A 1999 movie tries to predict 2005 technology, fails miserably?
Late '90s movie gets a lot more right than I thought
In 1999, a movie called "Netforce" was released, set in a "future" world of 2005 where "today's most cruel and ruthless criminals use the 'net." Netforce is the "police of the Internet", headed up by Scott Bakula. Interestingly, it's based on a Tom Clancy story, but unfortunately, not one of his better ones.
[Ahead of their time: Nine technologies that came early and 6 premature predictions of tech failure]
Based on the video below (thanks to the BargainBinofOblivion YouTube channel), you'd think that a movie predicting a world six years in the future would get some things right, and in some cases they did - computer crime has moved away from kids playing games into a more profitable venture for criminals. But they just seemed to get a lot of the terminology wrong. See for yourself:
Me, I must have missed out on the "online sex ports" and the "virtual brothels" - unless this turned out to be a prediction of Craigslist and some subreddits I've heard about.
My favorite line, though, comes from Kris Kristofferson, who mutters "I thought the Internet was our future, that it would bring us closer to each other. But I was wrong. All it did was create endless opportunities for perversion, corruption, greed, lust and all of the rest of Seven Deadly Sins."
Now I gotta find out if this movie is on Netflix... (UPDATE: It's not available, sigh)
Read more of Keith Shaw's ITworld.TV blog and follow the latest IT news at ITworld. Follow Keith on Twitter at @shawkeith. For the latest IT news, analysis and how-tos, follow ITworld on Twitter and Facebook.
