes of executive desks with “executive information systems” in the form of complex telephone control switchboards.
2) Captain Video and Other Television Serials, 1950s
After the introduction of broadcast television in the 1950s, sci-fi serials such as Captain Video, Tom Corbett and His Space Cadets, and Rocketman featured heroes rescuing heroines or humanity. Most of these shows featured typical cluttered airplane-cockpit controls with sets of blinking lights added for visual impact. Human-factors analysis of these sets would probably have reported many errors of design.
3) Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, 1968, Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women, a low-budget film with 1950s technology throughout, shows the typical wall of blinking lights and twirling tapes, complex rocket-ship control panels with hundreds of hard-button displays, and a remarkable contrast between male astronauts, heavy with technology, and the female denizens of Venus, who communicate via telepathy, seemingly devoid of metal and plastic technology, to say nothing of much of their clothing. This men-women contrast is a recurring theme of sci-fi movies, continuing with Avatar (2010)
4) 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968, Produced and Directed by Stanley Kubrick
The iconic film 2001 features many scenes of HCI displays, most of them conventional enhancements to existing contemporary technologies. Notable among its off-target guesses at the future are the use of video payphones, meeting-room conference tables without desktop computers, and no mobile phones. The film does show touch-sensitive desktop displays and also one of the first comic HCI scenes: an astronaut contemplates instructions for using a toilet, which are so long it is doubtful he ever gets to use the facilities. One innovative, memorable scene shows Hal, the onboard computer system, lip-reading, eavesdropping on a secret conversation between two astronauts.
5) Star Trek, Television Series, 1966–69, and Film Series, from 1979, Created by Gene Roddenberry
In marked contrast with conservative HCI content in many movies of the 1960s and 1970s, Star Trek showed a wealth of innovative HCI devices and techniques, including medical diagnostic tools with intriguing, cryptic displays, and the ever-present, often-used voice communicators. Another notable aspect of Star Trek was its multiracial, multi-gender, and even multi-species crew, which implied much user-centered design to accommodate different kinds of alien personas and use scenarios.
6) Matrix Trilogy, 1999 and 2003, Directed by the Wachowski Brothers
The Matrix Trilogy depicts a mass fantasy future, a simulated reality created by sentient machines to pacify the human population, which is used as an energy source. Memorable HCI moments include the cascading waterfall of cryptic alphanumeric symbols, “plugging in” directly to computer systems (and the consequent virtual worlds as the “display”), the use of pills (chemicals) to aid in connecting to computer systems, and the array of CRT display screens that are supposed to convey a world of high technology, but which completely overlook the immense complexity of these displays and their likely uselessness. Nevertheless, the imagery is compelling, which is often the point of it all.
7) Avatar, 2009, Written and Directed by James Cameron
Avatar depicts earthmen of about 2150 marauding Pandora, which seems to have a strong feminine leadership. Once again, isolated, destructive men with metal are pitted against sensitive, wise, connected women (as well as animals and plants), a dialectic featured in other sci-fi films. The HCI technology favors three-dimensional and transparent screen displays, which have become the iconic representation of “advanced technology”.
8) Terminator Series, 1984–2009, Directed by James Cameron
Much more inventive HCI appears in the Terminator series, starring a superior android (Arnold Schwarzenegger) with a Teutonic sense of humor. Here, HCI expert can find augmented-reality displays given a prominent role.
8) Battlestar Galactica, 1978
Battlestar Galactica (1978) still shows some amazingly simple adaptation of state-of the-art technology and computer interaction. The ”colonial vipers” in this film, for instance, are controlled by a lever that bears a striking resemblance with joysticks and they are even controlled in the same way: tilting the controller sideways changes direction, moving it backward and forward controls speed and three buttons are intuitively labeled ’fire’, ’turbo’ and ’im’. Also, the interior of the main ship’s bridge appears very similar in design and usage to real life technical control centers of at that time, for instance NASAs mission control center.
9) Bourne Identity, 2002
Automated palm-print identification systems are already commercially available from several companies, and they are most often used for security applications. Such a system is shown in The Bourne Identity, where the main character has to access his locker in a Swiss bank.
10) X-Men series
A method to display 3 dimensional data is used in X-Men15 , where a mission briefing is conducted with a physical display on a big table. The technology is not explained, but the surface seems to consist of small metallic cubes that are formed to the shape of the displayed objects by raising them to the appropriate level . In research, a current approach to displaying 3-dimensional images physically is Table Top Spatially Augmented Reality, where physical structures are augmented by projections , but this concept is still far away from a dynamic physical display as seen in this example.
Holographic displays are very popular among directors and are used in movies quite frequently: In Forbidden Planet16 from 1956 the so-called thought analyzer, a device inherited from the planet’s former inhabitants, displays a three dimensional image. Personal Computers were certainly not yet commonly known at that time, so not even a single 2D display appears in that movie, simple indicator lights were used for computer output — except for this device.
11) Marvel Series
As Marvel movies are based on technologies that were developed during World wars. Marvel movies use one of the most advanced technologies till date for their VFX. In Iron man (2008), the iron suite became very popular as it depicted that technology can make you a superhero. Also, it introduced highly intelligent and Teutonic sense of humor artificial intelligence named Jarvis. (In Avengers- Age of Ultron (2015), they also visualized Jarvis in the form of complex artificial networks). Various advanced technologies such as Artificial intelligence, computerized systems are the backbone of all the marvel movies.
Conclusions-
Sci-fi movies and videos can serve as interesting, valuable material on which to run heuristic evaluations of the designs, to study future personas and use scenarios, and to inform designers of possible future technological, social, or cultural contexts. There might even emerge a new class of heuristics: What principles should we follow to make sure that alien creatures can use our products and services? Conversely, how should we evaluate alien displays and equipment shown in terms of their use by human beings? In an ironic twist, “normal” human beings might be classed as disabled or lessabled creatures, much as our world now classifies some individuals.
Sci-fi filmmakers might benefit from more skilled and extensive use of HCI professionals in making their movies. As a consequence, viewers might be exposed to some of the truly latest technologies of R&D, including spherical sound, the Internet of objects, sophisticated personalization and location technologies, and virtual interactions. Perhaps then we would move beyond the transparent displays of backward type shown in Avatar and other imagery on which movie-production centers have currently fixated.