Movies – cs4fn

(You can be the one to tell Angelina Jolie!)

Damsel tied to a tree being rescued by a hunky knight — Painting by Frank Bernard Dicksee, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Lots of people think that Computer Science and IT are strictly for men only. That’s really bizarre given that right from the start women like Grace Hopper and Ada Lovelace played pivotal roles in the development of computers, and women are still at the leading edge today. To be a successful modern IT Pro you have to be a good team player, not to mention good at dealing with clients, which are skills women are generally good at.

‘Geeky male computer scientist’ is of course just a stereotype, like ‘helpless female in need of rescue by male hunk’, ‘scientist as mad eccentric in white coat’, or ‘evil robot wanting to take over the world’.

Where do false stereotypes come from? Films play a part in the way their (usually male, non-scientist) directors decide to represent characters.

Students on a ‘Gender in Computer Science’ course at Siena College in the US watched lots of films with Computer Science plots from as far back as 1928 to see how the way women, computers and computer scientists are portrayed has changed over time. Here are their views on some of those films.

Do you agree – when you are done read what the real IT Pros think of their jobs…and remember stereotypes are fiction, careers are what you make of them and real robots are (usually) nice!

1928: Metropolis

In a city of the future the ruling class live lavishly while the workers live poorly in the underworld. An evil scientist substitutes a robot for a female worker activist. It purposely starts a riot as an excuse so reprisals can be taken. All hell breaks loose until the male hero comes to the rescue…

X Computers: Evil

X Women as IT Pros: Helpless

X Computer Scientists: Evil

“Women are more or less portrayed as helpless … The computer scientist … as evil”

1956: Forbidden Planet

An all-male crew travel to Altair-4 to discover the fate of the colony there. They discover all that is left is scientist Dr Morbius, his beautiful daughter Altaira and a servant robot called Robby, programmed to be unable to harm humans. But what have Morbius’ machines and experiments to do with the colony’s fate?

✓ Computers: Helpful & Harmless

X Women as IT Pros: love interest

X Computer Scientists: Evil

“Altaira plays a typical woman’s role…helpless…unintelligent …Barbie-like”

1971: THX 1138

In an Orwellian future, an android controlled police state where everyone is made to take drugs that suppress emotion. LUH 3417 and THX 1138 stop taking their drugs, fall in love and try to escape…

X Computers: Evil Police

X Women as IT Pros: Few

X Computer Scientists: Heartless

“The computer scientists are depicted as boring, heartless and easily confused”

1982: Blade Runner

In the industrial wastelands of a future Los Angeles, large companies have all the power. Robotic ‘Replicants’ are almost indistinguishable from humans but have incredible strength and no emotions. Deckard (Harrison Ford) must find and destroy a group of Replicants that have developed emotions and so threaten humanity as they rebel against being ‘slaves’.

X Computers: Evil

X Women as IT Pros: None

X Computer Scientists: Caused the problem

“A woman plays the minor role of a replicant…but is portrayed as a topless dancer”

1986: Short Circuit

A comedy adventure about a robot that comes ‘alive’ after a power surge in a lightening storm. The robot, called ‘Number 5’ built for use by the US military and tries to escape its creators as it doesn’t want to ‘die’. It is helped by Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy) who realises, that like the animals she loves, it is sentient and helps it escape from the scientists of company Nova that built it.

✓ Computers: Nice

X Women as IT Pros: None

X Computer Scientists: Thick-headed

“The male computer scientists are often thick-headed… introverted…no life skills…There were no female computer scientists”

1995: Hackers

A group of genius teenage hackers become the target of the FBI after they unknowingly tap into a high-tech embezzling scheme that could cause a horrific environmental disaster. Dade Murphy and Kate Libby (Angelina Jolie) square off in a battle of the sexes and computer skills.

X Computers: Used illegally

✓ Women as IT Pros: Elite…but illegal

X Computer Scientists: Criminals

“Angelina plays a hard hitting, elite hacker who is better than everyone in her group except Dane who is her equal”

So it wasn’t great. Robots were killers, scientists evil. Computer scientist’s were introverted and thickheaded. Women were either sexbots or helpless love interest to be rescued by the hunky male star. 1995’s film Hackers was about as good as it got. At last a woman had expert computing skills. It’s hardly surprising some girls were led to believe computing isn’t for them with a century-long “conspiracy” aiming to convince them their role in life is to be helpless.

As our area on women in computing shows the truth is far more interesting. Women have always played a big part in the development of modern technology. So have things improved in films in the 21st century? There are more films with strong action-heroine stars now, though until very recently few films passed the Bechdel test: do two women ever talk together about anything other than a man? So can we at least find any 21st century films with realistic main character roles for women as computer experts? Here goes…

1999-2003: Matrix Trilogy

Hero Neo discovers reality isn’t what it seems. It is all a virtual reality. Trinity is there to be his romantic interest – she’s been told by the Oracle that she will fall in love with the “One” (that’s him). It’s not looking good. In film 2 Neo has to save her. Oh dear. At least she is supposed to be a super-hacker famous for cracking an uncrackable database. Oh well.

X Computers: Enslaving humanity

✓ Women as IT Pros: Elite…but illegal (there to be saved)

✓ Computer Scientists: The resistance

2009: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

This is the story of super-hacker Lisbeth Salander. Both emotionally and sexually abused as a child she looks after herself, and that includes teaching herself to be an expert with computers. She uses her immense skills to get what she wants. She is cool and clever and absolutely not willing to let the men treat her as a victim. Wonderful.

X Computers: used for hacking

✓ Women as IT Pros: Elite…but illegal look after themselves)

X Computer Scientists: hackers

2014: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

This film is all about a male hunk, so it’s not looking good, but then early on we see Agent Natasha Romanoff, (also known as superheroine the Black Widow). She is the brains to Captain America’s brawn and from the start she is clearly the expert with computers. While Captain America beats people up, her mission is to collect data. And she even gets her own film series…eventually!

X Computers: used for hacking

✓ Women as IT Pros: Elite…superheroes

X Computer Scientists: hackers

2015: Star Wars: Episode VII – the Force Awakens

Rey is a scavenger with engineering skills. She is very smart, and can look after herself without expecting men to save her. She’s not a hacker! Instead, she creates and mends things. She repurposes parts she finds on wrecked spaceships to sell to survive. She learnt her engineering skills tinkering in old ships and fixes the Millennium Falcon’s electro-mechanical problems. She is even the main character of the whole film!

✓ Computers: make the universe work

✓ Women as IT Pros: Elite, scavenges and fixes things

✓ Computer Scientists: at least some build and fix things

There are plenty of moronic films, made by men who can’t portray women in remotely realistic ways, but at least things are a bit better than they were last century. The women are already here in the real world. They are slowly getting there in the movies. Let’s just hope the trend speeds up, and we have more female leads who create things, like the real female computer scientists.

by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London

[Spoiler Alert]

If you are so power hungry you can’t stand the idea of any opposition; if you want to make a grab for total power, so decide to crush everyone in your way, then you might want to think about the security of your power supply first. Luckily, all would-be dictators who crush everyone who gets in their way as they march towards total domination of the galaxy, tend to be very naive about cyber-security.

Take Ronan the Accuser in the original Guardian of the Galaxy film. He’s a villain with a religious streak, whose belief that strength is virtue and weakness is sin leads to his totally corrupted morality. To cut to the guts of the story he manages to get the “Infinity Stone” that gives unimaginable power to its owner. With it he can destroy anyone who gets in his way so sets out to do so.

Luckily for the Galaxy, good-guy Peter Quill, or Star-Lord as he wants to be known, and his fellow Guardians have a plan. More to the point they have Gamora. She is an assassin originally sent to kill Quill, but who changes sides early on. She is an insider who knows how Ronan’s security system works, and it has a flaw: its big, heavy security doors into his control room.

Security Lesson 1. It should still be secure even when the other side know everything about how it works. If your security relies on no one knowing, its almost certainly bad security!

Once inside his ship, to get to Ronan the Guardians will need to get through those big heavy security doors. Now once upon a time big, heavy doors were locked and barred with big, heavy bolts. Even in Roman times you needed a battering ram to get in to a besieged city if they had shut the doors before you got there. Nowadays, how ever big and heavy the door, you may just need some cyber skills to get in if the person designing it didn’t think it through.

Electromagnetic locks are used all over the place and they give some big advantages, such as the fact that they mean you can program who is and isn’t allowed entry. Want to keep someone out – you can just cancel their keycard in the system. They are held locked by electromagnets: magnets that are switched on and off using an electric current. That means computers can control them. As the designer of an electromagnetic lock you have a choice, though. You can make them either “fail safe” or “fail secure”. With a fail safe lock, when the power goes, the doors automatically unlock. With fail secure, instead they lock. Its just a matter of whether the magnet is holding the door open or closed. Which you choose when designing the lock depends on your priorities.

Fail safe is a good idea, for example, if you want people to be able to escape in an emergency. If a fire cuts the electricity you want everyone to still be able to get out, not be locked in with no chance of escape. Fail secure on the other hand is good if you don’t want thieves to be able to get in just by cutting the power. The magnets hold the bolts open, so when the power goes, the spring shut.

Security Lesson 2. If you want the important things to stay secure, you need a fail secure system.

This is Ronan’s problem. Zamora knows that if you cut the power supply then the doors preventing attackers getting to him just open! He needed a fail secure door, but instead had a fail safe one installed. On such small things are galaxies won and lost! All Zamora has to do is cut the power and they can get to him. This of course leads to the next flaw in his security system. It wouldn’t have mattered if the power supply was on the secure side of that door, but it wasn’t. Ronan locks himself in and Zamora can cut the power from the outside … Dhurr!

There is one last thing that could have saved Ronan. It needed an uninterruptible power supply.

Security Lesson 3. If your system is reliant on the power supply, whether a door, your data, your control system or your life-support system, then it should keep going even if the power is switched off.

After all, what if the space ships cleaners (you never see them but they must be there somewhere!) unplug the door lock by mistake just because they need somewhere to plug in the hoover.

The solution is simple: use an “uninterruptible power supply”. They are just very fast electricity storage systems that immediately and automatically take over if the main power cuts out. The biggest on Earth keeps the power going for a whole city in Alaska (you do not want to lose the power running your heating mid-winter if you live in Alaska!). Had Ronan’s doors had a similar system, the doors wouldn’t have just opened as the power would not have been cut off.It’s always the small details that matter in cyber security (and in successfully destroying your enemies and so ruling the universe). As with all computational thinking, you have to think about everything in advance. If you don’t look after your power supply, then you may well lose all your power over the galaxy too (and your life)!