There’s some great TV on at the moment that revolves around tech as a central principle, like Mr. Robot, Halt and Catch Fire, and Silicon Valley. But what big-screen production utilises tech as its theme and stands the test of time?
A movie very of its moment, like 1995’s Hackers, seems painfully out-of-date watched today. The technology was fantastical then and old-school now. But its idea of renegade hackers taking on questionable corporations have become reality as well as a common fictional trope. Office Space, one of my favourite movies of all time, employs the old Y2K bug as the source of the disgruntled workers’ jobs, yet managers can still be like Lumberg, and programmers can still have mindless coding tasks that make them want to take a baseball bat to the company printer.
So what are your top picks? The movies don’t have to utilise realistic tech — Blade Runner qualifies as much as that Steve Jobs movie starring Ashton Kutcher. And who’s to say we’re not living in the Matrix? My choice would probably be Pixar’s WALL-E, which is a mediation on humanity and our future as much as it is a film starring an adorable adventurous robot.
There are no right answers here, but much to discuss. Tell us in the comments and help us all construct our Netflix queues going forward.