I remember The Net as if it was yesterday. It’s a pretty laughable movie now, for sure, but back in 1995 it was an exciting and scary look at the future of the Internet. Chris Sims recently wrote a really funny and insightful retrospective of the movie, called What We Learned About Technology From 1995’s The Net. I especially like this part:

Really, though, the movie is more about how the rise of technology impacts our lives, and our changing ideas and concerns about privacy. Bennett was easily seduced by Devlin because he spied on her describing her ideal man in a chat room, and filled in the details by going through her records. As she says, our entire lives are recorded on computers, from our work to our taste in movies. In 1995, this was a shocking problem that people had to learn to deal with. In 2013, it’s basically how Facebook works.

Information that in 1995 required extensive sleuthing performed by clandestine government operations is now freely available to anyone who knows how to type a name into Google. It reminds me of this video (make sure you watch all the way to the end):