Things You Can’t Do With A Computer – Unless You’re In A Movie!

Hollywood has a tendency to give the impression that plenty of very unlikely or impossible things happen all the time, as shown by shows like Mythbusters that have proven that cars that roll over tend not to explode into giant fireballs, among other things.

When it comes to computers and the things they can allow you to do, however, many movie writers use them in much the same way as they use wizards – to explain away anything implausible.  Yes, any time you see something that doesn’t really make sense in an action or heist movie, it is often explained with a lazy â??he can do it because he knows computersâ? or â??he hacked itâ?. Here are some things movie makers would have us believe a computer can do:

Communicate With Extraterrestrials!

We all saw Independence Day. Apple actually paid to have the Macbook that was used to blow up the aliens as a major plot device in that movie, in a colossal act of product placement, however there is literally no way that this could happen. The Mac in question would not even be able to communicate properly with an iPad from today, let alone the technology of an advanced alien race with the capability to travel to and take on Earth.

Computers are limited by languages, network configurations and all kinds of other things that would prevent you from being able to easily interfere with a network they haven’t been designed to interact with, let alone one that their designers and programmers have no understanding of.

Completely and Irreparably Destroy Your Identity!

While it was made back in the days when not everyone was that familiar with the internet, The Net starring Sandra Bullock sure did make it look like a scary prospect. Based around the idea of identity theft, Sandy’s life was completely ruined by some vengeful hackers, to the point where her own family somehow didn’t know who she was. Yes, identity theft online can be markedly inconvenient, but this, and other movies that use identity fraud as a major plot device, implies that we all only exist as data.

Had they just sort of hacked her MySpace page (this was before Facebook, of course!) and posted some embarrassing stuff or used her credit card number to order a lot of pizzas, this might have been a believable tale of hacking and identity abuse, but then it probably wouldn’t have been very exciting!

Steal Loads of Money Without Anyone Noticing!

Financial tech is super easy for anyone with a bedroom level of hacking ability to get into, and once you’re in there, you can remove as much money as you like from the one big database table with all the money in into your account without anybody tracing it. That’s what the movies would have us believe, anyway! In movies like Swordfish, people have pulled off ridiculous financial crimes simply by being â??elite hackersâ?. Elite hackers, however, are real, and yet crimes like this aren’t happening all the time. How is this? Hacking is used in movies like The Doctor’s sonic screwdriver â?? it doesn’t matter how it works, it just kind of sorts things out.

This post was authored by Todd Nash; he is a tech expert and an ardent blogger. He enjoys indulging in a game of basketball with his friends in his spare time after work.