In Popular Culture
- In Robert A. Heinlein's 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, computer technician Manuel Davis blames a real bug for a (non-existent) failure of supercomputer Mike, presenting a dead fly as evidence.
- In the 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (and the corresponding 1968 film), a spaceship's onboard computer, HAL 9000, attempts to kill all its crew members. In the followup 1982 novel, 2010: Odyssey Two, and the accompanying 1984 film, 2010, it is revealed that this action was caused by the computer having been programmed with two conflicting objectives: to fully disclose all its information, and to keep the true purpose of the flight secret from the crew; this conflict caused HAL to become paranoid and eventually homicidal.
- The 2004 novel The Bug, by Ellen Ullman, is about a programmer's attempt to find an elusive bug in a database application.
- The 2008 Canadian film Control Alt Delete is about a computer programmer at the end of 1999 struggling to fix bugs at his company related to the year 2000 problem.
Read more about this topic: Software Bug
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of his faults, and in spite of his beauties too. He will hit the nail on the head, and we shall not know the shape of his hammer. He makes us free of his hearth and heart, which is greater than to offer one the freedom of a city.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The best hopes of any community rest upon that class of its gifted young men who are not encumbered with large possessions.... I now speak of extensive scholarship and ripe culture in science and art.... It is not large possessions, it is large expectations, or rather large hopes, that stimulate the ambition of the young.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)