This is an easily-pierced trope of this kind of discussion. "But now that the majority of the movie-watching public has a pretty good idea of how computers wor

This is an easily-pierced trope of this kind of discussion. "But now that the majority of the movie-watching public has a pretty good idea of how computers work, having a "hacker" enter some kind of 3d virtual reality world to hack the NSA is perceived as ridiculous..." Are we in the future? Or, are we trying to destabilize the audience's expectation of what's possible? Or, are we trying to communicate to the audience that computing is so ubiquitous and so disposable that society has spent its resources on superfluous displays? Is the protagonist a fish-out-of-water invited into an enclave of super-advanced geniuses situated in otherwise present-day America? Narrative is craft, and it's subject to expedience. The question to answer, in any given instance, is not, "Is this use of technology realistic?," but, "How does this element of technological unrealism operate within the wider context of the (obviously unrealistic) fantasy world of the movie?" Anyone can come up with an instance of how this has failed in a movie, but the title of the article is "Coding the Movies: Don't Fake It." This person wants code to look real in movies, and that's a profoundly stupid generalization to insist on. It's worth noting, too, that the author's "blog post" is really an advertisement for his consulting service. In a Habermassian sense, we would be suspicious that this element of the Lifeworld, this Communicative Action, has been colonized by the System, namely his need to get work. Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.