I’d understand if you don’t get the reference, but I cannot forgive you for not getting the reference. Anyone who works in technology owes it to themselves to be educated on exactly what popular culture thinks of us at any given moment. In 1995, there was no iPhone and no blogosphere. No Facebook and no Netflix. The internet was scary and the digitization of information and identity was even scarier. Orwell’s 1984 might well have been happening, even if most of the general public wouldn’t put it that way. The computer was hardly commonplace and the people who programmed and operated them were both rare and misunderstood. The possibilities for abuse of these poorly comprehended systems of information were terrible and magnificent to consider. The Net was a pop-culture response to this very thing.

Sandra Bullock plays reclusive, sociopathic and unthreateningly beautiful computer programmer Angela Bennett, talented and capable, though underexposed to general civilization. While working a project, Angela discovers a terrifying secret of the internet: it is nearly universally compromosied by those ostensibly securing it. In an epic whirlwind, her identity is wrested from her control, subverted, modified and even outright stolen while she tries everything to expose the terrible truth of the computer age: things on computer screens are not always trustworthy and the dangers of an increasingly digital presence at the expense of a corporeal one could be significant.

Movies like this, Sneakers, Hackers, Eagle Eye, Enemy of the State, they all echo the general feeling of the Zeitgeist: we don’t understand these things we rely on and we’re secretly afraid even as we passively allow our dependence to become complete.

We are the keepers of that information terror, the accolytes of the secret fire of technology. We know where their Instagram photos are, we know why their smartphone won’t send email and we know where they keep their porn stash. We ARE the keyboard cowboys.

That’s how I think of it, most days. Most days I like being a wizard.