The 1980 Adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven (Screenshot 3)
Jumbo Dumb Terminals of the Future
You are looking at the platform shoes of the computing world. Huge, white jumbo dumb terminals in the 1980 Adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven. During the early 1980s, I actually worked on computers like these when I was a fourteen-year-old computer science student in some ‘special kids’ program at Cal State, Los Angeles. So we can be extremely generous with justifying the design of this film and propose that our hero, George Orr, is dreaming a world of the future but can’t quite envision all of the future, futuristically. So computers, telephones, chairs, Formica, manila folders and jovial bald guys don’t look that much different from the contemporary world where this film was made.
Even back in the late 70s, I am sure that these computers were not that futuristic—but then again I may be underestimating just how innocent the American public was in the 1970s. Remember that the 1970s was the era of the Pet Rock.