Prompt 10: Recognizing Truth

By Xavier Reinders

As with many fields and focuses Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) is subject to misconceptions and misrepresentations in popular media. Being as broad as it is CSE runs into a large amount of these problems, from over generalization, to sensationalizing, and straight up stereotyping. In this particular post I can not cover every problem out there or even name every piece that contains a problem like this, so for right now I am going to use a single example to point out some flaws that are common with the representation of the CSE field. To do so I am going to analyze the popular TV show "Mr. Robot" and highlight how it gets some things right and others wrong.

First things first, sensationalizing, or the act of presenting something in a way that provokes interest in the public while sacrificing accuracy. Does Mr. Robot do it right or wrong?  Right actually, while it is a little grandiose, it stays within the general logic limits of CSE and the exaggeration only comes in the theatrics and not the method.

So a determined hacker sits at his computer and pounds on the keys millions of lines a minute to retrieve one single line of information to hand off to the super spy who goes off to save the world right? Wrong, as a human being you are already behind in the CSE world, you are slower and less educated on the system than the system itself. So what does a real hacker do? They write a program, make a computer to outsmart the other computer. Basically a professional hacker, which is a thing, creates a program that does all the computation for them and just tells it which computing to do. Mr. Robot shows this well as you do not see him sitting down at his computer to race the system but rather he runs programs to beat the system.

Next, lets look at representation, Mr. Robot in the show is a cooperation hating, anti-social, save the world vigilante working for a hacker group trying to bring down the cooperations that run the world.  Although I'm sure some in the CSE field are like this, just like there are probably some in every profession,  it is not a large or incredibly pronounced group.  Most people in CSE work for some company or another, not an underground hacker cell trying the Fight Club Approach™, and are generally law abiding citizens who work IT, system management or are programmers. However professional hackers are a thing as I said above and Mr. Robot actually works as a legal one in the show, their job is to try and break a companies security so the company can plug any holes.

Like with the hate the world sentiment above there are a fair few in CSE that are anti-social but most are pretty social people and some are even famous, Zuckerberg and Gates are good examples. Also as a general rule CSE majors do not get to be alone while they work, a majority will work in groups or project teams and because of their broad reach will have to interact with all parts of a company or outside customers.  So while we may not be the most social group we also do not spend all our time in a dark hoodie with only our computer screens to light the way and general hatred for the world to fuel us.