I, like everyone else in the universe, was listening to “Billie Jean” the other day, when I realized…this song could not be written now. Nowadays, you could just take a quickie DNA test and determine conclusively that the kid is indeed not your son.
Can anyone think of any other examples of works of art or literature in which the plot is rendered completely pointless because of today’s technology?
Movies ruined by cellphones: World of Wonderment: Movies Ruined by Cell Phones
This sort of thing happens in science fiction a lot. One of Larry Niven’s first short stories was set on the permanently-dark face of Mercury which always faces away from the Sun, and between the story being accepted and it going to print, it was discovered that Mercury’s rotation isn’t actually directly tidally locked (it’s instead a “harmonic lock”, with its rotation and orbit in a 2:3 resonance). Niven shamefacedly wrote the publisher to say that unfortunately the story would have to be pulled, but the publisher wrote back to say that it didn’t matter, it was still a good story, and ran it.
Jim Croce’s “Operator”. Nowadays you just use the internet to help you track down somebody whose number you’ve lost.
It’s so pathetic now because in every movie to create suspense you have to have somebody pinned down and drop their cellphone out of reach. OH MY GOD!!! How will they get out of their precarious pickle?!
I doubt Andy Dufresne’s ID theft and clean out bank accounts plan would work all that well these days.
Any story with a legitimate Nigerian business is right out.
Even in 1978 Superman couldn’t find a phone BOOTH.
My friend and I were discussing this very fact, and he said he’d seen some spoof movie where the protagonist had taken cover and done the old drop the cellphone down the sewer bit, with all the nailbiting that ensues - and the camera pulls back to reveal they’d taken cover on the open side of a phone booth.
I didn’t catch the name of the movie, but I should ask him - it sounds like a lot smarter gag than the current crop of Wayans’ certified Scary/Date/Teen/Dance Movies out there.
From the Beatles:
“When I call you up, your line’s engaged…”
When’s the last time you got a busy signal?
I agree the cell phone has killed the thrill of mysteries in books. The author has to figure out a reason why the person drops a cell, forgets to charge it, or leave their personal GPS somewhere. I mean this is the 11th book in the series and she’s STILL forgetting to charge her cell phone
Actually most “phone songs,” seem out of place now. You know how you have to wait at home, hoping the phone will ring. Well now you don’t.
Led Zepplin’s “Fool in the Rain”, etc *- where a guy is waiting for his girl and she’s not showing up, and all of the heartbreak that ensues…
Now they’d be all a’ twitterin’ or using GPS in the cell phones to discover that he’s a fool waiting on the right block.
I love the movie Presumed Innocent, but with DNA testing the movie would be ruined. (On a lighter guilty-pleasure note, I seem to remember a Charlie’s Angels episode where the Angels went undercover to bust a baby-selling operation – the company hired pretty girls and handsome guys to conceive some good-looking kids – cue porno music.)
I like the way that Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files deals with this - cell phones just don’t work around wizards, including the protagonist. So no corny excuses or anything.
Another classic “phone” song done wrong by technology: “Memphis, Tennessee” by Chuck Berry.
Because “Google Maps=Marie+South Side+Memphis Tennessee” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
…I have to call a lot of elderly people because of my work… I get a busy signal a lot.
So if its a love song about old people calling each other… it can still work.
Well … I refuse to pay for call waiting, and find it borderline rude. So if someone tried to call me when I was on the phone … yup, they’d get a busy signal.
Well, the next line is: “I have had enough, so act your age!”
So, maybe.
I typically found that one of the surprisingly most frustrating impotencies of the internet. Have things changed in that regard?
It used to be easy with landlines to track on the Internet, now people got smart and cell phones aren’t easy to get a number. Most people don’t even remember a number they just program in the number and put it to a name or a pic of the person.
I don’t have call waiting but I have voicemail so the call goes straight through to VM. Still I haven’t got a busy signal since the late 80s.
Claire, I think I love you. I can’t stand call waiting either.