The 2000’s saw a smart-phone in every pocket and our intentions turned to living out our digital on the internet. In film, we saw law love bloom online in Must Love Dogs but we also saw the dark side of web-based relationships with the hit documentary Catfish. As social media became a defining part of the era, The Social Network would tell the story of the creation of the then-dominant social media platform, Facebook.

Computers were now a common facet in our lives and Hollywood was taking notice. TRON: Legacy took us back to the grid and provided a nice visual contrast that represented how far technology had come in the short time since the original movie released in 1982. Perhaps even more telling was that technology was no longer strictly for teens and adults. Movies began aiming at kids, trying to cash in on their familiarity with smart phones, The Emoji Movie and the internet Ralph Breaks The Internet.

As technology became more and more commonplace in our daily lives, the same could be said for our entertainment. The problem came in that most movies and tv shows failed to represent simple things such as texting on a way that felt authentic, much less a much more complex subject such as hacking. The Italian Job simply avoided showing any real code on screen. In stark contrast, the biographical thriller Snowden showed almost too much on screen, in a way that was both unrealistic and confusing. Hackers would finally get their on screen vindication in the TV series Mr. Robot, which utilized on set hackers to fact check the actions and code of the characters on screen, resulting in the most accurate representation of hackers on screen so far.