Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things: "Hollywood movies: 10 years' worth of dumb Internet depictions
The Wall Street Journal's published a roundup of all the clunky howlers in Hollywood movies' portrayal of the Internet:
In 1995's 'The Net,' a software engineer played by Sandra Bullock has online discussions with her buddies on 'Cyber Chat,' a cartoonish chat program. The movie was one of the first to capitalize on privacy and identity fears related to the Internet. Ms. Bullock's character finds herself hunted by the authorities after a terrorist uses his laptop to tamper with everything from her apartment lease to her police record. In one scene, she says, 'Just think about it. Our whole world is sitting there on a computer. It's in the computer. Everything. Your DMV records, your Social Security, your credit cards, your medical history, it's all right there.'
'It was Hollywood's attempt to borrow from the aura that anything Internet had at the time,' said Carl Goodman, deputy director of the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, N.Y. The tension that the movie evokes is hard to appreciate 11 years later, since viewers now know the Internet couldn't cause those catastrophic scenarios, he added. 'Maybe 'The Net' was never any good, but it certainly isn't any good today.' "