Movies nudge middle-class young people without a particular vocation into certain professions
Hollywood increasingly draws on the food-and-beverage industries (Sideways, Julie & Julia, Ratatouille), but nothing now matches IT’s allure. The computing industry specialises in the timeless Hollywood script of kid overthrowing old order. Jobs wears rollnecks, Zuckerberg hoodies, and guys in ties are losers. Moneyball (2011), in which mathematicians with laptops upend baseball, retells the Triumph of the Geeks story.
But it won’t last. Ominously for IT, this year’s Hollywood hero, Jobs, is dead. Before long they’ll be making historical movies about Silicon Valley. I wish I could predict the next fashionable profession, but given my own choice of career I’m the last person to ask.
