It helps to know that the swirly equations on the screen were meant to be the director’s interpretation of the characters’ internal mental model of what they we

It helps to know that the swirly equations on the screen were meant to be the director’s interpretation of the characters’ internal mental model of what they were seeing and not some magical UI trick on the computers of the time. The wall-attached phones near the end didn’t suddenly become spinning glass phonebooths either, but you’ll seldom hear the movie bashed for the lack of realism there.