[Basje]

Very cool. I saw Jurassic Park in the cinema and remember thinking that the Unix system that they used was some Hollywood fancy, but I learned much later that it was actually a prototype of a gui [0]. It appears that Spielberg was well-connected to tech people at the time.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_System_Visualizer

[B1FIDO]

I mean actually the FSV that you refer to is a clone of the SGI IRIX utility, fsn, that was actually depicted on a live computer in the film.

SGI was well-known to the film industry, because their IRIX systems were basically the sine qua non of graphics workstations and powerhouses. SGI invested heavily in the graphical capabilities, including 3D rendering, and therefore when the industry graduated from Amigas with the "Video Toaster" they slid into SGI systems quite nicely.

So it stood to reason that a couple of them would show up in an actual film. How plausible it was to have SGI systems on-site at a Jurassic Park type lab? I don't know, but seems reasonable, if they were also crunching DNA numbers.

[guerrilla]

Poor SGI. I used to love their website back in the 90s.

It's strange to think that alternative architectures were possible though and could get such a foothold in some industries. The specificity is mind-blowng. Everything is "PC"s today.

[jon-wood]

They had at least one Cray on site in the novel, a few SGI workstations seems very plausible.

[apaprocki]

Completely possible. In the early 90s everyone was buying SGI Indys to run Apache on and put the cool “Powered by SGI” badge on their site. I admin’d a local ISP then and that Indy was on my desk and IRIX was my daily driver. Their UI just felt leagues beyond other commercial Unices of the time, so rather than being plausible, I’d expect it due to the lab/science/dataviz aspect.

edit: Just last night a friend was watching MiB and Tommy Lee Jones looks at a Motif UI. It was obviously SGI but it was IRIS ViewKit and not the later Interactive Development Environment. Narrowed down likely creator being Van Ling from Banned From The Ranch Entertainment. If you’re out there…

[kayfox]

The page on Wikipedia for fsn was deleted because fsn is "not notable."