Watching TV shows often requires the suspension of disbelief — that is, a willingness to press pause on one’s critical faculties in order to believe the unbelievable. Realism often must besecondary to story, in other words. This very often is necessary when computers are used to advance plot lines, when programmers and hackers alike can bang away on their keyboards and produce tremendous results in seconds.
One need look no further than such shows as The Blacklist orScorpion, which feature keyboard cowboys who can hack into systems at the drop of a hat, hook into GPS systems, or employ some other technobabble gimmick to track the badguyand save the day. This use of computers has been commonplace as long as computers have been around.
“The patterns are not just with recent tech –20 years ago, MacGyver was doingvery unlikely tech things, as did the A-Team and so many others –just with different tech,” said Jim Purtilo, associate professor ofcomputer science at the University of Maryland.
“A brief suspension of disbelief has helped storytellers since wellbefore Shakespeare,” he told TechNewsWorld.
Impossible TV
What can be done with a computer on some TV shows requires more than a basic suspension of disbelief. In some cases, what fictional computer whizzes can accomplish borders on the miraculous.
With many TV shows, it’s likely that accuracy isn’t the writers’ primaryconcern, said Jay Rouman, a computer network engineer who has worked with computers since the late 1970s.
“I stopped watching Scorpion after they had a convertible chase acommercial jet down the runway with an Ethernet cable dropped out of the jet,” Rouman told TechNewsWorld.
Beyond the fact that the takeoff speed of the jet could be well over 200 mph, the fact that the cable was even so readily available could be something that occurs only in the imagination of a TV show writer.
“It just happened to be on board and plugged into the master computer,” recalled Rouman. “I’ve been in data centers where couldn’t find an Ethernet cable that would give you Internet connectivity!”
Brave New World
A new wave of TV shows have been creating more realistic situations, ditching the meaningless technobabble for more accurate computer jargon. Instead of murky plot devices, actual programming is displayed.
TV shows such as AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire and HBO’s Silicon Valleyfocus on the exploits of computer programmers — with the formerhighlighting the first tech boom of the 1980s and the latter takingplace in the modern day.
The shows are very different in tone. Halt and Catch Fire is a workplace drama with soapy elements, while Silicon Valley, which was created by Beavis and Butt-Head creator Mike Judge, follows the more traditional comedy formula.
Yet computer programming is key in both shows. Each is full of realistic jargon, and close observers will see actual code on the screens, which certainly has made the showsappealing to those in the world of tech.
“The culture around technology is also magnificently depicted inSilicon Valley,” added Purtilo.
“Sure it is stylized, just as any cartoonist must emphasize asubject’s few key features in order to tell a story — but they get itright,” he explained.
“Maybe we don’t know specifics of Pied Piper’sfabulous compression algorithm, but I’ve watched a room full of geeksself-segregate around ‘tabs versus eight spaces’ or ‘vim versus emacs’questions,” Purtilo observed. “It’s hilarious because that is what we do, and accuratedetails just help us project ourselves into those situations morereadily.”
Consulting With Programmers
Getting those details right takes going to the source, and in the case of Silicon Valley, it meant calling in actual programmers.
“We have a large staff of consultants who help us try not to look like idiots,” said Dan O’Keefe, co-executive producer and writer for Silicon Valley.
“It’s important to us not just to tell well-crafted, funny stories about people who live in this space, but to get as many of the details as right as we can,” he told TechNewsWorld. “Or maybe we’re just all severely OCD.”
A bigger challenge for Silicon Valley was that ithad to make the geek-speak not only believable, but also relatable.
“In a generic office show, all the comic tropes have been mined, fromThe Office going back to Dick van Dyke and further still,” notedO’Keefe.
“The tech space, being newer, has newer protocols and rituals and such-like,” he pointed out. “So it’s necessary for us to be more realistic not just to be believable, but to be funny in the specificway we intend.”
Not a Documentary
For a period piece recalling a time that many viewers may remember, Halt and Catch Fire does a decent job of getting the tech right — especially as it presents the faux history of companies that didn’t actually exist.
In terms of the technology it presents, “the show is very accurate,” said engineer Rouman.
Even when the technology shown is questionable — such as how thefictional gaming company was able to purchase an IBM when thosesystems typically were leased, it “mostly comes down to plot pointsand what would be most logical,” Rouman pointed out.
“Having run a dial-in service, I think they skipped over a lot, butit’s a TV show, not a tutorial on running dial-in modems,” hesaid. “Like Star Trek, the show creators are wise not to belaborthe technical details, because most people don’t care.”
If there is a complaint with this particular series, it is in the titlesuggested Rouman.
“HFC came from a joke in the old ‘fortune’ program that is stillavailable on modern Linux and FreeBSD systems, where it prints a’fortune’ or some random witty saying as you log on,” he explained. “The show’s producers came up with some line about how it was an instruction to the CPU that would cause it to loop forever and it was a real instruction. I have never heard of such a thing.”
Hack Attack
Anther side of programming on TV shows is hacking. Many have relied on keeping the actual “how it is done” so basic that it just “is” — no need for any problematic details. Noproducer wants to be accused of providing a how-to guide, but USANetwork’s Mr. Robot does attempt to make the on-screen exploits seem abit more genuine.
“I can’t speak to the techniques used to break into systems because I don’t do that, but their tools are correct,” said Rouman.
“The actual hacking stuff they got right — sometimes incredibly so,” headded. “The stuff that they type makes complete sense; ‘ifconfigwlan0up’ does indeed bring up a wireless interface. Nobody gets this stuffright.”
Although it’s not a documentary on hacking, some programmers actually might learn a thing or two.
“I am actually embarrassed to admit that after more than 25 years usingUnix-like systems, I saw a very common command had a default I didn’tknow about,” admitted Rouman. “I tried it and it worked.”
Scripted Hacking
Another consideration is that TV shows need to be entertaining, so the plot must supersede how the characters conduct any hacking or programming, and at times serious pros may spot what they consider serious mistakes.
“Mr. Robot is laughable, really, because it isn’t so much a show abouthackers, but about script kids,” suggested Adriel T. Desautels, CEO of penetration testing company Netragard.
The characters on Mr. Robot might seem like hackers, even to many inthe tech world, but instead of reverse-engineering software, they rely on third-party hacking tools to do their deeds.
“It is not really the hacking world,” Desautels told TechNewsWorld.
Yet “this is the first time that a TV show has even touched upon thispart of the computer world,” he added.
“More importantly, it is hardto translate that into an action-packed storyline,” Desautels acknowledged. “It would be reallyboring to have the hacker playing with bits and bytes to reverse-engineer the code, especially if you didn’t know what they were doing!”
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You’re right. . .
"The stuff that they type makes complete sense; ‘ifconfigwlan0 up’ does indeed bring up a wireless interface. Nobody gets this stuff right."
$ ifconfigwlan0 up
ifconfigwlan0: command not found
$
Can anyone hear you scream if a space is missing;-)