Showbits

Three years ago, my then-new employment at Computerworld partnered me with security maven Angela Gunn to produce a series of articles on a topic of mutual interest: geeky films. To make it appropriate for our employer's audience, we dissected the IT in films, she from a security perspective and I from a cinematic one. We wrote three such articles before Angela found employment elsewhere.

Movies are not a core topic for an enterprise IT magazine, so the series was put on the backburner. Fortunately, I recently found a new co-author with whom to collaborate. Bill Brenner of CSO Online, a publication affiliated with Computerworld, and I decide to revive the "Security Goes to the Movies" brand with a few changes. Instead of writing in two voices with one commenting on the other, we tried integrating our commentary into a consistent tone, making for a less jarring reading experience.

Our first outing was to see Iron Man 2 opening night with former Computerworld copyeditor Gene Demaitre, with whom I wrote the similarly cinematic IT piece, "Do Sci-Fi Films Get Advanced Tech Right?". Angela and I had reviewed the original Iron Man, and I was eager to put its successor to the same scrutiny.

The first fruit of this labor is now online:

The summer blockbuster season officially kicked off last Friday with Iron Man 2, an action-packed superhero flick that had the fifth-highest-grossing opening weekend in Hollywood's history. Whether you like the movie or not, at least one thing about it rings true — the plot and the characters provide a striking reflection of today's tech security industry.

Marvel's metallic superhero was first portrayed on the silver screen by Robert Downey Jr. in 2008's Iron Man. In that film, playboy industrialist Tony Stark has a crisis of conscience and brings the manufacture of weapons at his defense company to a halt. To chase down terrorists who have misappropriated his munitions, Stark builds himself an armored, weaponized exoskeleton suit (that can fly!) and becomes Iron Man, making his invention an object of desire to military profiteers.

The sequel is much the same, with more villains, more conniving and more suits. A montage catches us up on what's happened since the previous movie: With no country's military able to match Iron Man's technological superiority, Stark's vigilante action and deterrent policy have brought about a worldwide détente.

Since Stark is the only person who knows what makes Iron Man tick, the world's security rests entirely in his hands. Not surprisingly, the U.S. government wants to reproduce the Iron Man suit for its own militaristic purposes; the debate over private vs. public security forms one of the movie's core conflicts.

You can read the rest of our story at Computerworld.com (or CSO Online, if you prefer). Bill and I pretty happy with it and look forward to working together again.

One passage was rightfully left on the cutting room floor as it had little relevance to security technology, but Showbits readers may find it helpful to know:

There is a scene in Monaco in which Stark acts heroically without his suit, underscoring the fact that superpowers do not a superhero make. But the pendulum swings both ways, as later, we see an armored Stark making an ass of himself, akin to the Iron Man comic book plot "Demon in a Bottle." When he does battle evildoers, the film focuses tightly on the action, which provides less context for the overall scene; had the director pulled back on the camera a bit more, we'd have a better grasp of what's happening when.

Have you seen the film that kicked off the summer blockbuster season? What did you think, from any perspective?

The Super Bowl is about to begin, and for many people, the main attraction is the commercials. Since recent studies show that a three-hour telecast of a football game has only 11 minutes of actual gameplay, this evening will be a greater bounty for advertisement viewers than for sports enthusiasts.

If history is any indication, it'll be an especially good evening for geeks. Computerworld is running a gallery of ten favorite IT commercials from Super Bowls past (and two terrible ones). Yes, Apple's iconic and much-parodied 1984 ad is there — how could it not be? — but I think my favorite of the lot is "Cat Herders", reminiscent of one of the AFI's funniest films of all-time, City Slickers:

Meanwhile, Network Associates' ad came 15 years after that seminal geek film, WarGames:

What are some of your most memorable Super Bowl ads, from either this year or ones past?

Every now and then, something will pop up in an auction that sets geeks drooling. Whether it's an undiscovered Macintosh prototype or a famous movie prop, the chance to own a piece of history can drive us to extremes. But the combined fanaticism of Apple devotees and sci-fi fans will likely have more destructive potential than the Genesis device when this relic shows up on sensors: an early Macintosh Plus, given by Apple Computer Inc. to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry.

Read the rest of this entry at Computerworld.com »

Summer is a popular season not just for blockbuster films, but also for highly technical ones. Last year featured Batman and Iron Man, and their associated gadgetry, while the previous summer marked the 25th anniversary of Tron. My employer's sister publication, PC World, recently capitalized on this seasonal trend with an article blandly titled "Five movies starring computers". Showbits contributor and former co-worker GeneD. and I felt we could could compile our intimate knowledge of the genre into something better than a brief and unthematic list of 20-year-old movies. Since our outlet would be Computerworld — "The voice of IT management" — we chose a correspondingly relevant thesis: how sci-fi movies predict the development of technology, and whether reality is approaching or diverging from that future. We further categorized our topic into six specific kinds of technology: artificial intelligence; genetic engineering; virtual reality; cybersecurity; surveillance; and military.

GeneD. and I each tackled three of the six sections (can you tell which are mine?). We collaborated on the introduction and conclusion, I arranged it all into a cohesive whole, and editors Val and Barbara applied some insightful packaging, including the "At the movies/In reality" contrast. GeneD. and I are both pretty pleased with the final article, "Do sci-fi films get advanced tech right?", feeling it hits upon a variety of significant sci-fi films without requiring a previous knowledge of the more esoteric ones.

Though the article and the new Star Trek movie came out the same day, our piece isn't really about the science of Star Trek. Unfortunately, the flood of such analyses timed to coincide with the film's release made it difficult for our story to stand out. But if those are your druthers, there are plenty of great articles that focus specifically on Gene Roddenberry's pseudoscience, including "4 Star Trek technologies that are almost here (and 3 that are really far off)", as well as Phil Plait's review of the scientific accuracy of the new film.

If you like science fiction and technology, I think you'll enjoy our Computerworld article. What other genres of films (such as James Bond and his gadgets) or science (like space exploration) do you think would make for a similarly interesting read? Point us in the direction of our next article, and we'll see what we can do!

Last night, Steve Wozniak appeared on Dancing with the Stars for his fourth performance. Since last week, I joined the official "Vote for Woz" Facebook group and was surprised to learn its members receive regular missives from the Woz himself. He really is as nice a guy as he seems: one lengthy message was asking his fans' forgiveness for not replying to each individual email he received. Apparently that is a typical practice for him, keeping him up until the wee hours of the morning, even when he needs to get up early for dance practice. He asked his fans to understand how the demands of the show may cause him to temporarily re-prioritize. I think we can afford you that one luxury, Woz.

Woz's last performance earned him and his partner the lowest scores the judges had given in three years — yet the popular vote brought him back for more. Declaring his intent to earn the fan's trust and prove the judges wrong, Woz vowed to work hard and surprise us all this week. Here is his resulting tango:

I thought Woz did a great job, but I was bit disappointed by the choreography: it seemed like his partner was doing all the sexy and challenging moves. As Carrie Ann said last week, has the novelty worn off? If you don't think so, then be sure to vote for Woz. Follow his progress on Twitter for more updates!

We've been watching Steve Wozniak on Dancing with the Stars here on Showbits, giving him more attention than we previously have to any other topic. It can't be helped — the man invented the Apple II computer, which set this blogger on a path that ultimately led to this very site. Having the opportunity to watch the industry's progenitor get fancy on the dance floor is an honor.

After debuting with a mediocre cha-cha, Woz returned last week and performed a more respectable quickstep, despite having a fractured foot. Last night, his third dance was compounded by a pulled hamstring that made an already challenging samba even more arduous. Here are the results of his third and potentially final performance:

I've already applauded Woz for his daring and demeanor, and I think the judges both were unnecessarily harsh and didn't take into account Woz's physical limitations. Nonetheless, based not on the scores but on the routine itself, even I have to admit this could be the end of Woz's dancing career.

But remember: it's all relative. To get this far, Woz has worked harder than most of us could, proving himself a better dancer than anyone I personally know. A regular dancer myself, I was once told: "As long as you're smiling, you're doing it right." I admire anyone who would willingly put himself through the physical and social trials Woz has and still come out grinning.

I blogged yesterday about Woz's Dancing with the Stars debut. Here's round two of his performance!

Could geekdom ask for a better representative?

As I've mentioned before, I don't watch Dancing with the Stars — yet the retrocomputing enthusiast in me has been eagerly awaiting the debut of this season and the star of the show, Steve Wozniak.

In my circle of cloistered friends, Steve "Woz" Wozniak is a household name. He invented the Apple II computer that revolutionized the personal computer industry and which many of us still use to this day. With games like Oregon Trail and accounting software such as VisiCalc, the Apple II put computers in more homes and offices than possibly any other computer.

Three decades later, Woz is getting his mainstream acknowledgement with an appearance on Dancing with the Stars. How brilliant of ABC to recognize that celebrity comes in more shapes and sizes than Hollywood allows! The season debuted last Monday, and Woz's performance and scores are captured below:

Though I agree that the actual choreography and performance may've been somewhat lackluster, I find Carrie Ann Inaba's observation the one worth keying in on: this was something new and fun for Woz, and he took advantage of it. Unlike the actors and athletes that often stock the Stars lineup, Woz's fame is not built on performance. For him to strut his stuff on the dance floor took a lot of work and courage. I'm not sure if that's worthy of the sort of promotion fans are encouraging — for better or worse, dance competitions are usually won by the person with the most talent, not who put the most effort in. But Woz has vowed to keep on dancing, despite a fractured foot, and I think his dedication to something so obviously outside his comfort zone is admirable. Take a look at his training, courtesy MacRumors:

The results of last week's round are to be announced tonight, at which time we'll learn if the show will continue to be Dancing with the Woz!