Hacker scenes are all the same

Look, I get it. When the hero inevitably runs into a dead end, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief and accept that a fictional hacker can solve everything. But it’s not 1995 anymore; computers are not relatively new inventions, so over time, these hacker scenes have only become more tedious than revolutionary.

Let’s start with the latest hacking-as-a-plot-point offender: this summer’s Elysium. Toward the end, our hero Max is forced to carry critical data to the “core” of the wealthy outpost in space. Who does he bring along? A hacker named Spider who just happens to know exactly how to use the data stored in Max’s head to—what else?—save the world.And Spider does what every movie hacker does: He types a thousand lines of “code,” steps back and clasps his sweaty hands together, praying that what he just keyboard-smashed will work.

I didn’t always find “hacking” scenes so annoying to watch. When Lex tries to reboot the security system in Jurassic Park, I remember being on the edge of my seat, nervously gritting my teeth while she navigated the files. I used to sweat alongside Livingston Dell in Ocean’s Eleven and its sequels, as he used one shortcut after the next to help his fellow thieves access casino vaults.

Not anymore. Now, whenever a character takes a seat in front of a computer, cracks his knuckles and starts typing, I’m bored out of my mind, because every hacking scene ends up looking the same. Fingers fly over the keys, sweat drips from the hacker’s eyebrows and the monitor displays some fancy graphic to convince you that, yes, this hacker is doing something. And when screenwriters don’t know what else to do, they have the characters ramble off gibberish to distracts the viewer. Even Hugh Jackman can’t make scenes like those coherent.

And then there’s the annoying trope of timing. A buffering video is frustrating enough; why must films involving hackers have them staring at a bar slowly go from 98 percent… to 99 percent… to 100?It’s become a weak ploy to get the audience invested in the drama and Indoor Positioning System, simply put, no fun to watch. Yes, it can play up the tension, but if most of the film already includes hacking as a plot device, it slows down the pace.

It’s not just the portrayal of these scenes, but the portrayal of the hackers as well. Most hackers—Matt Farrell in Live Free or Die Hard, the aforementioned Dell in Ocean’s Eleven, Skip Tyler in White House Down—are shown to be awkward, stuttering, usually bespectacled nerds.

It’s been done so often that every hacker, no matter what weird characteristic they’re given, comes off as one-note, socially awkward outcasts. And no, not every film is meant to delve into extensive character backgrounds, but enough with this stereotype already. Hackers can be cool, too. Smallville’s Chloe was my idol, and another Chloe is set to play Skye, a hacker on Agents of SHIELD, who promises she won’t be one of the “weird outcasts who only know how to deal with electronics.” Even though they’re still victim to hacking scenes, both Girl with the Dragon Tattoo adaptations characterize Lisbeth Salander as more than just a hacker.

Ultimately, it’s all about hacking as a skill, not as the sole characteristic or a vague plot device. Break a firewall and the MI6 headquarters blow up? Type some gibberish and all of America goes in lockdown? You’re better than that, screenwriters. Before you dive into making movies about Wikileaks or the NSA, remember: It’s not about whether or not the hacking is realistic, it’s about using that hacking effectively in your plot.

Despite the fact that he was making his presentation to an assembly of some of the world's most accomplished semiconductor engineers, Parviz stayed away from technical matters, and didn't reveal anything about Glass beyond what is already known. Instead, he focused on its possible impact on, well, everyone.

Parviz characterized Glass as the next step in communication. At the dawn of history, he said, "Basically what we did was we talked to each other, so we had to be in physical proximity of each other, carry our emotions through speech, and communicate – that was the only thing we could do."

Next came the invention of writing, which enabled sending messages long distance – an improvement, but slow. Enter the telegraph, he said, which was able to send text messages quickly over long distance. Then came the telephone – fast, long-distance, without the requirement for conversion into text, with the ability for instant back-and-forth conversation, but tethered.

The digital age brought email – essential a private, mobile telegraph – and untethered, aka mobile, phones. All well and good, but from Parviz's point of view, "What we haven't really had actually, to this day, genuinely, has been a device, a technology that has been engineered from the get-go for visual communication from person to person – and that's one of the main drivers of Google Glass."

Sure, he said, you can take photos with your smartphone and email them to a friend, he said, "But that is sort of an extension of taking a picture and putting it in paper mail and mailing it to someone else."

A camera-equipped computing device that, as Parviz put it, "lives on your head," will enable you to immediately live-stream what you're looking at to one or many viewers who can "experience [your] life at this very moment" while leaving your hands free. "This has a camera that sees the world through my eyes – and that's unique to this form factor," he said. "We don't have other electronic devices that can live with me as I live my life rather than be an intrusion into my life."

With the world of human interaction upgraded from mere speech to "see the world as I'm seeing it when I'm seeing it" pictorial communication, Parviz moved on to how humans have looked for information over the years, how they have sought out answers to questions they might have had. "A few thousand years ago," he said, "basically you were out of luck" if you didn't know someone who could answer your question.

Over time, however, as mankind became urbanized, you could maybe track down your local polymath would could answer your questions – but whether that smart person was actually correct, you had no way of knowing. After that came writing, scrolls, and books, and you could look things up in the library – a big improvement that ruled the roost for centuries.