Wonderful movie-clip-filled exploration of Hollywood’s failure to understand the world of technology we purport to portray
Hollywood seems determined to make the technology-aware jump up from their seats and scream NO!!! A technical error pulls me out of the story like a slap in the face. It almost physically hurts. I’m not just nitpicking here, either. These aren’t hard things to fix. One just needs to care.
by Scott Hanselman • Computer Zen
There’s no other explanation. It must be a tradition like the Wilhelm scream.
What, haven’t heard of the Wilhelm scream? Well, once you do it’s impossible to not hear it in every film. It’s in freaking Lord of the Rings, and it grates. It’s THE go-to person screaming sound effect and has been for over 50 years. Here’s a compilation of dozens of movies – including every George Lucas movie – that uses the Wilhelm scream.
In a notable exception to Hollywood’s normal patter, the “hack” in The Matrix features real commands.
Hollywood and TV seems determined to make the technology-aware jump up from their seats and scream NO!!! at the screen.
I can only imagine what a doctor or nurse must feel like when watching ER or a dramatic surgery.
A technical error pulls me out of the story like a slap in the face. It almost physically hurts. I’m not just nitpicking here, either. These aren’t hard things to fix. One just needs to care.
Now, often they’ll use internal IP addresses to represent external addresses and a lot of folks argue that using these addresses is the “555 Phone Number” equivalent. I can see that a little, but even if they used the IP Address of the studio it wouldn’t be so jarring.
It’s debatable who is worse between TV and Movies, but it’s clear that CSI has the #1 spot locked down with this classic.
Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. I am a failed stand-up comic, a corn-rower, and a book author.
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Special thanks to our technology aware webmaster, Chris Friesen, for finding Scott’s article.
