We’ve been hearing buzz for quite some time now that Rovio will make an Angry Birds movie. We also recently learned that Zynga may also be making a film based on FarmVille, the somewhat-fizzling Facebook game. Perhaps the minds at Rovio and Zynga are hoping for the same box office success as 2010’s wildly successful The Social Network (you know, the Facebook movie).
As readers of PCMag, your taste in movies is probably pretty similar to ours. Though you may end up waiting for FarmVille to come out on video before you see it, we’re guessing most of you have seen the usual geek flicks: Star Wars (all of them), Star Trek (also all of them), Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Tron, and even the newer ones like The Matrix, Iron Man, Avatar, and Minority Report. These great films truly appeal to our inner-nerds, but unfortunately, none of them are actually based on technology that we actually use in our daily lives.
However, there are plenty of movies based on real-life technology that should not go overlooked by Sci-Fi enthusiasts. If you have any inclination to learn about of the evolution of technology, specifically computers, tune in to these nine movies. They may answer some questions about how we graduated from using mammoth computers like the Altair 8800 to typing on today’s ultraportables. There are films about the start of major tech companies, such as Microsoft and Apple, and others about the venture capitalists that funded some of today’s tech behemoths. We found movies documenting the creation of Linux and the free software movement, movies crowdsourced by YouTube users, and we even threw the highest-grossing movie ever to be adapted from a video game into the mix.
Take a break from movies about aliens and teleportation and check out nine films based on real-world technology.