That's great - and interesting that someone would react with "I got so upset that I wanted to bust the TV set" about it!
As this is an article about hacks, then I'll also point out that Max Headroom played the role of a "computer-generated television journalist", but there was nothing computer-generated about him at all... it was all prosthetics and makeup: even the "computer graphics" in the background were hand-drawn!
>"I got so upset that I wanted to bust the TV set"
I always found that reaction to be bizarre too. I wonder if some people see journalists and know that if they play up a character then their chances of being on the news goes way up. I think that explains a lot of the 'man on the street' perspectives we see in TV news. It becomes a game of one-upmanship to entertain the watcher and "get famous."
I'm no psychologist, but I can well imagine that someone could feel considerable cognitive dissonance if an institution that they had considerable trust in was unexpectedly and obviously subverted like this.
That was an interesting time. The concepts of 3D graphics, VR, AI, web/matrix/cloud/whatever, ubiquitous computing, smart phones/tablets/watches, global mapping (to hallway detail), [near-]real-time satellite imagery, weather prediction practically to foot & minute scale, affordable on-demand travel to anywhere, machine learning, machine vision, etc were becoming understood & popularized decades before they were anywhere close to feasible in hardware.
> were becoming understood & popularized decades before they were anywhere close to feasible in hardware.
I think there is an interesting feedback in that (not the first person to say it), you see accounts of scientists and engineers who grew up on sci-fi like Star Trek inspired to ask "Why can't we have that?".
It was the same for the original TV series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They got enquiries about what computer system they used to make the graphics for the guide. They were all hand drawn.
Special effects were done manually until quite recently. Independence Day was probably the last big budget film to use models. Now it's all computer generated.
One story I've heard is that the original Tron was responsible for a lot of this. They originally tried to use computer graphics for many of the movie's effects, but it proved to be way too expensive and time-consuming using the technology of the time. So they ended up hand-animating and rotoscoping most of it. The hollywood studios deemed the CG a failure and were scared off of it for a number of years following. So computer graphics didnt get as much adoption as it would have otherwise throughout the 80s.
Also many, many movies still use practical models in addition to CG. It's just that now movies can blend both techniques to use whatever is most appropriate for a given shot. What is rare now are movies that use no CG at all.. even things like Mad Max which are touted for their practical effects utilize a TON of CG work.
As this is an article about hacks, then I'll also point out that Max Headroom played the role of a "computer-generated television journalist", but there was nothing computer-generated about him at all... it was all prosthetics and makeup: even the "computer graphics" in the background were hand-drawn!