8 ms·
'typically-seen-as-sexy "hacker" scene'? By who? His association with At The Drive-In gives him more street cred than any tenuous relationship with hacking.
by barbecue_sauce 8y ago
'typically-seen-as-sexy "hacker" scene'? By who?
His association with At The Drive-In gives him more street cred than any tenuous relationship with hacking.
- txcwpalpha 8y agoSociety glamorizes hackers hard. Have you ever seen War Games? The Matrix? Live Free or Die Hard? Mr Robot? Blackhat? Any recent spy movie? What about the multitude of other movies/shows where hackers aren't the focus, but are certainly glamorized, a la NCIS, CSI, Limitless, etc. There's an entire genre of film & television about hackers and they are almost always portrayed as cool, attractive, powerful people with the world at their fingertips.
- merlincorey 8y agoI'm sad that you failed to mention the original /Hackers/ movie as well as /Swordfish/ -- two staples of Defcon movie nights.
- txcwpalpha 8y agoAh! I had Swordfish in mind but my brain blanked and I couldn't think of the name. For Hackers, I have no excuse.
- appleiigs 8y agoSneakers with Robert Redford
- merlincorey 8y agoYes! Another great classic Hacker flick.
- classichasclass 8y agoSneakers worked well because it had A-list actors playing up the social engineering aspect, which an A-list actor can do. It had comparatively little meditation on the hardware and technical aspects and from a plot and longevity perspective I think that was a particular strength of the movie.
- saalweachter 8y ago... have you seen War Games?
- txcwpalpha 8y agoYou mean the movie where a quirky-but-lovable nerd garners the attention of an attractive and popular girl who is fascinated by his hacking abilities and then goes on to kiss the girl, outsmart the FBI, and save the entire world from nuclear annihilation by typing stuff into a computer terminal? That WarGames? Yea, I've seen it.
- icedchai 8y agoWar Games is what made me want to get a modem, back in the 80's!
- myself248 8y agoIt's almost an exact copy-paste of the "spy / secret agent" mythos of the cold war. They don't use their real names, they have gadgets and mysterious power, not from magic but from skill. They operate outside traditional power structures and governments, you don't know who's working for whom, and they never seem far from a trenchcoat.
- js2 8y ago> Society glamorizes hackers hard. Hollywood glamorizes hackers, like violence, crime, rock n roll, space travel, and just about everything else hard. At the risk of hyperbole, if society glamorized hackers hard, Aaron Swartz might still be with us.
- barbecue_sauce 8y agoThis was what I was going to say. I'm not sure society itself has internalized Hollywood's glamorization of hackers, and the glamorization is more a product of trying to make something mundane seem more interesting in the context of a film.