“Iron Man” did big-time boffo box office business this weekend, but also showcased some top-notch IT instances.
In the olden days, characters that needed to hack into a computer system had to deal with plenty of pesky coding and important-looking typing and commands. In “Iron Man”, USB technology has made espionage easy: in one scene, the intrepid Pepper Potts simply sticks a “ghost drive” in the USB port and downloads all the secret files she needs for her boss, Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man).
In the same scene, more futuristic technology is showcased when she’s viewing a secret video. It’s in a Middle Eastern tongue, so she simply presses the “Translate” button for an instant decoding of what they’re saying (surprisingly, the translated voice sounds just like the non-translated one).
Now if only we could harness that technology to translate those wacky Japanese music videos that are all over YouTube…
