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Top 10 technology flaws in films
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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’s 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’s 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’ 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 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, 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?