Hackers
For this months IndieWeb Movieclub benji has chosen Hackers from 1995. A movie completely drenched in corny 90s tech aesthetics and I was simply grinning from ear to ear the entire time. This was right up my alley and amazing that I haven’t found out about this before.
As an edgy nerdy teenager, I tried to label myself as a hacker. Not in any illegal sort of sense, though I admit to making my fair share of shenanigans with the school’s computers. I felt drawn by the hacker ethic and mindset, with people like Kevin Mitnick and Richard Stallman (should be noted, those two represent very different things), and the whole ethos of “data wants to be free”. The good outcome of that was that it led me to open source, Linux, BSD and free software. Which did play a part in my now long IT-career. What still stands for me is the underlying ethic of the good natured hacker spirit, where it is about sharing software, sharing knowledge, for giving people the tools to control their own computers and data.
This film is made for entertainment and thus greatly exaggerates everything, but I really liked how it is somewhat based in reality. They do use real terms (occasionally) and quotes from the hacker manifesto are correct, so the filmmakers have done some research. It is not realistic, but it isn’t Swordfish levels of stupidity. What it does capture perfectly, is the whole vibe around hacker culture. Or at least my teenage version of whatever that was. I just enjoyed being in the 90s again in all its corny glory of misguided understanding of the future of the Internet. Sadly, it doesn't stick the landing for the final "hacking"-scene, that is mostly just random computer graphics that make no sense where “hacking” looks like a computer game. Which is a shame, because earlier scenes did show at least some substance. And while the plot is pretty out there in terms of wackiness, I think they could have gotten even crazier with how the rest of the tone of the movie is turned to 11.