If William Gibson's cultural legacy were to be summed up by a cynic, it would be this: he
made the act of hacking appear way cooler than it is. Movies show acts of daring, pounding away at keyboards to gain illicit access to complex systems — often the reality is something closer to social engineering (e.g. You just call someone and pretend to be the right person.)
This video, by founditemclothing is proof that the 90s idea of computer hacking was straight out of the Hollywood school that, in the 1980s with Weird Science, tried to convince us that a Commodore 64 could bring to life an artificial intelligence genie. It opens with Jurassic Park and takes us through a ridiculous world of John Connor hacking an ATM machine with Budnick from Salute Your Shorts, Jeff Goldblum creating a virus for alien space ships in Independence Day, and, just for good measure, Keanu Reeves riding a few cyberspace environments out, including not just The Matrix but also Johnny Mnemonic, based on a short story by William Gibson himself.
It ends fittingly with the Office Space scene where they hand off the penny-fraction skimming disc, remarking how easy it actually was in a parody of so many other scenes. But along the way, brace yourself for endearing tech literacy ineptitude.
Via io9.
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