Any of us could probably come up with hundred different “So Bad That They’re Awesome” movie scenes that involve technology in some manner. Whether hacking into the CIA database, or bringing down a bank’s firewalls, it always looks so glamorous when it appears on the big screen. In tonight’s J@N, we’ll share with you some of our favorite blunders in Hollywood technology, and let you laugh along with us.

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Tonight’s Show Notes & Download Below:

Last week was the 15th anniversary of the film “HACKERS” — probably the single most well-known example of Hollywood Tech, it embodied every single stereotype we still see used in movies to this day.

io9’s list of the “10 Goofiest Hacking Scenes”

So very, very common, that they’ve been broken into three separate categories on the popular “TV Tropes” website.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodHacking
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ViewerFriendlyInterface
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExtremeGraphicalRepresentation

… and blogged about thoroughly
https://www.useit.com/alertbox/film-ui-bloopers.html

“Enhance” — the art of pulling a fully-detailed image from a single pixel, no matter what the source.
Even more ridiculous…

But sometimes they use REAL hacks! (or… almost…)

Remotely possible that similar ideas sprung from reality:
Early “display” models of the ENIAC (one of the very first general-purpose computers) had a worthless series of blinking lights attached to the circuits that did nothing but flash on and off while the machine worked.  Their sole purpose was to distract onlookers while the computer performed its computations, so that they weren’t staring at an uninteresting hunk of metal.

Uplink: A hacking video game designed to make fun of these Hollywood computer interfaces

Download: