http://www.maximumpc.com | oct 08 | MAXIMUMPC | 09
I
just returned from a special theater screening of War Games—quite possibly
the only good film Hollywood has ever produced about computers, computer
nerds, or hacker culture. Shockingly, the movie, which was first released in
1983, holds up quite well, despite the use of archaic hardware (acoustic couplers
and vocoder boxes), a laughable sentient military supercomputer, and an occa-
sional lapse into typical Hollywood lingo.
The abundance of 8-inch floppy discs also gave people in the theater a laugh,
as did the fact that characters were practically chain-smoking throughout the entire
movie. Our biggest laugh came when the machine running the projector crashed—
it displayed a Windows 2000 Start Menu, sending the nerd collective into
hysterics—but none of the showing’s pervasive air of yestertech could
take away from the fact that War Games remains awesome. It was well-
researched, authentic, and sometimes downright prescient. After all,
the main premise of the movie is about people dialing into military net-
works using modems. Who would have thought that just five years after
the movie’s release, the military-focused ARPANET would be opened
up to commercial interests, and very soon after that, the Internet as we
know it would be born.
After the show, I lingered in the lobby with my fellow sweaty nerds
and reminisced about good hacker movies. Well, we tried to, anyway.
Aside from The Matrix (which was about a nerd but shares more DNA
with Hong Kong martial arts flicks than anything else), there haven’t
been any good films that explore the geekiest depths of computing—
ever. Think about it for a minute: Hackers was at best laughable, a blatant
attempt to capitalize on a legitimate underground phenomenon. Even
movies that first appear to add a promising element of nerdom always
end up doing something dumb, like tarnishing a tense computer-based
drama with idiotic and unusable (but oh so very sexy) 3D interfaces. Yes,
I’m talking about the IRIX 3D filesystem featured in Jurassic Park.
Where War Games showed a likeable kid who hacked simply be-
cause he wanted a peek at new games, the other movies portray computer nerds as
socially inept at best. At worst, they paint computer nerds as dysfunctional, “let the
world burn” anarchist types. Over the last 10 years, I’ve met thousands of people
who, like me, describe themselves as computer nerds, but I’ve yet to meet a single
anarchist hacker. Maybe those guys are all holed up in their moms’ basements, but
my hunch is they’re just another fictional stereotype, manufactured by Hollywood
to explain anything it fears or doesn’t understand.
I want to see some more good movies about people like me, computer nerds.
Have I missed any forgotten classics? Is there anything I need to bump to the top of
my Netflix queue? Let me know!A thing or two About A thing or two
ed wordWhy Does
Hollywood Give
Nerds a Bad Rap?
WRITE TO WILL Please send comments, questions, and boo
berry cereal to [email protected]. include your full name,
city of residence, and phone number with your correspondence.
unfortunately, will is unable to respond personally to all queries.AhOy
hOy!Monitor Madness!
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EDITORIAL
ED itor in Chi EF Will Smith
DEP ut Y EDitor Katherine Stevenson
MA nAging EDitor Tom Edwards
SE nior EDitor Gordon Mah Ung
on Lin E EDitor Norman Chan
ASS oCiAtE E Ditor David Murphy
wEb C on CiErg E Nathan Edwards
EDitor At LArg E Michael Brown
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Contributing writQuinn Norton ErS Tom halfhill, Thomas McDonald,
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ART
Art Dir EC tor Natalie Jeday
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Contributing Arti St Adam Benton
BUSINESS
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ADVE646-723-5416, [email protected] Sing DirEC tor, gAMES grou P Nate hunt
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