Movie Gadget Friday: Strange Days
By Ariel Waldman 
posted Jul 31st 2009 5:03PM
posted Jul 31st 2009 5:03PM
Ariel Waldman contributes Movie Gadget Friday, where she highlights the lovable and lame gadgets from the world of cinema.
On our last episode of Movie Gadget Friday, we rode around the robotics-dependent world of Runaway. Traversing from robots-gone-wrong to "wire-tripping"-technology-junkies, this week jacks-in to the cyberpunk streets of LA in Strange Days. While lacking in computer gadgetry, there is no shortage of leather pants, grunge metal, huge cell phones and random rioting in this 1995 film. Keeping true to the times, we can't get over how even the murderer commits crimes while managing to sport a fanny pack.
SQUID Receptor Rig
Short for Super-conducting Quantum Interference Device, the SQUID receptor rig consists of a two-part system: a lightweight, flexible mesh of electrodes and a recorder. The technology had originally been developed for the feds to replace body wires, but has since leaked onto the black market. The SQUID acts as a magnetic field measurement tool on a micro level. By placing the electrodes over your head and activating the recorder, your first-person audio-visual-sensory experience is recorded wirelessly, direct from the cerebral cortex onto a TDK 60-minute MiniDisc. The rig can also be hacked using a signal splitter and simstim attachment - allowing someone else to experience your experience in real-time. Optional accessories for the rig include a fanny pack for closely storing the recorder and various wigs for concealing your otherwise obvious surveillance of others.
Unfortunately, there appears to be no way to directly upload these recordings to the net, leaving room for inefficient, in-person, illegal "playback" dealings of MiniDiscs similar to buying and selling drugs. From sex to committing crimes, clients to the self-proclaimed "switchboard of souls" dealers are able to jack-in to a variety of illicit activities without leaving their home. More after the break.
Playback Deck and Simstim Attachment
This bulky, retrofitted Sony MiniDisc player acts as a Playback Deck for the 60-minute cerebral cortex recordings. Linked up to a simulated-stimulation (simstim) attachment via short-range wireless technology, users affix the translucent appendage over their head and hit play to receive a sensory overload of someone else's experience. The simstim attachment delivers a high adrenaline adventure to your audio-visual-sensory receptors, so strong that keeping your eyes open causes users to see double.
While the Playback Deck is rather basic in its play, stop, fast-forward and rewind functionality, hackers have been able to insert amplifiers inline in order to boost the sensory signal. This hack is not recommended for tinkerers at home, as amplifying SQUID recordings causes frontal lobe failure, leaving you in an acid-trip-of-a-coma for the rest of your life. Beyond having a surround-sound system embedded in your head, we question if the future of this gadget will lead to cyborg-like notions of achieving collective thought.
TV/Phone Control Pad
Connected to a home phone and television, this control pad serves as a paired down dashboard for busy professionals. The device ships with five services: voicemail, weather, TV guide, local news and international news. Essentially a less-than-glorified remote control, the gadget retains one unique feature: real-time answering machine transcribing. We're unsure of a use case that needs to have voicemail transcribed word-by-word in real-time (guessing people are typically not home to see its processing speed in action), but this definitely led the way for visual voicemail to come.
Ariel Waldman is a digital anthropologist and the founder of Spacehack.org, a directory of ways to participate in space exploration.
On our last episode of Movie Gadget Friday, we rode around the robotics-dependent world of Runaway. Traversing from robots-gone-wrong to "wire-tripping"-technology-junkies, this week jacks-in to the cyberpunk streets of LA in Strange Days. While lacking in computer gadgetry, there is no shortage of leather pants, grunge metal, huge cell phones and random rioting in this 1995 film. Keeping true to the times, we can't get over how even the murderer commits crimes while managing to sport a fanny pack.
SQUID Receptor Rig
Short for Super-conducting Quantum Interference Device, the SQUID receptor rig consists of a two-part system: a lightweight, flexible mesh of electrodes and a recorder. The technology had originally been developed for the feds to replace body wires, but has since leaked onto the black market. The SQUID acts as a magnetic field measurement tool on a micro level. By placing the electrodes over your head and activating the recorder, your first-person audio-visual-sensory experience is recorded wirelessly, direct from the cerebral cortex onto a TDK 60-minute MiniDisc. The rig can also be hacked using a signal splitter and simstim attachment - allowing someone else to experience your experience in real-time. Optional accessories for the rig include a fanny pack for closely storing the recorder and various wigs for concealing your otherwise obvious surveillance of others.
Unfortunately, there appears to be no way to directly upload these recordings to the net, leaving room for inefficient, in-person, illegal "playback" dealings of MiniDiscs similar to buying and selling drugs. From sex to committing crimes, clients to the self-proclaimed "switchboard of souls" dealers are able to jack-in to a variety of illicit activities without leaving their home. More after the break.
Playback Deck and Simstim Attachment
This bulky, retrofitted Sony MiniDisc player acts as a Playback Deck for the 60-minute cerebral cortex recordings. Linked up to a simulated-stimulation (simstim) attachment via short-range wireless technology, users affix the translucent appendage over their head and hit play to receive a sensory overload of someone else's experience. The simstim attachment delivers a high adrenaline adventure to your audio-visual-sensory receptors, so strong that keeping your eyes open causes users to see double.
While the Playback Deck is rather basic in its play, stop, fast-forward and rewind functionality, hackers have been able to insert amplifiers inline in order to boost the sensory signal. This hack is not recommended for tinkerers at home, as amplifying SQUID recordings causes frontal lobe failure, leaving you in an acid-trip-of-a-coma for the rest of your life. Beyond having a surround-sound system embedded in your head, we question if the future of this gadget will lead to cyborg-like notions of achieving collective thought.
TV/Phone Control Pad
Connected to a home phone and television, this control pad serves as a paired down dashboard for busy professionals. The device ships with five services: voicemail, weather, TV guide, local news and international news. Essentially a less-than-glorified remote control, the gadget retains one unique feature: real-time answering machine transcribing. We're unsure of a use case that needs to have voicemail transcribed word-by-word in real-time (guessing people are typically not home to see its processing speed in action), but this definitely led the way for visual voicemail to come.
Ariel Waldman is a digital anthropologist and the founder of Spacehack.org, a directory of ways to participate in space exploration.
Haha what a trip.
This articles' placement is just odd.
Readers of engadget.com come here to review what is new about technology not get informed about vaporware in moves. I can appriciate the desire to create more content and add value to the site, but this type of article will jsut annoy readers and in general reduce the quality of content.
It was a fair attemt to add value, but in a word off topic.
So sayeth Bill, proclaimer of propriety, arbiter of taste, vox populi.
Engadget reports on vaporware all the time -- new patents, rumors, etc. Having a series on gadgets in sci-fi makes plenty of sense to me. Plus it's entertaining. What's not to like?
Sorry - this is one of the few movies I actually walk out of (the others include Videodrome, and Wolfen). I just can stand Monkey/ShakyCam cinematography and I just loathed the storyline. Now,"Runaway," on-the-other hand, was a classic. You guys got'a do "Swordfish" next...
You walked out of Videodrome, what do you know?
And he wants someone to have anything to do with swordfish.
What's his favorite movie? Hackers?
The Computer wore Tennis Shoes?
Mini Disc when it was a new technology was used quite a bit in the movies, I seem to recall them in Time Cop and a few others around the same time frame. It was very new technology when Strange Days was in the theater and Flash memory had not yet been invented.
Sony has been trying to push the Mini Disc as much as they can with the most recent variant being the UMD.
One fictional movie tech that I am personally waiting to materialize is the hover boards from back to the future... until that happens keep writing articles like this one I really enjoyed reading it, and I also enjoy watching the movie every now and then.
Man I like these "Movie Gadget Fridays" I wish Engadget did more of them..
I loved that movie, especially the scenes with Faith singing in the metal dress :)
Not sure what they mean by not being able to upload Minidisc recordings to the net. I've been doing it for years. The MZ-RH1 even lets you upload your recordings you made on old players, like the MZ-R55. Stop spreading disinformation.
In the movie, no one seems to have that ability.
Oh they probably COULD have uploaded it to the eh, 'Net'...but who wants to watch the ~20 odd hour upload at 28.8kbps (33.6 with compression) that they could envision in those days...
Not to mention the fact that it would have tied up the line and prevented that sweet voicemail transcribing...
I loved that movie.
Still do.
The concept of recording the brain was also in a movie with Christopher Walken called Brainstorm (1983). Trippy movie.
I still don't understand how this movie fell off the map.
Exactly what I was thinking but didn't remember the title. Thanks.
Heh - Brainstorm almost wasn't released. It was the movie that Natalie Wood was making when she died. The only part that hadn't been filmed was the very end. If you didn't know, you really wouldn't notice. However, they were considering taking the insurance money from the actors death - rather than releasing it. They weren't sure they would make more money.
I also knew the guy working on it. He was responsible for the Optical Tape Drive. It was essentially a DVD surface on a fat reel to reel tape. It actually makes sense and seems feasible. I got a chance to read the script - when he thought it wasn't going to be released.
Note: The script was influential enough that I later spent 12 years working on the medical application of SQUID helmets (they look like the big ass system in the beginning of Brainstorm). When I left, we had 256 channels systems in numerous countries. The core technology is very real.
The reality that get's ignored (in making movies) is that these systems require huge magnetically shielded rooms. If you can pick up the weak (~100 femto Tesla) magnetic signals from brain activity, you are going to pick up every bloody signal floating around. A royal PitA.
Still my favorite job - ever!
Top movie
Amen.
I'm also a big fan of Michael Wincott.
Never saw the movie. Looks like that new movie coming out with Bruce Willis called Surrogates. Perhaps its a remake of Strange Days. Fun article, nonetheless!
forgot to mention this movie was written by James Cameron and directed by kathryn bigelow
Simstim. William Gibson detailed this technology in Neuromancer years before this movie..
good
I remember very little of this movie other than it stood out as one of the extremely rare examples of a movie i thought was ass until about the 3/4 mark when it not only pulled itself out of the fire, but truly impressed me by the time the credits rolled.
This was a great film with a really good soundtrack. This movie wasn't really about the tech though. The tech was just secondary to a very believable police state future. The cerebral recorders were just a medium to communicate corruption. It was more about the corruption.
i first saw this movie in my teens and Ive been waiting for the the SQUID ever sence. LOL one day itll be mine lol
I wanna see them do Aliens!
Just for the Pulsed Plasma Rifles (like in Terminator)!
i feel alive when i see this movie.
forgot about this movie been ages since i last saw it
I used a SQUID in Uni.
It is actually a real scientific instrument but it is more like a microscope than an experience recorder.
This is a great film, in the sense that the hero must rely upon his wits to survive, whereas all the baddies do have weapons.