The World of OCR (C. 1960) [video] | Hacker News Reader

The World of OCR (C. 1960) [video]

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25 pointsindolering11 comments

The most interesting part of this video to me is the editing. It feels like someone just watched Breathless by Goddard and really wanted to make a French new wave movie, but had a day job making films for IBM.

That channel has a ton of cool old films from IBM, Bell, NASA and others.

“She’s a very attractive young lady, but why in the world are we watching her?”

Amusing comparative to today's mores.

What always strikes me these days, is how old film is now. This "attractive young lady" is likely in her 80s or 90s, if she's still among us. EG, let's take 2025 vs 1965 + 25 years.

There was a time when paintings were the best we knew of the past. Then blurry photos, but we're now over 100 years of motion pictures. Our ancestors had no capacity to see the past, as we have.

I do my best to not blame the past, for most in it were simply ensconced in the culture and mores of the time. And it makes me think that quite surely, many things we do today will be seen as quaint, or improper 100 years from now. Certainly our descendants will think us uncouth, and over things we imagine as proper today. Things we think of as "doing the right thing", will be seen as uncouth, horrible, perhaps vile to our descendants.

Take this out of context statement about the young lady (the context being "the era of the 60s"). Back in the day, women expected such complements. They also expected doors to be opened for them. Chairs pulled out. For a man to stand whenever a woman was to be seated.

In this film, the gentleman says "why are we looking at this woman", yet also felt obliged to couple that with a conditional "she's attractive", for it could be misconstrued as "OMG, why am I looking at this hag!". Societal politeness dictated he do so. He would be doing the young lady a disservice, and seen as impolite by his peers did he not. And further, she'd expect it as her due.

I find today that often people take so many things out of context, from the past. Judge without knowing the circumstances (not saying the parent is judging here). We should understand context, culture, history, before pointing I think.

In the context of the film this has has little to do with politeness. The executive goes on to says of the film "It has to "STIMULATE these men who know far more about the HARD facts of their business".

I think it's intentionally being a bit naughty.

That may or may not be the case for the words afterwards.

However, what I cited would be taken as mere politeness. Failure to do so, rude.

The woman isn't in the room with the men so you are saying he's being polite to film footage. This is an unintuitive argument.

If you want to test your theory bring up a game show from that era and see if the male host says "You are attractive" to every young female contestant.

If you don't think that's the same thing the dialogue is too idiosyncratic to be explainable in reference to normal social mores.

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Yes I read your post where you claimed "Back in the day, women expected such complements"

Either you meant women expected such compliments broadly (as in a game show) or you meant women expected such compliments if featured in the intro of an IBM OCR documentary where a man shows confusion about a woman on screen.

The latter interpretation is ridiculous, yet here we are.

You seem to have missed the context in the post you replied to, and the original. I've said it several times, he said effectively "why am I looking at this woman", but countered with a complement to ensure his statement was not taken incorrectly. EG, he had no issue with the woman in film visually.

You should not be confused, for politeness is not a thing easily turned on and off. It is often automatic. Further, a film is shown to contemporary audiences, and those viewing, audiences of less sophisticated times with media, may find his comment rude otherwise.

Viewing another culture is difficult at best, but I find it more so when it's your culture yet shifted by time or location. An example being British vs US culture.

The statements are the same, but sometimes subtly the meaning not.

This chart is a good example:

https://tommccallum.medium.com/british-business-language-tra...

Peering into the past is much the same. The language seems the same, but what is conveyed is sometimes different.

I think you're really missing my point, and not really attempting to view this 60 year old film as I suggest culturally.

Regardless, the main point is... viewing the past needs to be taken without finger pointing.

I don't think there is much value responding beyond what I've said. You appear to be slicing concepts out of the whole, and responding to only those portions.

Regardless, have a good one.

It's okay that we disagree.

However I don't believe I misunderstand your point. The dialogue is almost certainly scripted, presumably by an advertisement professional. You believe you know why the advertisement person wrote it that way. You think the man was scripted to be "polite" to the woman he was watching in the context of the scene and that particular line. You think your understanding of the society of the time explains the line.

I offered an alternative interpretation. The advertisement professional wanted to begin with something winkingly sexy so had a bunch of guys say a woman was attractive.

I don't even know what to make of the statement that "for politeness is not a thing easily turned on and off." A stock character in an IBM ad doesn't have an internal life so does not struggle to be polite or impolite.

This whole framing would make more sense to me if we were talking about a male game show host (a real living breathing person) trying to be polite to a real life female contestant in an old game show.

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