I just watched the "Making of Jurassic Park" documentary. They originally wanted to do most of the effects without computers. But one of the computer guys convi

I just watched the "Making of Jurassic Park" documentary. They originally wanted to do most of the effects without computers. But one of the computer guys convinced them to try it, and it worked really well. They actually had to scrap a bunch of practical models they had built because the computer stuff was so good. One of the guys in the documentary says "we were afraid they wouldn't need special effects people anymore. The director would just go on the computer and hit D for dinosaur and R for rain, and we'd be out of a job". But it turned out that even with computers, they had to do a whole bunch of practical effects to get the rest of the footage. So when a computer generated dinosaur breaks through a fence, they had to make the fence break in just the right way so they could film it, and that took practical effects. A lot of things have changed in the film industry and a lot of the old effects have gone away due to computers, but I don't think these big doom and gloom predictions people make are likely to come to pass. I was listening to my favorite Martin Luther King Jr speech, The Three Evils of Society, and he's talking about concerns people have about job loss due to automation back in the 1960's. And computers did come and automate away all kinds of stuff, but people still found work in other areas. My point is people have been worried about automation for a very long time. And it is interesting to think about, but I think a lot of the hyperbolic claims that it's going to destroy all these jobs overnight are a bit overblown.