GO-JEK Movie List: 5 Tech-Related Film Recommendations
Films can be powerful media to tell a story. It is also the best way to convey a strong message that can be enjoyed by everyone. Films can also give you clear explanation about things you haven’t even heard before and they can also act as a medium to learn new knowledge.
Advanced technology, like computer science sometimes can be confusing for us, the non-tech people. And people who are so passionate about computers sometimes come across as nerdy. However, in films, the directors are so good in capturing computer geeks to look very cool.
I asked GO-JEK’s tech team their favorite movies about technology, computer or programming that has inspired them to pursue their careers. Here are the top five movies that I’ve curated, and I hope it can give you some inspirations after watching them!
The Matrix (1999)
The story: The Matrix is the film that makes the Wachowskis became popular to the whole world. Their visions in bringing an advance science idea and delivered it in a simple way so regular people can understand, made a lot of viewers fall in love with this movie. Starring the Hollywood hottie, Keanu Reeves as Neo, he brought us to his journey in a dystopian future.
In this world, reality that most humans perceive, turns out to be a simulated reality called ‘The Matrix’. This reality is created by machines, and it is there to conquer the human population. The film was successful in its time as the Wachowskis popularized the visual effect called ‘the bullet time’ where Neo tried to dodge bullets that were shot by his enemy.
The Influence: The Matrix is the first film that talked about living a life in a simulation. This idea’s execution is beyond its era. The Wachowskis were among the filmmakers who pioneered using complicated visual effects that needed high technology computers to bring their vision to life. The film showed the characters gained super user access to the code of virtual reality as they attempted to free the world from the clutches of the machines. Oh wow, while we’re in the subject of machines taking over our world and become omnipotent, do you really think it can happen in the future? I always think they could. Some thoughts on this?
Recommended by Satyajeet Kanetkar (Product Engineer), Gaurav Singh (Product Engineer), and Giovanni Sakti (System Engineer)
The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz (2014)
The Story: The biographical documentary film about Aaron Swartz, the founder of the beloved website Reddit, is rated quite high by IMDb users with an average score of 8.1/10 points. Directed by Brian Knappenberger, an award-winning documentary filmmaker, this film portrays the life of Swartz as a programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist (or hacktivist). Film critics raved about this documentary. John DeFore from The Hollywood Reporter said the film is an “excellent newbie-friendly account of a story that rocked the Web’s cognoscenti.” The film is narrated by Swartz’s close family and friends.
The Influence: Our tech team loves it because Aaron Swartz was involved in the early stage of Creative Commons development. The concept of Open Source and public dissemination of information was championed by the hacktivist. If the Internet has seen its glory days as a gateway to information, it is because of him. In this film, we can see that Swartz was trying his best to make the world a better place. He never cared about money or fame, he only wanted the internet to become a place where everyone has the right to speak.
Nikola Grozdanovic from Indiewire wrote in his review that this movie will ‘make you feel privileged to have heard such a voice as his, without ever forgetting the injustice of having it silenced prematurely.’ Swartz, the hacktivist, has proven to the world that everybody can contribute to the world by saying what they think is right out loud.
Recommended by Satyarth Sampath (Platform Team Member)
Antitrust (2001)
The Story: Directed by Peter Howitt, Antitrust is a thriller film about two young idealistic programmers who work at a large company called NURV. At first, the protagonist, Milo was happy with his job since he was offered a big fat paycheck to work at the company. Then as the plot thickens, Milo began to find out that the company steals code from programmers all over the world and then ended up killing them. Find out how Milo stops the evil plan of NURV by watching the movie!
The Influence: A lot of people, especially the non-technical ones, probably think that programming is boring and geeky. Koko Lingga, Backend Engineer of GO-PAY used to think so, until he watched this movie. He thinks that it was really fun to watch the protagonist duo, Milo and Teddy, typing codes, solving algorithmic problems like they are going to defuse bombs! Techie jargons were sometimes used casually in their daily conversations which make them look super cool. I personally think that Koko really wants to hang out with them if this duo were real life people.
Koko’s favorite scene is the one where they were fighting over and explaining IP address concept to a retired police officer. Every time Koko feels like he’s not keen to work, he always imagines Milo and Teddy when they did pair programming. He thinks that the movie brings out a good impact to society and makes us want to live better with technology which in line with GO-JEK’s spirit to make social impact through our app. Now, I bet you’re intrigued to watch it since the film is presented in a very fun and nerdy way.
Recommended by Koko Lingga (Backend Engineer of GO-PAY)
Spare Parts (2015)
The Story: Based on true story that has been published in Wired Magazine entitled ‘La Vida Robot’ by Joshua David. The film tells a story about a group of students from a Latino majority high school who won first place in Marine Underwater Robotics Competition. The event was sponsored by NASA and the United States of Armed Force and was intimidating since they were up against the M.I.T robotic team. Oscar Vazquez, the protagonist, is forbidden to join since he’s an undocumented immigrant. However, he found his way around to join the competition and the good parts of the movie started from there. Crying is mandatory when you watch this movie, since it’s totally a heartfelt kind of movie.
The Influence: It’s a classic underdog story when an unpopular institution competed against the mighty MIT and actually won! What made our tech team impressed is because this story happened in real life. The inspiring part of this movie is although Vazquez’s team has limitation on materials, budget and experience, nevertheless, they keep thriving and work their way around to build robot from the things used in daily life, such as tampons. The way they did it is so logically good and creative and really makes you think whether or not you have been giving your 100 percent effort in everything you do.
Recommended by Sanchit Juneja (Product Manager) and Bergas Bimo Branarto (Software Engineer)
Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999)
The Story: The film depicts a rivalry between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates on the development of personal computer. Based on the book by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine titled Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer, the film portrays the struggles of these two inventors during their university years and the founding of their companies.
The Influence: For our tech team, this film becomes inspiring since it tells a different side of the trifecta inventors in Silicon Valley: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and how they brought revolution to the world. Although the story is not merely about software, it captures the spirit of hard work, ingenuity and how those great inventors can bring a revolution in technology and make our lives much simpler. Also, there are a lot of nerdy stuff going on in this movie which our teach team loves since it cemented their loves for computers and technology back then.
Recommended by Shani Hadiyanto (BI/Growth Dev)
Honorable Mentions: There are also two inspiring movies that our tech team recommended, Office Space and Revolution OS.
