Video: Santa goes high-tech

Santa more like an enterprise than ever before

By Keith Shaw Add a new comment

December 22, 2011, 3:45 PM — With iPads, Facebook, Twitter and Google Earth, today's kids now live in a world where telling them about Santa in a toy workshop at the North Pole seems a bit archaic. Fortunately, the world of TV and movies have it covered - Santa's now just as high-tech as the children he's delivering presents to. As seen in recent specials "Prep and Landing" and the new movie "Arthur Christmas", Santa has an entire paramilitary enterprise at his disposal - utilizing stealth aircraft, paratrooper elves and mission control centers that rival NASA and NORAD (which continues to track Santa, by the way).

In this video, we've compiled a mash-up of some of the different ways TV and movies have portrayed Santa throughout the years, in which he initially used "magic" to explain how he did it, but these days it's all advanced technology.

I forgot to add the "Elf on the Shelf" toy and TV special (it debuted this year), which basically has "scout Elves" who watch your kids and report back to Santa. I'm surprised we don't tell the kids that there's a video camera inside each elf with a direct satellite link back to Santa HQ. Maybe next year.

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.

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Keith Shaw writes the Cool Tools column for Network World, and is the Multimedia Content Editor for IDG Enterprise, responsible for editorial video and audio content creation. Follow him on Twitter @shawkeith.

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