Starfire Video

Yet another surprise today.  I found a video produced by a team at Sun in 1994.  It is in a similar format and style to the internally famous “Virtual Workplace” video produced in 2001.  It is called the “Starfire” video and it tries to capture what will be available in 2004.

It is extremely well produced.  The budget must have been very large.  There are even a couple of actors that look familiar even though I would not be able to name them.

“Julie was looking forward to a good day until Michael O’Connor tried to deep-six her sports car project. Now, only her team, scattered around the world, can save her…”

The film, developed in 1992, predicted the explosive growth of the world wide web at a time before graphical web browsers even existed. Starfire: The Directors’ Cut explores in candid detail a technological future based on industry cooperation, human-centered design, and the continued presence of bad guys.

The film, although 14 years old, is still fresh.  Surprisingly, it is also still very futuristic.  The workspace is probably at least another 10 years away for common deployment.

What impressed me the most was the human interaction was very real and believable.  In other words, it had a more human touch than a typical high tech video.

It is fairly big (240MB) so be prepared to wait a bit for the download.  It uses MP4 and needs QuickTime to run.

I really enjoyed watching this video.  At times you forget about the technology since it does actually a story as well.  The moral of the story might be that you should work from home if you have a cold and that you should never marry someone that likes to pretend being HAL.

Enjoy!

About Jeff Muir

Live near Brisbane, Australia. Software developer currently focused on iOS and Android. Avid Google Local Guide