posted by Doyle
Well, maybe not predicted, but I noticed some great parallels while having a good time watching Hackers, the 1995 film starring a young Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller, a couple of nights ago.
While it was far from the first time I’ve seen the movie (my wife will actually complain about how many times I’ve seen the movie!), I noticed something very different this time. More than just laughing at the out-of-date technology, the hacker culture portrayed in the film acts much like today’s social networking and mobile computing cultures.
So maybe Hackers predicted at least a part of the future. Fifteen years ago, you needed special equipment and a lot of special skill to pull much of this off. Not anymore.
A few examples:
- Throughout the movie, the characters hacked in to networks from pay phones. While it was mostly to evade getting caught by using their own phone lines, it reminded me of the public WiFi community that’s sprung up with cheap (or free) and easy Internet access from anywhere and could even be a WiMax foreshadowing. Just as they used pay phones to hide, we can even make it difficult to be tracked from a Starbucks, for example, as the address will show up as a public access point.
- Remember the scene where they all watched the show with Razor and Blade called “Hack the Planet”? Again, you needed serious skills (and maybe even a little fiction help from the script) to show your program by breaking into a broadcast feed. Now, that’s nothing more than a video blog, which can be—and often is—produced by just about anyone. You can check out shows like AmateurLogic.TV anytime—no special skill or equipment needed.
- Hacker handles: names like Acid Burn, Crash Override or Phantom Phreak populate the movie. There’s even a scene where one character, Joey, says “I don’t have an identity until I have a handle.” Not really so different from Twitter handles, is it? A shout out to my friends @geekmommy, @smileyvegas, @technosailor and @queenofspain. So, which one of you wants to be Lord Nikon?
- And in the end, they needed to meet (meetup?) to take down the systems and save themselves from certain prison sentences. They sent messages online (today’s Facebook event, meetup or Tweetup) and used pagers (perhaps SMS or Foursquare?) to get people together all over the world and support their cause. Look what we’re doing now: through SMS alone, more than $20 million was raised to support relief efforts in Haiti in just a few days.
Perfect parallels? No, but it reinforces something we’ve been talking about lately at Metzger: social media is not new behavior, it’s just new tools that allow us to talk, interact and get together—which is what we’ve always wanted to do.
Put Hackers in your Netflix queue… it’s still a fun ride (I wonder what Dave Taylor thinks of the film. Dave… would you like a “retro-review?” Call me!).
3 responses so far ↓
1 GeekMommy // Feb 21, 2010 at 4:07 am
I love that movie… despite it's overuse of Movie OS and the post-War-Games 'all hackers are really just nice, well meaning kids' theme.
You've made some really interesting analogies here though Doyle. It's true that the medium is simply the way we find to get the message out and altogether too often the 'early adopters' are those with a lot of time on their hands to get familiar with prohibitive technologies.
It's amazing to think that there was a time when there were payphone banks pretty much everywhere you went, isn't it?
The funny part is that I *did* have a handle back then (before that movie actually) and it was nothing like the 'geekmommy' brand at all. I even have a phone phreak gadget I'll have to bring up and show to you sometime that predates that movie by 5 years!
But you and I have always agreed that we are simply using 21st century technology to accomplish communications the same way we did from the 19th century and before.
Speaking of which – we need to do a night of geek movies – Hackers, Sneakers, the Net etc – some time soon!
2 Ef Rodriguez // Feb 21, 2010 at 6:40 pm
I love it. I haven't seen the movie in a while, though I remember being wowed by it when it came out, but based on my rememberings – I think you're onto something.
I'm a big fan of handles (Pugofwar, anyone?), and I hope that doesn't go away as more peeps merge their real identity with their online identity. Unless you have a really cool name.
Like Axl.
3 meghanc99 // Mar 10, 2010 at 7:29 pm
So, Life DID imitate art in this case! This is a great post. That is such a funny movie to watch now with all that outdated technology. But you make a great point that there are some definite parallels. The one you mention that seems most similiar would have to be the "hacker handles". That quote is so funny, "I don’t have an identity until I have a handle". And while it seems a little obnoxious how many people do you know that feel that way about their twitter handles. Maybe we aren't as different from these crazy kids as originally thought! Great unique post! Thanks!
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