Cinematic attitudes towards advanced technology in the 1980s can best be described as schizophrenic. On the one hand, the bleak visions of our technological future have never been as dystopian and pessimistic as in films such as Bladerunner (1982) and The Terminator (1984), in which technological advances designed to serve humanity end up threatening it. On the other hand, the 1980s saw a deluge of romantic comedies starring robots and computers, in which technology was anything but threatening: Heartbeeps (1981), Electric Dreams (1984), Short Circuit (1986), and Making Mr. Right (1987). The growing pervasiveness of computer technology in our everyday lives—a source of great fear, loathing, and gnashing of teeth in the films of the 1970s—made computers more familiar and much less threatening. Computers were no longer enormous, monolithic machines occupying underground government installations or scientific laboratories with ambitions to enslave the human race, but were becoming compact and "user-friendly," with cute voices and ambitions to fit into human society.
Below are some representative films from the 1980s. Clicking on the title will take you to the filmography page, where you'll find a brief description of the film, links to other CyberCinema pages on that film, and a link to that film's entry in the Internet Movie Database.
Some AI Milestones from the 1980s*
1980
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1981
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1982
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1983
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1984
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1985
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1986
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1987
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1988
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1989
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*Adapted
from Mark Kantrowitz, "Milestones in the Development
of Artificial Intelligence." |