The World Inside Your Computer

TRON envisioned a virtual world stored inside a computer, where real-world programmers (“Users” as the film calls them) have digital analogues called Programs. Hero Kevin Flynn therefore has a glowing, innocent version of himself called Clu, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner) has a digital twin called Tron, while Dillinger has an equally evil analogue called Sark. In many ways, TRON served as an excitable advertisement for a world of mass computing that, at the time, was just around the corner.

Hacking

The 1980’s introduced us to a new form of hero: the cool geek with a computer. In the case of David Lightman from War Games and Ferris Bueller from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, America got its first taste of the ease of living that owning a computer could bring into the home. Embodying the mantra “work smarter, not harder,” these two dorks hacked their way out of their responsibilities and into our hearts.

Artificial Intelligence

With the advent of technology, humans did what we always tend to do when we love something, we humanized it. The concept of sentient technology was nothing new in the 80’s, that idea is almost as old as the genre of sci-fi itself. But, The Terminator was one, if not the most bleak pictures of a world dealing with the impact of a sentient AI that we have ever seen. Even nearly 40 years later, The Terminator serves as a cautionary tale that even brilliant minds such as Stephen Hawking , Bill Gates and Elon Musk have urged humanity not to overlook it.