The first appearance of a real computer in a comic book | Hacker News Reader

The first appearance of a real computer in a comic book

fivedots.coe.psu.ac.th

117 pointsADavison256023 comments

Some comics used to try to pass off source code ... often BASIC ... as programs on the screens of the computers in the story's. I had seen a couple of these instances in Jim Starlin's "Dreadstar" comic. One of them was a printer dump routine from 80 Micro magazine for a TRS-80 that included the original author's contact info on the screen:

https://jiml.us/i/dreadstar-basic.jpg

I think the 4th head in the Batman comic is supposed to be Arthur Christopher Benson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._C._Benson

Could be! Although I was favoring Arthur Conan Doyle, with the first name just the 'A' initial.

Hah, I'm sure you're right. The mustache threw me.

"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact." - A. Conan Doyle

(Although with Doyle in the giant head roster, the Thinker's choice of Poe to deduce Batman's identity is notable... speaks to Bats' gothic nature I guess.)

A machine that we can ask any question and get an answer, aghast! Fun to realize what was top level science fiction at the time is now our mundane daily life

Only superficially.

The most important aspect in the early sci-fi visions of computers was that you could trust the answer the computer gives you. Futuristic sci-fi computers were, and are, DWIM[0] - they understand what you're asking for, and give back as accurate and relevant answer as possible. This is in stark contrast to real-world search engines and voice assistants of today: sure, they can tell you a lot of things, but half the time they can't parse your query correctly, and the results depend less on their accuracy, and more on who paid more to get their stuff in front of people (relevant or not). Second-guessing and sanity-checking answers are a standard part of our interactions with query-based interfaces. So we have a lot to go to match even cheesy robots from pulp comic books.

But we sure as hell nailed the glitter.

[0] - Do What I Mean.

In the future, being multilingual will be useful not so much for communicating with other humans, but for getting different answers from voice assistants.

    Hey Google, who owns Hans Island?
    Hej Google, hvem ejer Hans Ø?

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage

In their defense, that's a great way to filter out snake oil salesmen that would happily take your money and promise you a machine that will give you the right answer no matter what.

"Hey Google! How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?"

See how good an answer you get.

A month ago, I asked GPT-3 this question. I was attempting to write a crossover fanfiction version of Asimov's The Last Question in AI Dungeon. Unfortunately, GPT-3 didn't recognize this reference - after all, a short story is too weightless. You need a well-established collection of fictions and fanfictions in the same universe to gain any recognition by GPT-3.

My input was, roughly:

> Human: "Is it possible to defy entropy?"

> Alien: "We've asked this question to Microvac, Galactic AC, Universal AC, Cosmic AC, and AC, the most powerful supercomputer in our world. However, the only answer we got was 'THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER'."

And the only output I could get was:

> Human: "Why couldn't the computer answer the question?"

> Alien: "It's like asking a computer 'how do you pet a cat', which is meaningless to it."

GPT-3 didn't realize it was an Asimov reference, instead, GPT-3 decided to use the common trope in Sci-Fi that logical computers cannot understand human experience, which is out of context and clearly doesn't apply here.

But on second thought, I invoked this trope in an indirect way. Perhaps GPT-3 actually knew it - I should try to replicate the same context as the original story, and see how it goes.

Anyone noticed the reference "A colossal task!" in that Wonder Woman strip? (In 1948 this was highly classified.)

reference to what if I may ask?

I think this computer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer

> Later in the story, the "Poe" head is asked to deduce Batman's identity. Fortunately, Alfred (Bruce Wayne's butler) manages to throw a monkey wrench into its card reading slot. This causes Poe to malfunction, as depicted by assorted "pop", "crackle", and "bang" sounds, and it decides that Batman is actually Alfred.

With some careful wording of the question, I'm almost certain you could get GPT-3 to say the same thing haha.

An interesting plot. Something similar happened with a computer in a Spider-Man comic, and as I recall (it's been a while since I read it) the computer ends up determining that Spider-Man must be Flash, through no tampering but just because computers are in fact not good at that sort of thing. Spider-Man is strong and Flash is strong, Spider-Man shows up in a lot of places that Flash does, etc, and of course no one had actually told the computer about radioactive spiders.

Not an "early" comic book, but this Radio Shack sponsored Superman & Wonder Woman comic, featuring the TRS-80, is amusing: https://www.amazonarchives.com/all-titles/date/1980s/1982/su...

Cool! I never had many comics books as a kid, but I think this is one of the handful we had around. Probably still in a box somewhere at my parents' house.

This is a great resource for Wonder Woman.

I just had a look at Comic Cavalcade #29, and the page before the appearance of the ASCC is included at https://www.amazonarchives.com/all-titles/date/1940s/1948/co...

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