These are some of my favourite moments, in the spirit or sharing, what are yours?
Star Trek IV, The Voyage Home. Scotty tries to turn on a 20th century computer by saying “Computer On” The 20th century guy tells him he has to use the mouse. Scotty picks up the mouse and speaks into it like a microphone and says the same thing.
RoboCop. The evil robot view of the world seen through an evil Macintosh interface – complete with skull where the apple logo should be in the top left.
Tron. The entire movie.
Wargames. When the hero having hacked into the W.O.P.A., types in: “Let’s play Global Thermo-Nuclear War”
The Matrix. Explanation of Deja Vu as a computer glitch
Beeping ‘computer text’ caption revealing itself character by character.
Anytime the hero has a swipe card attached to a circuit board via a ribbon cable to break into some swipe-card entry door and it ‘decodes’ the password one number at a time. Yeah right.
Anytime the hero tells a computer operator to ‘enhance’ a video still of the bad guy from a CCTV and ends up with a 10-megapixel detail of the bad guy’s face. Yeah right.
Anytime the hero ‘hacks’ into a CCTV to record the scene and then plays it back while he does what he needs to do.
Superman II. When Richard Pryor hacks his company’s payroll system to funnel the fraction-of-a-cent excess from transactions into his payroll account, earning him millions. The company exec laments that this hacker must be incredibly smart and they’re never going to catch him, just as Pryor squeals into the parking lot in his brand new Ferrari.
The same transaction hack happens in one of my favourite movies, which includes another classic moment…
Office Space. When the heroes take their temperamental printer out to the field behind the office and kick the crap out of it – in slow motion to a Hip-Hop track. Just as they’re done and the printer is in pieces, one of them tries to return to give it a final kick but is restrained by the others.
Priceless.



October 25th, 2007 01:37
I’m crushed….you mean what Jack Bauer does at CTU with enhancing the LA traffic grid cameras isn’t real???
October 25th, 2007 03:28
‘Fraid not. Also, there’s something you should know about the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus…
October 28th, 2007 02:28
You have no idea how many times I’ve threatened to recreate that scene from Office Space. Truly, some machines deserve it. *nods sagely*
November 13th, 2007 04:04
For some reason I always laugh hysterically in the original Star Wars when Luke is asked by his Uncle Owen to take C-3PO and R2-D2 back to the homestead for cleaning. Luke’s reply in a whiny teenage sounding voice, “But, I wanted to go to Toshi Station to pick up some power converters!” Ha-ha!