5 ms·

"Jurassic Park inspired more people to go into biotech than any academic paper"

41 points by herbertl 2y ago

will-burner 2y ago
It would be cool if there was some data to back this up, but it's impossible to get. It's really about young people being impressionable and having the mindset to be inspired by something such that they'll dedicate their mind to it.
- nashashmi 2y ago
  Imagine that if you want people to be consumed into solving some problem put there (like protein folding), you create scifi movie about it. And tada! More people dedicated to doing that.
  - nsonha 2y ago
    The US military spends a lot of cash funding Hollywood blockbusters for the exact reason. However when it comes to things that actually benefits society like science, they don't even have enough funding to just do the thing, let alone PR
nashashmi 2y ago
> Jurassic Park inspired more people to go into biotech than any academic paper. The Matrix inspired more people to go into computer science than any GitHub repo. The Martian inspired more people to go into aerospace engineering than any industry trend report. > Science fiction doesn’t predict the future, it does something much more interesting: tell stories about technology so compelling that people dedicate their lives to advancing the frontier.
janice1999 2y ago
Children, generally, do not read academic papers.
- neverartful 2y ago
  Not only children! Very few adults (as a percentage) read them.
  - InvaderFizz 2y ago
    Sadly, you can drop "them" from your statement and its accuracy stays about the same.
thih9 2y ago
I am doubtful. Is there anyone here who got into computer science because of The Matrix? Wanting to recreate a sci-fi subplot irl can only get you so far, especially in an engineering field. These movies are of course loved by all the nerds, me included; but I’d guess the causality is different than what the twitter poster suggests. > tell stories about technology so compelling that people dedicate their lives to advancing the frontier Not to mention that the point of a lot of these stories was to not advance the frontier in that particular direction.
- kibibu 2y ago
  > Is there anyone here who got into computer science because of The Matrix? Not personally. However, I can say that a lot of people got into trenchcoats, sunglasses, and lil slide out phones because of The Matrix.
- AndrewKemendo 2y ago
  I was already coding but it was a significant motivator (along with Kurzweil) for me to pursue AGI as my focus
- tetris11 2y ago
  > got into computer science because of The Matrix? Looking at at least one. It put me into the cringe habit of customizing my desktop the way I wanted it, and realising that Windows just would not do for customization, and thus began my lifelong Linux affliction.
- talldatethrow 2y ago
  Sure. I chose mechanical engineering because I liked car movies. Heck, I thought fast and furious was cool and I wanted to go to college to learn to design and make car tuning parts. Don't underestimate how foolishly 17 year olds fill out their college applications based on random crazy thoughts occuring to them that month.
- inhumantsar 2y ago
  while I wouldn't say it's the reason, snowcrash and the diamond age were big motivators for me. the metaverse and the primer were great fodder for the imagination and seemed like they should be doable.
dcl 2y ago
I'd say Moneyball made statistics kind of cool for a bit. It would have inspired a lot of people to get in to sports analytics.
i4k 2y ago
For me it was hackers (1995) but after I got triggered Matrix had a huge influence in my mindset.
harimau777 2y ago
Reminds me of how many lawyers have been inspired by Atticus Finch.
- nashashmi 2y ago
  Even more are being inspired by Suits
jshaqaw 2y ago
Lots of finance people from an earlier era ended up there from the movie Wall Street which is hilarious since it was not intended as something glorifying the sector
- thih9 2y ago
  To be fair, Jurassic Park also doesn’t present cloning dinosaurs as a safe career path.
nsonha 2y ago
a tweet of unsubstantial claims, how impressive and thought provoking /s
syntaxing 2y ago
Twitter doesn’t work for me, is the post about the movie or the book?
- illwrks 2y ago
  Context suggests film... "Jurassic Park inspired more people to go into biotech than any academic paper. The Matrix inspired more people to go into computer science than any GitHub repo. The Martian inspired more people to go into aerospace engineering than any industry trend report. Science fiction doesn’t predict the future, it does something much more interesting: tell stories about technology so compelling that people dedicate their lives to advancing the frontier"
yazzku 2y ago
[citation needed] Also, very low quality post, amounting to just a tweet, and an unsubstantiated one at that.
malux85 2y ago
I’ve told this story before but I’ll tell it again - Jurassic Park got me into programming! I was 7 when it came out, and when I saw that one scene with the 3D fly over of the clouds in the approaching storm, I was hooked. Hooked like “I MUST build this” I started learning C, I downloaded NOAA weather satellite images from school and took them home on floppy disk. I started learning OpenGL (this was a few years later) over the course of many years I learned how to read a JPEG in C, how to denoise it, how to convert it to a height map, and how to animate a fly-over of it. I think I saw “segmentation fault (core dumped)” about 50,000 times over the 8ish years it took me to build from ages 8-15 or so. It was funny because I had to learn the basics of trigonometry before they taught it to me in school, when it got to that I was like “ohhhhhhh i wish you had shown me this sooner this is really useful!!!” While the other kids were still complaining “when will we ever use this?!” There’s a quote from the game civilisation that I love “instruct the children not to dream of toys or sweets, instruct them to dream of infrastructure” - I wish we had more scifi like Jurassic park that inspires our young <3
- wenc 2y ago
  The scene where the girl goes "It's a UNIX system, I know this" was one of the most realistic computer scenes in movies during a time when computer output on screen was mostly fake mockups. I was a kid back then but I'd seen otherworldly expensive SiliconGraphics workstations at PC fairs (my dad could only afford an XT clone), and seeing one in a movie was so cool.
  - malux85 2y ago
    Yeah! Much later I found fsv which was a Linux 3D filesystem viewer that was similar, And also gr_osview which was the resource monitor we saw running on one of Dennis Nerdrys monitors in one of the close-ups
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
bitbasher 2y ago
Video games inspired more people to get into computer science than any white paper.
eesmith 2y ago
How many fewer people would have gone into biotech had Watson and Crick never published their helical DNA paper? How many fewer people would have gone into biotech had Jurassic Park never been made? I have no idea how you compare those counter-factuals. Had Watson and Crick not published that paper, someone else would have. Had Jurassic Park not been made, what other movie might have inspired future biotech people?

41 points by herbertl 2y ago

It would be cool if there was some data to back this up, but it's impossible to get. It's really about young people being impressionable and having the mindset to be inspired by something such that they'll dedicate their mind to it.

nashashmi 2y ago
Imagine that if you want people to be consumed into solving some problem put there (like protein folding), you create scifi movie about it. And tada! More people dedicated to doing that.
- nsonha 2y ago
  The US military spends a lot of cash funding Hollywood blockbusters for the exact reason. However when it comes to things that actually benefits society like science, they don't even have enough funding to just do the thing, let alone PR

nashashmi 2y ago

> Jurassic Park inspired more people to go into biotech than any academic paper. The Matrix inspired more people to go into computer science than any GitHub repo. The Martian inspired more people to go into aerospace engineering than any industry trend report. > Science fiction doesn’t predict the future, it does something much more interesting: tell stories about technology so compelling that people dedicate their lives to advancing the frontier.

janice1999 2y ago

Children, generally, do not read academic papers.

neverartful 2y ago
Not only children! Very few adults (as a percentage) read them.
- InvaderFizz 2y ago
  Sadly, you can drop "them" from your statement and its accuracy stays about the same.

thih9 2y ago

I am doubtful. Is there anyone here who got into computer science because of The Matrix? Wanting to recreate a sci-fi subplot irl can only get you so far, especially in an engineering field. These movies are of course loved by all the nerds, me included; but I’d guess the causality is different than what the twitter poster suggests. > tell stories about technology so compelling that people dedicate their lives to advancing the frontier Not to mention that the point of a lot of these stories was to not advance the frontier in that particular direction.

kibibu 2y ago
> Is there anyone here who got into computer science because of The Matrix? Not personally. However, I can say that a lot of people got into trenchcoats, sunglasses, and lil slide out phones because of The Matrix.
AndrewKemendo 2y ago
I was already coding but it was a significant motivator (along with Kurzweil) for me to pursue AGI as my focus
tetris11 2y ago
> got into computer science because of The Matrix? Looking at at least one. It put me into the cringe habit of customizing my desktop the way I wanted it, and realising that Windows just would not do for customization, and thus began my lifelong Linux affliction.
talldatethrow 2y ago
Sure. I chose mechanical engineering because I liked car movies. Heck, I thought fast and furious was cool and I wanted to go to college to learn to design and make car tuning parts. Don't underestimate how foolishly 17 year olds fill out their college applications based on random crazy thoughts occuring to them that month.
inhumantsar 2y ago
while I wouldn't say it's the reason, snowcrash and the diamond age were big motivators for me. the metaverse and the primer were great fodder for the imagination and seemed like they should be doable.

dcl 2y ago

I'd say Moneyball made statistics kind of cool for a bit. It would have inspired a lot of people to get in to sports analytics.

i4k 2y ago

For me it was hackers (1995) but after I got triggered Matrix had a huge influence in my mindset.

harimau777 2y ago

Reminds me of how many lawyers have been inspired by Atticus Finch.

nashashmi 2y ago
Even more are being inspired by Suits

jshaqaw 2y ago

Lots of finance people from an earlier era ended up there from the movie Wall Street which is hilarious since it was not intended as something glorifying the sector

thih9 2y ago
To be fair, Jurassic Park also doesn’t present cloning dinosaurs as a safe career path.

nsonha 2y ago

a tweet of unsubstantial claims, how impressive and thought provoking /s

syntaxing 2y ago

Twitter doesn’t work for me, is the post about the movie or the book?

illwrks 2y ago
Context suggests film... "Jurassic Park inspired more people to go into biotech than any academic paper. The Matrix inspired more people to go into computer science than any GitHub repo. The Martian inspired more people to go into aerospace engineering than any industry trend report. Science fiction doesn’t predict the future, it does something much more interesting: tell stories about technology so compelling that people dedicate their lives to advancing the frontier"

yazzku 2y ago

[citation needed] Also, very low quality post, amounting to just a tweet, and an unsubstantiated one at that.

malux85 2y ago

I’ve told this story before but I’ll tell it again - Jurassic Park got me into programming! I was 7 when it came out, and when I saw that one scene with the 3D fly over of the clouds in the approaching storm, I was hooked. Hooked like “I MUST build this” I started learning C, I downloaded NOAA weather satellite images from school and took them home on floppy disk. I started learning OpenGL (this was a few years later) over the course of many years I learned how to read a JPEG in C, how to denoise it, how to convert it to a height map, and how to animate a fly-over of it. I think I saw “segmentation fault (core dumped)” about 50,000 times over the 8ish years it took me to build from ages 8-15 or so. It was funny because I had to learn the basics of trigonometry before they taught it to me in school, when it got to that I was like “ohhhhhhh i wish you had shown me this sooner this is really useful!!!” While the other kids were still complaining “when will we ever use this?!” There’s a quote from the game civilisation that I love “instruct the children not to dream of toys or sweets, instruct them to dream of infrastructure” - I wish we had more scifi like Jurassic park that inspires our young <3

wenc 2y ago
The scene where the girl goes "It's a UNIX system, I know this" was one of the most realistic computer scenes in movies during a time when computer output on screen was mostly fake mockups. I was a kid back then but I'd seen otherworldly expensive SiliconGraphics workstations at PC fairs (my dad could only afford an XT clone), and seeing one in a movie was so cool.
- malux85 2y ago
  Yeah! Much later I found fsv which was a Linux 3D filesystem viewer that was similar, And also gr_osview which was the resource monitor we saw running on one of Dennis Nerdrys monitors in one of the close-ups

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

bitbasher 2y ago

Video games inspired more people to get into computer science than any white paper.

eesmith 2y ago

How many fewer people would have gone into biotech had Watson and Crick never published their helical DNA paper? How many fewer people would have gone into biotech had Jurassic Park never been made? I have no idea how you compare those counter-factuals. Had Watson and Crick not published that paper, someone else would have. Had Jurassic Park not been made, what other movie might have inspired future biotech people?