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Tuesday, May 27, 1997
Friends vs. This LifeYou live with or near a pile of friends in a big city, you’re in your twenties, your problems revolve around relationships and your career, and you spend lots of time in bars, cafes or pubs. The description applies both to Friends, the ubiquitous US sit-com, and to This Life, the rather more low-profile BBC2 drama-cum-soap. Throw in the tension of a couple of the protagonists going through an on-again off-again relationship, and you might be wondering if there are any differences at all. Wednesday, April 30, 1997
Hamish Macbeth vs. BallykissangelYour modest proposer, normally content only within the sound of Christchurch’s bells, currently finds himself in California. But when the sun glints off the Pacific, one’s thoughts turn to picturesque Celtic villages. Ballykissangel and Hamish Macbeth both trade on their scenery and their whimsy. The characters have a twinkle in their eyes, a quaint turn of phrase, and spend all day in the pub. Both villages have a plentiful lack of problems - policemen Hamish and Ambrose have so little to do that they can take a full part in the many community activities that revolve around beating the next village in obscure contests. Thursday, April 17, 1997
Pringles vs PlaystationAn intelligent young man sits in front of the TV, clutching a PlayStation controller and screaming in horror as his alter ego crashes to his death off a pixellated cliff. He bitterly shakes his head and mumbles, ‘just one more go’. He doesn’t want another go. He knows he should be doing creative and positive things, but instead he feels about nine years old, and part of him wants his Mum to come in and tell him to get up those stairs and tidy his room. Thursday, April 10, 1997
Spice Girls vs. U2This whole thing is about words and deeds. The Spice Girls have created a phenomenon by projecting an image of sexy misbehaviour and irreverence. The attitude is their unique selling point, because the music itself is glitzy but essentially mundane. The lyrics mouthed by these advocates of girl power are actually simpering tributes to the values they denounce in their frequent public statements. Monday, August 26, 1996
An Irishman’s Diary - The Silicon ValleyMost areas exist in two places at once. They have an actual existence on the ground, and an imagined existence in the minds of people that think about them. People who have never been to London can tell you about Big Ben and red buses. And people who have never been to the Silicon Valley in Northern California can tell you about the hot-shot computer companies that are based there.
Posted in
• Irish Times
Wednesday, August 14, 1996
Apple’s Mission ImpossibleComputers in movies have come a long way since the nerdy Matthew Broderick in War Games. In the current hit Independence Day, Jeff Goldblum saves the world by dialing up the alien invaders from his laptop, and in Mission: Impossible Tom Cruise uses his computer to defeat the nasty double-crossing spies. With hi-tech movies all the rage, the opportunity for product placement has not gone unnoticed by the computer industry. While Microsoft might look to have the real world sewn up, in the neverland of tv and cinema, Apple reign supreme - and it doesn?t cost them a penny. Monday, July 08, 1996
Ballpark figures - Irish companies playing softballReceived wisdom says that to work in computers you need only cerebral skills - rearranging noughts and ones is a singularly sedentary pursuit. But there are a fair few IT firms in Dublin who would be pleased if you can also hit home runs or catch a fly ball out of the sun back on the fence. The Leinster Softball League (LSL) boasts 78 teams (18 more than last year), and computer firms making up a sizeable chunk of the teams - the Claris Crusaders, Gateway Comanches, Digital Dodgers and Symantec Hackers turn out against the Isocor Angels, the Oracle Orbits and the Fujitsu Olympians. Even clubs without direct affiliations with companies seem to have more of their fair share of programmers, testers and project leaders. ?I?m not sure exactly why so many computer people are involved,? says Paul Byrne, Director of the LSL. ?But there?s a bit of friendly rivalry between Lotus and Microsoft, for example,? Saturday, June 22, 1996
Future imperfect - sci-fi TV shows?Those who are ignorant of the past are condemned to repeat it,? runs the famous line. That?s all very well, but now there?s a televisual corollary: ?Those who are ignorant of the future are condemned to repeat the present.? In some ways the future?s never looked brighter. Big-budget science fiction shows are entering the tv mainstream to an extent undreamed of by the creators of the original Star Trek; even Dennis Potter?s final work for television, Cold Lazarus, was pure science fiction. This weekend sees a Star Trek convention at Dublin City University, and next week two of the cast of The X Files arrive in Ireland to promote a new video spin-off from the hugely successful series. Thursday, June 20, 1996
Born Curious - Interview with Jostein Gaarder‘To study philosophy increases your identity, giving you more strength as an individual. If we learn a little about thinking, it gives us a stronger self, because philosophy doesn’t ask questions like ‘what have you got?’, but ‘what are you’’. Jostein Gaarder talks like an evangelist. The author of Sophie’s World, the best-selling novel that doubles as an introduction to philosophy, has an unquestionable commitment to the cause of questioning everything. ‘For me philosophy is not something just cerebral, it’s also a question of sensuality. When I ask the questions ‘who am I? what is love? what is Nature? what is the Earth?’ I’m talking about physical things. And I don’t think at all that my mind is more important than my body - philosophy includes both.’ In his new book, The Solitaire Mystery, he underlines his argument that the best introduction to philosophy is to hang on to something of you childish curiosity.
‘We are born curious. Young children ask curious questions: ‘does God exist? Why do the stars twinkle? How go birds fly?’ he says.
Posted in
• Irish Times
Monday, April 29, 1996
The Moore the Merrier - looking for namesakes on the netNicholas Negroponte, director of the MediaLab at MIT, recently said that using the internet, ?information and community can be pinpointed with total disregard for geographic density and without the need to justify or qualify them in terms of a mass medium. It?s a familiar argument that the internet creates communities of similar people that would otherwise be separated by geography. But how much of a sense of community is it possible to feel with people, when your means of communication is a computer and modem? To test this theory, I went looking for a community of people that were just like me, or rather for people that were me - people called David Moore. (This might sound nothing more than vanity, but it?s actually not a bad name to choose: not too common and not too rare, and it?s a name that isn?t linked to any particular English-speaking country). Saturday, March 16, 1996
The agony and the empathy - TV teen dramaEpisodes of Beverly Hills 90210 are like 50-minute commercials for a life you’ll never have ‘Yoof’ programming has had a bad press. We’re led to believe that it’s all inane magazine shows with manic audiences, and bronzed bodies on California beaches - visual bubblegum for sullen teenagers too old for safe kids’ telly, and too young for Newsnight. American teen dramas in particular have drawn a great deal of criticism. These escapist shows, such as Beverly Hills 90210 and Sweet Valley High, try to tell you that being a teenager is a brilliant thing because you’re beautiful, it’s sunny and everyone loves you. However, recently a new type of teenage drama has appeared, which explores the difficulties of growing up in a much more considered fashion. More empathetic than escapist, this school is best represented by Party of Five (which won this year’s Golden Globe for best TV show) and My So-Called Life, which has just returned to Network 2. Thursday, January 11, 1996
Garbage in, garbage out - technology in moviesBullock’s character still has to defeat the leading bad guy by hitting him over the head with a heavy object Suddenly our movie screens are about to become computer screens, as Hollywood releases a crop of films about the Internet and virtual reality. Just when you thought the cinema was the only place you could escape from the media hype, it appears that swords and kilts are yesterday’s news. The Net, starring Sandra Bullock, started the process here last autumn. Johnny Mnemonic (starring Keanu Reeves) is due next month, and Virtuosity (with Denzel Washington) is on its way. These are big-name stars, and the films have the budgets to match, but their directors and writers insist they are thoughtful and timely examinations of how technology is changing our lives. ‘I see it as a fable for the information age,’ says Johnny Mnemonic’s writer William Gibson. ‘The film is a cautionary tale about how technology can expand our minds and horizons and how it can also reflect the worst of what we’ve become,’ says Brett Leonard, the director of Virtuosity. Monday, November 27, 1995
A blast from the past - retro gamingNostalgia has arrived in the hi-tech world of computers. Normally so concerned with bigger, faster and newer, it now appears that the next big thing could be smaller, slower and older. Remember those Atari videogames from the eary 80s? Well, they’re back. As part of the current taste for retro-chic, people who grew up with Defenders, Space Invaders and Pac Man are now looking to play these games again. Old and new are coming together in a rewarding way, with the internet being used to help enthusiasts swap information on retrogaming. Now you can use your Pentium-driven PC to visit websites and newsgroups devoted to consoles and home computers that could only muster 48K of memory, 16 colours, blocky graphics and tinny sound. Tuesday, July 18, 1995
Newt’s Knights - the real meaning of First Knight. . . if Ben Cross is Saddam Hussein, then (and I hesitate to say it) Richard Gere as Lancelot is Newt Gingrich It’s a cliche that history books say more about the time they were written than the time they describe, but the recent crop of medieval-based films have shown that the same is true of historical films. You go for swashbuckling and damsels in distress, and end up with a discussion of big government versus the rights of the individual. Rob Roy, Liam Neeson’s latest film, and Mel Gibson’s forthcoming epic Braveheart both describe the little man fighting for freedom against the English military and political machine. First Knight, despite being a reworking of the story of King Arthur, shares this uneasiness with government intervention into individual lives, however well-meant. Saturday, July 15, 1995
Doctor, Doctor! - Medical TV Dramas‘You work in a pool of excrement. Your job is to swim to the shallow end’ ‘Nurse, the screens!’ ‘Yes, doctor, I know. They’re full of hospital dramas.’ Rescued from the mid-afternoon limbo of Young Doctors and A Country Practice, medical programs are now back in prime-time. Casualty has finished another successful season, but now we also have ER, Cardiac Arrest and Chicago Hope. One of the most notable features of all these shows is their convincingly incomprehensible technical vocabulary. The instructions barked over the speeding trolleys make very few allowances for a non-medical audience. Pursuing realism is fine, but what do we get out of this emphasis on obfuscation? We get security. It is comforting to place yourself so completely in the care of a doctor who speaks an obscure, almost sacred, language. You don’t want to know what it all means, so long as these magically cryptic words (such as ‘intubate’ and ‘O neg’) somehow make you better. The hospital dramas might use the same language on both sides of the Atlantic, but they’re saying different things with it. The American shows (Chicago Hope and ER) are much less bleak than their British cousins, which often concern themselves with the way political and medical issues interact. Chicago Hope is named after the hospital in which it is set, but the abstract noun in the title is telling. In each episode we only see a handful of patients, and there seems to be the time (and the elaborate offices) in which to discuss abstract issues such as hope, morality and religion. Where we do see medical procedures being carried out, however, they are detailed in the extreme, placing the discussion over issues into context, and showing us that the safe technical terms describe startlingly physical actions. |
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