Filed under: Computers, Playroom
You can always count on Hollywood to warp real-life technology into something wholly unrecognizable. Whether it’s virtual reality or social networking, we can be sure that, once translated to the big screen, representations will become exploitative or far-fetched. As for such movies that deal with the Internet, we’ll classify them as ‘Netsploitation’ films. The Netsploitation genre began in the ’80s with the growth of personal computer usage and the emergence of hacking, but before the existence of the Internet as we know it. By the mid ’90s, however, the Net had reached that perfect equilibrium of being an emerging, relatively misunderstood technology that was nevertheless publicly accessible. A boom of Netsploitation films followed. As the ’90s marched on, the Internet slowly became an inextricable part of daily life, and films’ treatment of the Net drifted into more mundane realms. However, after 9/11, there arose a wave of movies that preyed on fears of cyber-terrorism and unease about our reliance on the Web. Here’s our rundown of the best — and worst — Netsploitation films of the past three decades.
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Netsploitation: The Internet in Film originally appeared on Switched on Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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