In Which We Celebrate Some Anniversaries
With all the attention on the 30th Anniversary of Star Wars, I realized that two other anniversaries of childhood favorites all but slipped under the radar. The Apple II, the computer that launched the personal computer revolution, also turned 30 just a little while ago, and the equally-geek-appeal movie Tron turned 25. Both are dear to my heart, I’ve used Apples all my life and Tron is still one of my favorite movies, mostly because it introduced me to Wendy Carlos’ music and Moebius’ art, but also because it’s the first movie to highlight the ongoing conflict between the hackers in the labs and the managers at the top of the building.

While Tron stands out as a milestone in cinema CGI (though it was declared ineligible for a Visual Effects Academy Award for having used computers – technology now de rigeur in moviemaking), its overall message seems to have been lost. The most important scene in the whole film takes place in the real world between Walter, the bearded, fun-loving founder of the company, and Dillinger, the upstart from accounting who took over the whole shebang. Walter protests the locking-out of the company’s programmers from their systems and the use of a Master Control Program – the movie’s true villain – to maintain security by watching all the employees. Dillinger accuses Walter of “religious discussions” when Walter points out that the programmer’s spirit remains in everything he makes even if he’s no longer allowed access to it. This point is made all the more when we discover that Walter’s software alter ego is an I/O controller, something that in the digital world is akin to a high priest, allowing programs to commune with and receive guidance from their creators and users – a function the Master Control Program has blocked.

“Helping users is what computers are for,” says Walter at one point. “Doing our business is what computers are for,” retorts Dillinger. This one exchange sums up everything the film is about: the creators versus the moneymakers. The creators want to leave things open, modifiable, and with plenty of freedom to let the user do as he sees fit. The moneymakers like to keep things restricted, locked, but with the option to “upgrade” and get more freedom (or the illusion of it) by spending more money on more product.

In many ways, Tron is the story of Apple, and really, every other computer company that got so big so fast that the profit envelope had to be pushed ever further just to keep the doors open. The Dillingers of the world desire control because ever-increasing cancer-like growth is the only thing Wall Street rewards, and total control facilitates that. The Walters just want to make things that are not only useful to the human race, but are enjoyable and comfortable for people to work with. Walter wishes he were back in his old garage where he founded the company, a clear reference to Steve Wozniak, the creator of the Apple. Wozniak too shared the idea that computers were for people and that people should be able to conform and customize the computer to fit their needs, not the other way around.

Steve Jobs, the business end of the Apple II, wanted the computer to be an appliance, like a toaster or a TV set. You bought it, you took it out of the box, and you used it within a certain set of company-pre-defined parameters. Wozniak wanted entirely the opposite. From what some have said, there was actually a serious fight about the direction they’d take with the Apple II. The expansion slots that were in the II, and its successors the IIe and the IIgs are the legacy of that (Woz won). You could even build your own devices to plug into those slots, the specs were public. The inclusion of BASIC, not only as a separate package but also built into the firmware, was another Woz idea. You could even use the onboard mini-assembler, the Monitor, to program in the machine language, directly accessing the ROM and firmware tools. How many professionals in the software industry today cut their teeth on Applesoft BASIC? Raise your hands, there’s a lot of you.

Would the Apple II have been as successful if it hadn’t been user-modifiable? But the bigger question, would the Internet be as interesting, as fast-growing, as fun, as surprising if the majority of its users hadn’t been those who’d grown up assuming that technology was something to be tinkered with on an individual basis? There are times I think the Woz should be revered as the patron saint of the Internet – if not an honorary founder – along with the gang from Beagle Bros and the Chief Surgeon of Black Bag. There’s a clear spirit of anarchic creativity online and there always has been, and honestly, I don’t think that companies can lock that out. If Tron teaches us anything, it’s that lightcycles move faster than tanks and recognizers, and all it takes is determined and well-placed individuals to hit the weak spots and the villains come crashing down.