 Computing, the Hollywood way
Tuesday, 16 May 2006
On a lighter note, I read this article on The Wall Street Journal about Hollywood and their often absurd portrayal of computing and the internet on the big screen.
Apart from the never-ending proprietary interfaces with a look and feel (complete with annoying blinking graphics and sound effects) which no-one has ever seen, let alone use, here’s a couple of my favourite specific farcical moments:
Tom Cruise in “Mission Impossible” manages to send an email message to that “Max” bloke, even though the email address is "Max@Job 3:14". Yes, that’s right. Not only is the address missing the domain name but it’s also got illegal characters in it. Jeff Goldblum in “Independence Day” defeating the entire Alien population with his Macintosh by infecting their advanced computer systems with a virus which he somehow manages to transmit because the aliens just happen to be using the same wireless protocol as us humans.
There are quite a number more, of course. A general propensity for ridiculously fast web searches which produce instantaneous results and passwords which are somehow always cracked in under three tries also spring to mind.
Do you have any that you found to be particularly stupid?
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One word...SWORDFISH....especially in the nightclub scene!
From "The Net", that stupid of the stupids movie of the 90's:
"The internet connects to everything in the movies. You can edit credit records, search hotel registries, lookup police criminal files, search (and edit) driver's license databases, edit social security files and more just using the internet!"
Have a look here for some other annoyances.
The premise of a world controlled by computers via "The Net", with Sandra Bullock as the protagonist and Irwin Winkler as the director? It was just too hilarious to contemplate at the time. But the more I hear about "The Net" from others who have endured it and survived, the more I'm drawn to it in some strange, perverse kind of way.
Jakob Nielsen has just published a Top 10 Bloopers of usability in the movies.