Re: X-files goof.Color laptops in 1989 dream on!

From: Gregory Weston (uce_at_splook.com)
Date: 06/28/05 

Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 17:09:51 -0400

In article <john.doggett-AFAB24.07535528062005@news.charter.net>,
 Bible John <john.doggett@x-files.gov> wrote:

> Watching my new X-files DVD and in one episode which is a flashback to
> 1989 which explained how the Lone Gunman met and got together, and also
> how they met Mulder. During the episode a color laptop is used which is
> impossible because color laptops did not exist in 1989! As a matter of
> fact, even color monitors were hard to come bye, and as best I can
> recollect the only color computers in 1989 was the Apple IIgs and
> Macintosh. I heavily used both PC's and Apple's in those days, and
> never used or heard of a color PC, but used plenty of colors apples.

Your lack of recollection is, of course, not proof of nonexistence. I
don't recall any color portables offhand, but color at least as an
option on desktop machines was easily the norm by 1989. You may, for
example, remember something called the TRS-80 Color Computer. Just to
throw a name out there, y'understand.
  
> If me and my ibook G4 were to go back in time to that year, my ibook
> would be the most advanced and powerful computer on the planet, yet CC
> makes it look like 1989 PC's could do things that modern computers
> cannot in some of the scenes where Byers is searching through government
> databases.

You can go back further than that and find prognostication about where
we'd be at some now-past future date that was quite off. In fact, you
can routinely find some pretty amazing things that are ostensibly
contemporary with the production.

> First in 1989 government databases would not look as nice
> and richly formatted as CC portrays, and second a 1989 government
> database would be accessed via a VT-100 Unix command prompt or shell and
> there would be no such thing as a picture that goes along with a
> government personnel profile! Perhaps CC is not as computer savvy as
> people are led to believe.
>
> Computer experts am I correct?

Um. I never really had any particular belief about how computer-savvy
Chris Carter is. I _do_ know, though, that things are often put into
fictional presentations in such a way as to make them accessible to the
widest possible subset of their prospective audience. There are sapient
human beings today that have never seen text-based computers,
black-and-white television (let alone the absence of television), or
analog audio formats nor how anyone could have possibly found such
conditions acceptable. The anachronism of a color laptop in 1989 is a
blip comparatively.

G 

-- 
Goal 2005: Convincing James Hetfield to cover the Strawberry Shortcake
"Are You Berry Berry Happy?" song.

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