电影里的科技老板：从英雄到反派

225 million, 17 million.

Don't tell me yet whether the films are good or not, look at these two numbers first.

Dollars.

Right, dollars, worldwide box office.

The first one is The Social Network from 2010,

Mm.

The second one is its sequel that came out this October, the figure so far.

Mm, I know what you're going to say.

What I'm going to say is, that change you talk about, most people, most people never even went into a cinema.

The change I mean isn't one film.

Look back ten-odd years, in 2014 there was The Imitation Game,

Turing.

Right, the man who helped crack the Germans' codes in the Second World War.

The film made him a hero, it did well at the box office, and it won an Oscar.

Mm, he was a scientist, not a boss.

Yes, but back then, when films showed people in technology, they showed how they changed the world.

The Social Network was also about how Zuckerberg built Facebook from the start,

Mm.

By the sequel, the main character has become a woman who used to work at Facebook,

Oh.

The one who made the company's internal files public.

The Zuckerberg in the film is cold.

He's become the villain.

At least, at least he's not a hero any more.

And the sequel was written by the same man who wrote the first one, and this time he's directing it himself.

Mm.

And that's only one film.

There's a documentary about Musk, about four hours long, which opened in American cinemas on 16 October.

The same day there was another documentary, about that woman who started a blood-testing company and later went to prison for fraud,

Oh, I know that one.

Right, the film-makers followed her the whole time, up to the few weeks before she went to prison.

It got very good reviews.

Mm, there are more films, I can see that.

But, but who goes to see them?

What do you think?

People who already don't like these companies,

Mm.

They buy a ticket to hear again what they already believed.

When they come out, their minds haven't changed at all.

Mm, you're right about that.

The people sitting in the cinema mostly didn't like them to begin with.

Right.

But a film doesn't only live in the cinema.

In a few years, even people who never saw it will roughly know what the Zuckerberg in that film is like.

Mm, first someone has to remember the film.

Think about Turing.

My picture of him, most of it, most of it came from that film.

Mm, I don't deny that, me too.

Films can decide how people remember a person.

Right, that's what I mean.

But remembering a person and using his things are two different things.

After you say Facebook is bad, you still open it in the evening.

I rarely open it.

You know what I mean.

Fine.

One more thing,

Mm.

Where does the money for making films come from?

You're going to talk about the Altman one.

Right.

A film about Altman, about the time at the end of 2023 when he was suddenly pushed out of OpenAI.

Amazon's film company was making it, and this June, Amazon didn't want it any more,

Mm.

Not long after Amazon agreed to invest $50 billion in OpenAI.

The big film companies are either owned by technology companies or depend on technology companies' money.

What gets filmed, what doesn't,

Money decides.

That's how I see it.

Amazon's own explanation is that the film would be better off released by another company.

And it will still come out in the end, a smaller company took it over and says it will show it this year.

A small company, the box office will only be smaller.

Small box office, but it still gets said.

Mm.

When I got up this morning, the first thing I did was look at my phone.

Right, me too.

So however cold the bosses in the films are,

Mm.

People still use their things every day.

Using them doesn't mean trusting them.

What they want is for you to use them.