TV series 2015-2019.

One of the problems with the hacker lifestyle is that Hollywood never, ever gets it right.

Back in the early Eighties, hackers were supposed to be either in their bedrooms, or solitary apartments, looked like fashion models, and dressed in the finest of downtown fashion, hairstyles and makeup, with no outside interests outside of the Moby HACK. Looking at the actual people behind the Macintosh, or early UNIX, you wonder who didn't get the memo: these men and women tended to be low-maintenance and well-rounded, and loved their music collections, quirky interests, take out/epicurean cuisine, cats and general disdain for anything nongeeky. Not that there weren't people working for AT&T or IBM who lived and dressed as Organization Men/Women, but they weren't as serious about Becoming Real Adults as the Yuppies of the era: scratch an IBM standard suit, and you'd find a Tolkien fiend who could reel off whole episodes of Monty Python.

Now we're in the Black Hoodie era.

What I can't quite figure out is how Elliot (the hero) manages to fit it all in: while it might be possible for him to be living in a tenement apartment in Manhattan on various forms of relief and rent adjustment, and OK, maybe he might fit in a few hours here and there working for The Man, given few other distractions, here he is working full time doing computer security (dressed in full IBM king-drag...don't they have a more casual dress code for the coders?), chasing the Almighty Fix as a junkie, moonlighting with the rebels...

...and he has a dog.

Somehow this, and the junk, rub me the wrong way. Yeah, it's possible that he might have a few illegal appetites (had a few m'self), and he might have something like a free-range gecko (they like roaches as a snack) though the classic is a cat, since all you need to keep them happy is canned food, a clean box, and a couple of stray minutes of play while something downloads. A dog, on the other hand, needs to go walkies, needs at least some floorspace to exercise, and constant attention lest they get bored/lonesome, and decide to amuse themselves somewhere. Add that to the fact that he might be out of the apartment for a good while (Two jobs. Habit.) and you might have a barking problem as well. Keeping a low profile...hmmm...

Then there's the junk. If you're a pothead, you've got no problem as far as not having any, except that you'd like some. If you're a crackhead, you want it after you've had it, but it's not a necessity in between times. Having to keep fixed, whether it's junk or anti-depressants is a major time-waster, as is not being able to work well while high. This is being handwaved away by calling whatever it is that's wrong with him "a form of schizophrenia, he's trying to manage with various drugs". Has anyone writing this ever tried programming a computer? Ever? Have they ever even heard of autism?

OK, it had a few good ideas. The Corporation is the Big Bad. The Rebels are the Usual Suspects with a bit of Inclusiveness. It talked about using a Raspberry Pi as a minicomputer. It had Remy Malik. But if anyone wants to fill this out with a plot and characters, you have my blessing.