Fits a couple of themes
Movies and TV famously do an awful job of showing how real computers and real programmers work. Hackers type madly, see ACCESS DENIED on the screen in big flashing letters, then type some more and see ACCESS PERMITTED in big flashing letters.

The opposite happened in the mainframe era. Most movies and TV shows gave a solidly realistic close-up image of sorters and tape drives and card punches. They usually overrated the power of the computer, but the machines, and the way of working with the machines, were correctly viewed.

Stop to think: In the mainframe era very few people had actual experience with computers. Since 1980 everybody has actual experience with computers.

When nobody knew the reality, movie producers were free to make up anything they chose. But they didn't. After 1980, movies should have been restrained by common experience. But they weren't.

This 1960 movie is a good example of getting mainframes exactly right. It does an even better job with the dilemma of trusting the machine vs trusting the expert.

An arrogant expert working for an insurance company insists the computer must be wrong because it shows a pattern of deaths that is "impossible" by his theories. This is realistic.

Soon he looks more closely and realizes the machine was right, and then goes into detective mode to find who is behind the pattern, and possibly save the next victim. This is unrealistic by today's standards. It might have happened in 1960. (It also fits my recent theme of insurers saving lives to increase profit.)

Now we refuse to follow obvious simple DATA because the experts know the DATA is wrong. Bizarre delusional demonic theories and theologies are always correct, and they become even more undeniably correct when ALL the data contradicts them.
  ¶ 1:13 PM