3.4 Transition from personality to tool

If it is great to use computers, it is even better to sell them. As businesses morphed from "garage bands" into respectable corporations, the movies began not only to show computers as the studios wanted, but also to show the messages the computer industries paid them to.
In other words, advertising.

There should be a transition point between the vision of computers as "jealous gods" and tools. Among the movies I saw to write this, the perfect expression of this thought came in the 1986 movie "Star Trek IV-The Voyage Home".

This smart Apple computer ad has many things that make sense. Hey, who can beat the deadly machines of the century if not a man from three centuries after? In the future, no doubt that persons know how to use their computers better than today, so why would Scotty use a computer as a tool if that was not the right way to use it? And WOW! If someone from the 23rd century feels at home with a Mac, this computer is worth looking at!

From this scene on, the worldwide audiences were told that THEY should run the computers, and not the computers should run THEM. Besides, it is problably the most remembered scene in the film. Even my dad, who rarely touches a mouse, remembers the "Hello, computer!".