“You are listening to a machine. Do the world a favor and don’t act like one.”

Computers and the internet revolutionized our society from an efficiency standpoint like no other invention since perhaps indoor plumbing. Everyday human transactions have been made simpler and quicker for everyone with access. Online banking, ordering take out sans translator, and buying books minus the snide remarks from the aficionados at Barnes and Noble, can all be accomplished from the comfort and privacy of your home without interacting with anyone at all. But as we all know, all good things should be taken in moderation.

This week we learned how that idiom applies to technology. Our over-reliance on computer advances has come back to bite us. One of our most sacred traditions, a beacon of hope for a few minutes of fame and a small sum of money for trivia geeks and the bookish among us, has been tarnished by machinery. If you haven’t already heard, IBM has developed a computer named Watson that can defeat humans on Jeopardy!   

But, aside from potentially destroying one of the longest running shows on television, this type of computer based efficiency brings up other issues. Eliminating human interaction from daily life, obviously, dehumanizes it and removes all the quirks that go with it. While perhaps making decisions more proficiently by relying on hard facts, it eliminates some of the so called softer realities that we as humans face making for a less robust and, in many examples an unjust, outcome.

Further, how do we know that “trusted” sources haven’t been hacked into or that those sources can really be trusted to begin with? Some argue that our current economic crisis was caused by some investment modeling that turned out to be wrong, that people – individual investors and professional bankers alike – were fooled, or blinded, by misleading data. President Bush presumably launched the Iraq War on what he and others now consider flawed intelligence. It is these two examples that are most troublesome, much more so than a misquoted academic paper or an algorithm procured date gone wrong. 

There is one fictional man to blame for all this: Professor Stephen Falken.

I know what you are thinking. Hey Josh, what about that episode of Superfriends where Professor Goodfellow built the G.E.E.C. machine that allowed humans to do away with physical labor? Or the episode of the Jetsons when George made that robot mad and he turned all the computers against him? Or the HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey going haywire? Well, dear reader, those are the warnings that have so far kept us from completely giving into a fully computerized world. That is not how Professor Falken wanted it.

If you are not familiar with the 1983 film War Games starring Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy – shame on you, it’s brilliant – here is the low down: A teenage outcast named David Lightman (Broderick) mistakenly hacks into the military’s war simulation computer, the WOPR (big miss there on product placement, Burger King). Believing he has reached the digital catalogue of a company that makes gaming software, he begins to play a simulation game called Global Thermonuclear War that was initially developed by Professor Falken. The WOPR begins to run the simulation on the computers at the NORAD headquarters where, at the behest of one of Falken’s disciples, the military brass has adopted this program to manage and strategize the launch sequence of America’s entire nuclear arsenal, while, and here is the funny part, removing the men who turn the keys from the silos. Needless to say, the US Commanders believe we are under attack – unprovoked mind you, during the era of MAD – and bring the world to the brink of nuclear war. In typical 80s film style, the world is saved at the last minute after some minor intervention from David and the Professor (more on this later).

So why not blame Falken’s former assistant, McKittric (Dabney Coleman), since he is the one who actually argued for the removal of the men from the silos? He seems like an obvious choice, no? But blaming him would be like blaming Stalin for creating communism, when it was Marx and Engels who proposed it. He simply carried it out, even though it was somewhat corrupted from its original version. And like Stalin, McKittric doesn’t act because of some altruistic motive; he is out for personal gain – in his case career advancement and his own pride in the system.

Professor Falken, on the other hand, is an avowed scientist – we see him wearing a lab coat, so he must be – and created computer games in the early years of their existence. His focus was on games of strategy, and his work with the Department of Defense led him to develop the Global Thermonuclear War simulator. By his own words, his system was developed, “To find a way to practice nuclear war without destroying ourselves. To get the computers to learn from mistakes we couldn’t afford to make.” Essentially, to let the computers learn to think and remove that burden from us. Sound familiar, Watson?

By the time we meet him in the film, he is living as a recluse on an island in Oregon, his identity changed by the Department of Defense to protect him from potential Soviet espionage. He has survived the tragedy of his wife and young son being killed in a car accident, but has faked his own death and his life is now spent studying dinosaurs in what seems to be an obsession with extinction. You know that song about people who need people. Well, it’s not on Falken’s playlist I can assure you. He has no use for humanity and believes that its annihilation, by its own hands, is inevitable.

David, having researched him extensively, has tracked him down and tries to convince him to come to NORAD with him to explain to them that what they are seeing is not real. But Falken is reluctant to go, almost wishing that the military’s destruction of humanity is carried out, even saying that they are only a few miles away from a prime target and would be instantly vaporized, being “spared the horror of survival.” He adds, “Humanity is planning its own destruction – that a phone call won’t stop,” before completely scaring off David and Jennifer (Sheedy).

Falken decides to “help” and flies David and Jennifer to NORAD in his private helicopter (why this man has his own helicopter is beyond me. Plus, does he even have a license to fly it?). I put that in quotes because I don’t believe that Falken cares one way or the other if the world is destroyed and this is the crux of the case against him. His interest in this situation is strictly one of a scientist with a bit of a God complex, to kind of stand to the side and test his theories on a grand stage. He just wants to see if man will destroy himself because a computer tells him he should, as he theorizes he will. If the world is destroyed, great, his computers would be the survivors and he the creator of the new world. Should the world not be destroyed, that’s fine too. It was only a failed experiment anyway. I offer two pieces of evidence to support this: his words to the General Beringer immediately before the film’s climactic sequence and his attitude during it.

As he enters the military command center on the brink of war, he jokes with McKittric, his former assistant (“I see your wife still picks out your ties.” Ha!) as if he is totally oblivious to what is about to happen. Then, approaching the general who is hell-bent on winning by launching the missiles, tells him, “You are listening to a machine. Do the world a favor and don’t act like one.” In other words, let my little experiment continue. This is a red herring and counter to Falken’s stated goal: that the computer would learn futility and eliminate the need for inferior human interference. He actually wants him to intervene and prove him right. But, if the General were to act like this particular machine, we find, he would have avoided war just as well as the computer eventually does, similar as to if a person were to act like Watson, he would win on Jeopardy!

During the entire game sequence, Falken just stands there, not a worry on his face. In fact, he appears to be mildly amused that in everyone else’s minds, the world is about to end. It’s as if he doesn’t really care about the safety of the world or the fate of the millions outside NORAD. Like many academics he just cares about teaching the lesson whether the practical outcome is favorable or not, and testing his theories. He’s been down this road before with his experiments as he is quick affirm David’s suggestion to have the machine play Tic Tac Toe to learn that sometimes there are no winners, followed by his knowledge that to have it play itself he would need to enter players ”Zero”. Notice he did not offer this solution and only provided it when asked – all part of his scientific approach.

Watching the scene unfold, we see there is nothing the human players can do to stop the computer from running the course of the game. Everything they do is futile and really does nothing to stop or help the situation except for General Beringer taking us to DEFCON 1, a necessary variable for launching the missiles. He is duped by what he sees on the screen into taking that drastic step. Surprise, humans are fallible.

The computer runs simulation after simulation, with the threat looming that missiles will actually be launched. Game after game ends in a draw. Faster and faster we go, watching the world destroyed multiple times in a variety of strategic attacks. Finally, after all strategies have been exhausted and none produce a winner, the computer stops. Addressing his creator and the military brass, he exclaims: “Strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” (Seemingly, computers don’t have the same attitude about Jeopardy!) The crisis ends and peace wins the day with the return to DEFCON 5. 

What we find at the end, because of Falken’s callousness, is that computers can make correct decisions solely on logic and humans more or less can’t because of emotion, knowledge of history and the other quirks that make every day life what it is. But Falken created a world where computers can do all the thinking and come up with all the right outcomes by turning those softer realities into hard facts that the computer can understand, such as futility. This is more or less the same thing we are seeing with Watson, except we are now witnessing the destruction of the world of game shows. Perhaps, Watson will one day learn the futility of such games. After all, what is a machine going to do with all that money and those parting gifts anyway?

What’s the big deal? So there will be one less platform for advertisers to try to sell you things you don’t need, right? Well, yes. But by creating such a program he, and now IBM, has allowed us to think that the machine would correct itself, and has allowed us to let down our guard; to allow us to think less and become less intellectual overall. Take for instance the aforementioned computer modeling of financial instruments. A non-thinking public spent itself into bottomless debt, often because this computer modeling and projections gave banks the go ahead to lend more and more money to people who could clearly not afford it.

So thanks to Professor Falken, we have computers like Watson, not to mention Deep Blue, that aim to remove the thinking man from humanity and are at DEFCON 1 in the attack on game shows. We can only hope that Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? is next on the list of Watson’s targets. But maybe it will all be okay. If it’s one thing I learned from Double Dare, it’s that you can always take the physical challenge.

Do you have a real world problem that may have been caused by a fictional character?  Feel the need to defend a fictional character that has been erroneously charged with causing one?  Let me know in the comment section or email me your suggestions.  I’m ready to believe you.  

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