Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!aipna!mjb
From: mjb@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Michael Beaton)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Where _are_ my shades, anyway? [was: Re: Computer generated Porn?]
Message-ID: <896@aipna.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 24 May 89 21:19:43 GMT
References: <2272@pur-phy> <33234@sgi.SGI.COM>
Reply-To: mjb@uk.ac.ed.aipna.UUCP (Michael Beaton)
Organization: Dept. of AI, Edinburgh, UK
Lines: 47

In article <33234@sgi.SGI.COM> sfisher@abingdon.SGI.COM (Scott Fisher) writes:
>In article <2272@pur-phy>, piner@pur-phy (Richard Piner) writes:
...
>> movie. Every year computer animation improves. How long will it
>> be before it is possible to make a blue movie without cameras or actors?
...
>Take a look at "The Art of Computer Animation," at a video store
>near you (well, I found one near me).  In the first segment, the
...
>You haven't seen a collection of SIGGRAPH demos recently, have you?
...
>The issue is not technology.  Right now, there are three basic
>problems with this level of computer animation:
>1.  The biggest problem is that it's very hard to realistically
>    simulate human motion, simply because it's something that
...
(What's been done on this?)
...
>3.  The people who could do it--and I've mentioned 3 or 4 people
...
>The present isn't so bad either.  Try to make it to Boston this
>August, you might see a few things that surprise you.


Nice letter, this.

So, who in the States caught 'Max Headroom'... a T.V. show set 20 mins. into
the future about ace reporter Edison Carter ('coming to you live and direct')
from channel 23, and his computer generated alter ego, Max Headroom (see first
prog. for an explanation of the name). That show involved a human pretending to
be a computer, pretending to be a human, which just goes to show what technology
can do for you if you really try.

And how about 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' by Robert A.Heinlein, Mike (for
Mycroft, and again the name has an interesting derivation...) runs everything
on the moon, and he's a computer... one day they plug in that one extra
circuit board and he becomes conscious, and with a little help from his friends
he also becomes the leader the Underground Movement to free the Moon from
Earth's tyranny, and not as a computer but by generating a comp.graphics body
for himself!

Hope I'm there too! How long will all this be? And which newsgroup should
I be on!?

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