4 ms·

I think Mr Robot has good tech in it, because it's not a show about tech CSI-Cyber style. It's a drama, which uses tech as a basebone. All the hacking largely s

by Vexs 10y ago

I think Mr Robot has good tech in it, because it's not a show about tech CSI-Cyber style. It's a drama, which uses tech as a basebone. All the hacking largely stays in quick snippets displayed, and maybe a sort of slow-marathon style of filming where it's clear something takes a while. It's a show about hacking, but hacking is secondary to the other aspects, it just moves the plot forward, and that's why it works so well.

minimaxir 10y ago
Mr. Robot has good tech because, like HBO's Silicon Valley, they consulted with people in the industry. USA has posted an interesting making-of of sorts on the show: https://youtu.be/1BbTUASfrAI https://youtu.be/1BbTUASfrAI
- adrusi 10y ago
  The point is why they consulted with people in the industry. Often when media shows hacking it's as an action scene, and you can have some very exciting realistic hacking scenes, but only if you can rely on the audience understanding a lot of the context, which you can't, so instead they present a charicature of hacking that is exciting to a wide audience. The same can be said of many other domains of knowledge. You can make realistic historical settings extremely interesting, but that's very hard if the audience doesn't know the historical background so that they can connect what is happening on the screen with what happened in history. Mr. Robot consulted with people industry because their hacking scenes more closely resemble Sherlock Holmes detective work than action sequences, so they don't have to make things happen fast to get viewers' adrenaline flowing and can have time to give lay-people more room to understand the context. Without this story structure any expert consultations would be wasted.
  - rasz_pl 10y ago
    Matrix wasnt action oriented?
  - RobertoG 10y ago
    I appreciate your comment, I think is insightful, but I have to say it: about the 'get viewers adrenaline flowing', they could, at least, make a little effort in avoiding the totally ridiculous. If they are not aiming for realism, they could, at least, try to be coherent in their own 'universe'. Sometimes, the things that come from Hollywood feel like they don't respect their public. We leave for another day the discussion about if their public deserve the respect.
dexwiz 10y ago
I think its a bit more than that. The hacking is realistic, because its more than just Mad-Libbed in. When writing shows like Star Trek, writers often put things like Insert Technobabble Here into the first draft of the script, and it gets filled in with Reverse Tachyon Inductors later. This works for SciFi, since any explanation can be RetConned. But its glaringly obvious when done with real tech. The tech terms and snippets are more than just buzzwords dropped into a middle of the sentence. They are clearly defined plot devices with real world meaning.
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  It's a unix system. I know this.
  - dexwiz 10y ago
    That particular example seems so strange. The first half of the movie seems believable: long debug/compile times, never shut down the mainframe, disgruntled employee ineptly tries corporate espionage. Then we get that atrocity of a file explorer.
    - thoth 10y ago
      That scene did seem out of place, and I'm not sure how useful a 3D file explorer is, but fsn was a real (experimental) product for IRIX systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn edit: fsn is lowercase
      - vorotato 10y ago
        Never forget the 90's love for 3d actually went this far beyond the practical.
        caf 10y ago
        Perhaps culminating with psDoom, which allowed you to kill processes by shooting them in an FPS.
bduerst 10y ago
Don't watch the new Person of Interest tv show then, it's a lot like CSI but they name-drop technical jargon in only semi-relevant context, which makes it even worse for some reason.
- glider97 10y ago
  I think that's rather over-criticizing it. Person of Interest may not be able to match Mr. Robot in technical realism, but it is set in a fantastical universe with a fully functional AI. I wish they were as committed to realistic hacking as Mr. Robot, but it cannot be said that they didn't try. Its hacks were explained enough for a layman, and shown enough for a technical person. And its story was good, too. I'd recommend it to people just for that.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    But that's what makes it worse than CSI, because it's so heavily grounded in technology that suspense of disbelief is disrupted when technical terms are misused.
    - glider97 10y ago
      Can you give some examples? I'm sincerely asking, since I never felt that technical terms were misused. I want to know where I missed that.
- scrollaway 10y ago
  Person of Interest has some of the most realistic uses of tech on TV. It could match Mr. Robot... the only reason it doesn't is... it's a scifi show. Yes, you have to make believe some things about bandwidth and just how smart one person can be. But classifying POI, an incredibly high quality and well researched show, as "worse than Cyber" is doing nothing but hurting the cause you claim to support. And the reason I'm pissed off about that is that I support it too. Sorry that science fiction show is not a documentary about the NSA. May I recommend Citizenfour instead?
- smileysteve 10y ago

by Vexs 10y ago

minimaxir 10y ago

Mr. Robot has good tech because, like HBO's Silicon Valley, they consulted with people in the industry. USA has posted an interesting making-of of sorts on the show: https://youtu.be/1BbTUASfrAI https://youtu.be/1BbTUASfrAI

adrusi 10y ago
The point is why they consulted with people in the industry. Often when media shows hacking it's as an action scene, and you can have some very exciting realistic hacking scenes, but only if you can rely on the audience understanding a lot of the context, which you can't, so instead they present a charicature of hacking that is exciting to a wide audience. The same can be said of many other domains of knowledge. You can make realistic historical settings extremely interesting, but that's very hard if the audience doesn't know the historical background so that they can connect what is happening on the screen with what happened in history. Mr. Robot consulted with people industry because their hacking scenes more closely resemble Sherlock Holmes detective work than action sequences, so they don't have to make things happen fast to get viewers' adrenaline flowing and can have time to give lay-people more room to understand the context. Without this story structure any expert consultations would be wasted.
- rasz_pl 10y ago
  Matrix wasnt action oriented?
- RobertoG 10y ago
  I appreciate your comment, I think is insightful, but I have to say it: about the 'get viewers adrenaline flowing', they could, at least, make a little effort in avoiding the totally ridiculous. If they are not aiming for realism, they could, at least, try to be coherent in their own 'universe'. Sometimes, the things that come from Hollywood feel like they don't respect their public. We leave for another day the discussion about if their public deserve the respect.

dexwiz 10y ago

I think its a bit more than that. The hacking is realistic, because its more than just Mad-Libbed in. When writing shows like Star Trek, writers often put things like Insert Technobabble Here into the first draft of the script, and it gets filled in with Reverse Tachyon Inductors later. This works for SciFi, since any explanation can be RetConned. But its glaringly obvious when done with real tech. The tech terms and snippets are more than just buzzwords dropped into a middle of the sentence. They are clearly defined plot devices with real world meaning.

jonathankoren 10y ago
It's a unix system. I know this.
- dexwiz 10y ago
  That particular example seems so strange. The first half of the movie seems believable: long debug/compile times, never shut down the mainframe, disgruntled employee ineptly tries corporate espionage. Then we get that atrocity of a file explorer.
  - thoth 10y ago
    That scene did seem out of place, and I'm not sure how useful a 3D file explorer is, but fsn was a real (experimental) product for IRIX systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn edit: fsn is lowercase
    - vorotato 10y ago
      Never forget the 90's love for 3d actually went this far beyond the practical.
      - caf 10y ago
        Perhaps culminating with psDoom, which allowed you to kill processes by shooting them in an FPS.

bduerst 10y ago

Don't watch the new Person of Interest tv show then, it's a lot like CSI but they name-drop technical jargon in only semi-relevant context, which makes it even worse for some reason.

glider97 10y ago
I think that's rather over-criticizing it. Person of Interest may not be able to match Mr. Robot in technical realism, but it is set in a fantastical universe with a fully functional AI. I wish they were as committed to realistic hacking as Mr. Robot, but it cannot be said that they didn't try. Its hacks were explained enough for a layman, and shown enough for a technical person. And its story was good, too. I'd recommend it to people just for that.
- bduerst 10y ago
  But that's what makes it worse than CSI, because it's so heavily grounded in technology that suspense of disbelief is disrupted when technical terms are misused.
  - glider97 10y ago
    Can you give some examples? I'm sincerely asking, since I never felt that technical terms were misused. I want to know where I missed that.
scrollaway 10y ago
Person of Interest has some of the most realistic uses of tech on TV. It could match Mr. Robot... the only reason it doesn't is... it's a scifi show. Yes, you have to make believe some things about bandwidth and just how smart one person can be. But classifying POI, an incredibly high quality and well researched show, as "worse than Cyber" is doing nothing but hurting the cause you claim to support. And the reason I'm pissed off about that is that I support it too. Sorry that science fiction show is not a documentary about the NSA. May I recommend Citizenfour instead?
smileysteve 10y ago