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       D A V E ' S   R A V E S

        WIZARDS AND COMPUTERS


    The Fellowship of the Rings won't
be playing in Holly for a few weeks.
That's OK. I have waited 33 years -- I
can wait a little longer. But the
first Harry Potter movie was shown
these last couple of weekends, and we
watched it twice.

    I [like] the Harry Potter books.
While some in the Christian community
see only dangers with any mention of
witchcraft and wizardry, I happen to
love stories of magical worlds. J. K.
Rowling has created a wacky and
wonderful world that has enticed
hundreds of thousands of children to
[read]! But these are not exactly
children's books. Rowling has included
a lot of depth and character in her
tales.

    The movie is absolutely [perfect]
in every way. Chris Columbus must have
just "ripped the pages from the book
and shoved them in the camera." That
expression comes from the venerable
Ray Bradbury, whose own experience
with Hollywood was anything but
fulfilling. Somewhere between buying
the story from him and getting it on
the screen, too many "creative" cooks
spoiled the plot.

    And for years, we knew that was
true. The financial realities of
filmmaking and distribution, and even
the essential concept among the
Hollywood elite of what made a good
film, conspired to butcher excellent
prose into mass-marketed pablum!

    But two things have changed.
First, the technology is now available
to create on the screen [anything]
imaginable -- and make it work. The
movement began with "2001 A Space
Odyssey," made a quantum leap with
"Star Wars," and zoomed forward with
"Roger Rabbit" and "Jurassic Park."

    The other thing that has changed
is that the old technicians who tell
the director what can or cannot be
done are now Boomers. And when it
comes to tweaking technology, Boomers
don't say "can't."

    When it comes to tweaking the
financial side of movie making,
"can't" doesn't carry the weight it
used to. For example, the Harry Potter
set alone cost $125 Million! And this
for a film with no box office
blockbuster stars. And The Lord of the
Rings [Trilogy] was shot all at once
over a two year period at a cost of
$275 Million.

    Hollywood has never worked that
way. Never mind that Fellowship of the
Rings -- the first movie -- generated
over half of the investment in two
weeks. Hollywood has always played the
short odds -- and pulled down big
bucks.

    Anyway, we are seeing more about
fantasy wizards in believable fantasy
worlds -- thanks to computers.

    Thanks to computers in two ways.
Obviously, digital imagery offers the
tools. But moreover, people who know
and love computers know a thing or two
about magic!

    If magic is the ability to arrange
certain words and commands in such a
way to create new wonders, then
everything about computer programming
is [magic]. I like to call it
"sourcery!"

    Such "sourcery" created text
adventures -- a completely new way of
telling a story. The reader/player
changes the plot by decisions made
along the way. This is an incredibly
new way of thinking about text
entertainment. Heretofore, the story
teller devised one and only one path
along which the characters traveled.
With interactive fiction, the writer
must design all the myriad ways a
reader/player might go.

    This concept can play hob with
religious concepts of One True Way or
God's Perfect Plan -- and opens new
vistas of a (ahem) living God who
interacts with the world.

    Another idea that is changing
how we think is the concept of
"serial" as opposed to "random"
access. For 2000 years, the essential
difference between a scroll and a book
(called a "codex") never occurred to
anybody. But many of us remember when
a datasette was the storage device du
jour ("du jour" being the time it took
to load a program). Serial access --
as with a tape drive or a scroll -- is
slow and cumbersome. Random access --
whether disk drive or codex book --
puts information at one's fingertips.

    I am of the opinion that the codex
book was an essential technological
development that underwrote the
birth of Christianity. With a codex,
Matthew (the gospel writer) could
easily flip back in his Septuagint
(The Greek translation of Hebrew
Scriptures) and copy: "For a virgin
will bear a son, and his name shall be
Emmanuel."

    Scrolls work more toward story
telling innovation -- called
"midrash," where the gist of an
ancient tale informs a new telling,
mostly from memory.

    And now, some 2000 years later, we
have entered a new, fantastic world of
communication and information. We are
like the old farmer who finally got
electricity out to his place. At
sundown, he turned on the electric
light for a few moments, then turned
it off again. He reckoned this
electricity did make it easier to
light his kerosene lanterns!

    One last note -- I am now working
with the Principal of our Middle
School to find several young people
who are bright but under-motivated. I
want to offer them a chance to become
"wizards" in their own right. We have
several C-64's available for loan to
kids without the cash. And buying a
C-64 should be within even a kid's
budget.

    "Wizards of Worth" will have
nothing to do with witchcraft or
arcane arts -- and everything to do
with showing kids that [they] can take
charge of at least a small part of
their world. I am sure some will turn
up their noses at a 1 Megahertz
computer, when 1+ Gigahertz machines
are now available. I call them fools,
("Muggles" comes to mind) patently
incapable of understanding the wisdom
of true wizardry.

    I will keep you abreast of this
venture through this year. This might
be just what your User Group needs to
do. Or you!

 DMM