The Great Love Affair: The Computer and Its User

To ensure their survival in tomorrow´s digital era, pre-school children are being taught to master the double mouse-click. Six-year-olds are initiating their grandparents into the mysteries of flight simulation. Forsaking the couch, psychologists are now conducting their therapy sessions on interactive software programmes. As they surf through the fantastic world of Cyberspace, computer junkies have discovered a new version of the classic tale of infidelity and jealousy: A menage à trois involving man, the computer and woman, with the computer starring in role of chief tempter. In almost no other environment do sheer madness and level-headed banality lie so close together than in the daily routine at the computer. Yet the reality is far removed from the bleak horror scenarios and the euphoric visions of global networking so often projected. “The Love Affair – The Computer and its User” is not a film about computers. It is an event. A multimedia event, which for the first time in television affords the computer the opportunity to reflect upon study its “user”. Indeed, in our film the computer studies its operator. Who is dependent on whom? Our approach to the question is direct and innovative. A new graphic user-interface was developed especially for the film, enabling us to cascade down the pull-down menus, leap through electronic files and prevent (almost) any crash. The innermost insights of an intimate relationship. Voyeuristic images of the computer and its user. A film about love, enslavement and despair.