Top 10 technology flaws in films

The Matrix: human beings make lousy batteries

With the economy worsening and layoffs hitting more and more tech firms, IT news can be a bit depressing these days.

One of the most tried-and-trusted methods for beating the blues has always been to curl up with a good movie or two and get whisked away into another world.

Unfortunately for those in the tech world, Hollywood's portrayal of geeks has always been spotty at best. The unrealistic and implausible depictions can set a tech-happy viewer off on an irritated, complaining rant faster than it takes the glasses-clad movie geek to 'hack the mainframe'.

So, if you do look to Hollywood to kick your recession blues this fall, here's a short list compiled by vnunet.com of movies for the easily-annoyed geek to steer clear of (or not, if you want a good laugh). If you want to add any of your own feel free to use the comments section below.

Johnny Mnemonic

Shaun Nichols: Great story in book form, awful movie. With all due respect to William Gibson, the continuation of Moore's ‘Law’ has made the line "I can store 320 gigabytes in my brain" a bit of a joke. (Gibson himself as much as admitted this; his latest novel has replaced brain-couriers with speedy iPod-toting teens.)

But that's not even the worst part. The fundamental underlying flaw which completely ruins the film version of Johnny Mnemomic for me is this: even in a futuristic high-tech ultra-capitalistic cyberpunk wasteland, who the hell is going to entrust any sort of important data to the brain of Keanu Reeves?

Iain Thomson: Couldn’t agree more on this one. There was some good use of technology, the passports spring to mind, but the way this film has dated has made it a stinker. And, as we’ll see below, Keanu Reeves is going to make regular appearances in this list.

Demolition Man

Shaun Nichols: This early-90s Sly Stallone shoot 'em up portrays a high-tech future in which a steady grid of ever-present consoles and kiosks ensure a squeaky-clean society in which everyone is happy, friendly and polite. Sort of like a Teletubby portrayal of Orwell's 1984.

The problem with this plot is that it assumes technology will make people more peaceful, polite and accommodating. Anyone who has ever spent more than five minutes on a message board, chat forum or YouTube knows that this is most definitely not the case.

Plus, I have little faith in any future in which Wesley Snipes has to dress like a five year-old.

Iain Thomson: You forgot that anyone who can hack a public internet terminal in seconds could bring out a lot more havoc than Snipes manages to. Add into that the apparent attraction of telepathic sex and it's thumbs down from me.

Hackers

Shaun Nichols: The film that launched a million script kiddies. It's one thing to have one or two unrealistic portrayals of technology, it's another thing to pretty much base your entire movie on them.

Way too many cock-ups in the plot to list, so I'll stick with the big one. What high-school aged 'hacker' has a) a regular hangout that is not his bedroom; b) more than three friends; and c) a young Angelina Jolie willing to be within five feet of him? Aside from that, who in their right mind is going to believe a movie about computer enthusiasts of any age that doesn't once reference Monty Python or The Simpsons?

Money quote: "RISC architecture is going to change everything."

Iain Thomson: I could rant for hours on this film; it's dated more badly than Elizabeth Taylor. The technology references are hopelessly dated and I’ve worked in the industry for nearly 20 years and have never found an Angelina Jolie lookalike in the server room.

Cherry 2000

Shaun Nichols: The cult classic which boldly predicted a future full of robotic spouses and pirate-infested post-apocalyptic forbidden zones. Possibly the most unfortunate of all the technology films in the list.

No doubt that late-night broadcasts of this flick have inspired more than one drunken call to IBM asking where the heck all the cyborg wives and pirate-infested forbidden zones are. I'd take it over the Demolition Man future, at least.

Iain Thomson: Shaun actually inspired me to check out this film and all I can say is I want 93 minutes of my life back please.

War Games

Shaun Nichols: OK, put down the torches and pitchforks and hear me out. War Games was pretty realistic at the time, and as time goes on and current events continue, its scenario still seems hauntingly plausible today. So no, there are no classic cock-ups.

The problem with War Games comes when you watch it with anyone under the age of 28 or so.

Some of us are barely old enough to remember 28.8 modems and 486 processors. The sight of Matthew Broderick reaching back to pull out an 8in floppy disk for his 'dialing program' is a lot like watching footage of workers digging the Panama Canal by hand.

When he picks up his corded phone headset and plugs it into an early modem for the days-long process of pinging servers, any youngster in the room is liable to ask you if people actually ever really did that. At which point you'll probably just be better off dismissing it as a cock-up than dating yourself by fessing up to having used such things.

If you want to nit-pick, there's also the improbability that any early-80s computer hacker ever convinces Ally Sheedy to go into his bedroom with him.

Iain Thomson: OK, we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. Yes, the technology is old but the basic premise is reasonably sound, if you ignore the final scene where the computer apparently becomes self-aware.

Jurassic Park

Iain Thomson: Michael Crichton is proof that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. While he can spin a cracking yarn his knowledge is fairly limited in some areas and Jurassic Park is no exception.

Leaving aside the unlikeness of the central plot vehicle, extracting DNA from insects incased in amber, it is the park’s computer system that sets the teeth on edge. When the park’s IT administrator crashes the system to make his escape he doesn’t just shut it down, instead he leaves it up with a picture of his face on it – very subtle.

But the standout moment has to be when the gutsy female kid decides to reboot it – with the classic line “It’s a UNIX system, I know this!” Leaving aside the fairly obvious point that it has a graphical user interface whereas 1993 UNIX was almost always command line based, she then displays no computer knowledge whatsoever in dealing with it.

Shaun Nichols: Iain pretty much hit it spot on. Though I guess when you've already re-animated a dozen species of dinosaurs from pieces of amber, other technological inconsistencies sort of get overshadowed.

Also, I'd add that if a sleep-deprived, highly traumatised 12 year-old can take complete control over the entire IT infrastructure while being chased by dinosaurs, you'll probably want to rethink a few things, the first being why all the people you're paying to do so couldn't figure it out.

The Net

Iain Thomson: In 1995 the internet was just starting to enter the mass public consciousness and as such Hollywood was getting in on the game. However, the writers of The Net obviously had no knowledge beyond maybe reading a couple of back issues of Wired.

Sandra Bullock plays one of the first online home workers in history who has apparently been hired remotely too, since no-one in her office knows who she is. She then gets a program that allows access to all sort of juicy stuff.

The central problem with this film is that the vital data that the bad guys are after is carried by Bullock on a floppy disk – total capacity 1.44MB. Now you can write effective code that small, but it’s about as unlikely as remote working in 1995, and the disk goes through a hell of a lot of punishment and still remains readable by every computer in the film.

There are other niggles – viruses that smear the computer screen for example – but overall it’s a bad film idea taken to extremes.

Shaun Nichols: The ultimate data leak story, but it's also got to be up there with Hackers in terms of bad technology. And as Iain pointed out, anyone who ever lost a term paper because you dropped your bag in an odd way would marvel at the amazing durability of that seemingly-ordinary floppy.

Demon Seed

Iain Thomson: The only reason I can see that an Oscar-winning actor like Julie Christie took part in something like Demon Seed was that she owed someone a big favour.

The plot is simple, and ridiculous. A new computer system is developed to be artificially intelligent and is uploaded with the entire sum of human knowledge, whereupon it takes over its creator’s house, impregnates his wife and becomes human.

Even by Hollywood standards this plot takes silliness to whole new levels. The computer apparently manages genetic engineering in a house basement, manages to cut human pregnancy to 28 days and yet can’t seem to get its head around the concept of electronic transference, as shown with the painfully silly line " When will you let me out of this box?"

All in all, one to avoid.

Shaun Nichols: I've been reluctant to put horror films on this list, because all of the technological cock-ups can be written off as 'evil magic' or something like that. When the basic premise is an evil computer that not only achieves self-awareness, but then decides to advance itself by genetically engineering a super-baby, who am I to point out a few technological improbabilities?

Independence Day

Iain Thomson: I went to a preview of this with a bunch of fellow computer journalists and it had us in stitches throughout.

Where to begin? The invading aliens can travel light years and yet have to bounce signals off our satellites. They use binary code just like us even though they have radically different morphology. And they haven’t discovered the concept of a firewall or anti-virus software for their mainframe.

But the biggest laugh came when plucky Jeff Goldblum and cocky Will Smith got onto the alien mothership to try and bring down its computer. How do they link to the systems? By using the notoriously buggy Powerbook 5300 with an operating system that was difficult to connect to another Apple and incredibly tough to link to a PC. Is there something in Steve Jobs’s history we don’t know about, one wonders?

Add in the now traditional virus that uses a graphical skull and crossbones and the limitations of escaping fireballs by hiding in cupboards that presumably are not only heatproof but come with their own oxygen supply, and you have a stinker of a film.

Shaun Nichols: I wouldn't say that the virus part is such a huge cock-up. In 1996, you couldn't transfer a simple word processing document between a Mac and a PC. It's not so far-fetched to think that an alien spaceship from a million light years away would work better with a Mac than anything Microsoft made.

The Matrix

Iain Thomson: This may be an unpopular choice, as seldom has a film so entranced movie goers and been so universally liked. I too was blown away by it at first, but then reality kicked in.

The main problem is this – human beings make lousy batteries. The amount of current we generate is tiny, much less than would be needed to run the facility shown for keeping humans alive.

In the film humans apparently blocked out the sun in an effort to kill off the solar powered robots. But what kind of robot army runs solely on solar power? OK, they might be able to fight at night with enough battery power but the chances of it working on a large scale are laughably small.

Plus there’s a second, more crucial, point. Given the choice of living in an electronic fantasy world or hanging around in a submarine eating lumpy porridge with Keanu Reeves and a host of characters who dress like they’ve been dipped in glue and dragged backwards through a bad rave I suspect that most of us would choose the Matrix.

Shaun Nichols: "Whoa… I know Kung Fu!" I never quite understood the concept of death in the Matrix. If you've already realised that you're in a simulated environment and any death you experience is only simulated, why do they still die?