Hacker Cinema
Innerspace
1987 · Film · 120 min
Directed by Joe Dante
Test pilot Tuck Pendleton volunteers to test a special vessel for a miniaturization experiment. Accidentally injected into a neurotic hypochondriac, Jack Putter, Tuck must convince Jack to find his ex-girlfriend, Lydia Maxwell, to help him extract Tuck and his ship and re-enlarge them before his oxygen runs out.
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6 comments on Hacker News
It's not dead yet[1] but, yes, it's never quite caught on the way so many of us thought it would back in the 1980s and 90s. The 1987 movie "Innerspace" even referred to "photon echo memory chips." Friends of mine worked for years at one of the companies mentioned in the Wiki page but came up just a little short.
FWIW, gallium arsenide was also supposed to take over from silicon for CPUs once speeds went above 25-MHz (or so). A senior colleague of mine said, "There are a lot of smart people whose kids's college tuition depend on making silicon a little better every year." And so, it came to pass. GaAs is definitely important but we've got multi-GHz silicon CPUs now.
[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/hsd/ "Project HSD: Holographic Storage Device for the Cloud"
These are all generally highly reviewed can lead to interesting discussions:
Gattaca - interesting take on genetics/DNA discrimination
Europa - hard science fiction, maybe a bit slow for a 12 year old
The Net - older movie but the concept of digital exile resonates today
City of Ember - post apocalyptic civilization that lives deep underground
First Man - dramatization of Neil Armstrong and the first moon landing (not realy "fiction")
Arrival - first contact situation, tastefully done
Contact - another first contact situation that explores how politics, skepticism, and fanaticism react
The Martian - easily as fun as the book
The Prestige - competing magicians in an industrial age setting
The Hunger Games - extreme class divide in a future setting
Jurassic Park - the original not the sequels
Stargate - wormhole travel to another planet (be careful with the TV shows though, SG1 on streaming has full frontal nudity and "not ok" scenes which were obviously not on the broadcast version and a total shock when we watched it as a family)
District 9 - has some graphic gore and language, so it might be 14+, but is an interesting look at aliens as refugees
Contagion - a look at how a pandemic could play out. Premiered before COVID.
The Maze Runner - interesting setting and look at group dynamics
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids - fun setting
The Village - scary movie with a sci fi twist
Galaxy Quest - comedy
Short Circuit - old movie that deals with AI sentience
Innerspace - another old one, but has some fun concepts
Documentaries
- Citizenfour 2014: Actual interview between Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden
- Voyage of Time: Life's Journey 2016: Voyager probes development and deployment
- Zero Days 2016: The background story and effects from Stuxnet
Films
- The Challenger Disaster 2013: Dramatization of Richard Feynman and his investigative work of this event
- Batteries Not Included 1987: When mechanical-based lifeforms descend into NYC to help an elderly couple
- Pi 1998: Fun film with lots of computers and wiring
- I Am Mother 2019: Post-apocalyptic robotic "rejuvenation" of the human race
- Gravity 2013: Fairly accurate dramatization of what space is really like
- Real Genius 1985: Silly film of college hackers before the 1995 film Hackers
- The Abyss 1989: Aliens under the sea, somewhat related to the 1998 film Sphere
- Innerspace 1987: Fun scifi version of Honey I Shrunk the Kids!
wow, interesting investigation. reminds me of this scene from the movie Innerspace https://youtu.be/hnj0lYvWYHo?t=133
I think the movie Innerspace is to blame.
As a science undergrad, I would like to see science-based video games. Though I appreciate being able to rotate computer animations for clarity, or placing electrons in their orbital, I have to imagine a video game that required the upkeep of biochemical/physiological systems would be more effective than rote memorization. I am sure that some of us remember the movie "Innerspace"; why not start young gamers on inner-body adventures based on real science. I hope this idea is already being pursued. It has been a dream of mine to author some anthropomorphic children's books about a whole range of biological topics. However, I hope in the not-so-distant-future parents will be telling there teenagers, "you can't go out with your friends until you pass the influenza level of 'Innerspace Invaders.'"