If you remember Skynet, you'll know where I'm headed.  Skynet is the computer from the Terminator movie series that put a fundamental fear of computers in many people.  More  accurately, Skynet asks the fundamental question of when or if a computer will achieve sentience.

Skynet is, of course, an extreme case, but it has taught us to question some of the advancements we’ve made in artificial inteligence and to gaze at the wonder with a bit of doubt.

If Skynet doesn’t take over the world, there are plenty of movie examples, where backing up your data is key.  This has become easier today with applications such as Mozy, backing up your primary files on your primary workstation is essential.  As an IT professional who regularly preaches the power of backups, I have little tolerance for those to simply don’t do it.

Science Fiction movies also paint a picture of what could be from the IT perspective.  Tom Cruise in Minority Report was moving things magically about just by dragging his hands around.  Today, we see news anchors doing the same thing.  The Star Trek movies regularly saw reports delivered on what today would be a tablet computer similar to the iPad.  Did we learn from those visions?  Perhaps not, but the visions do motivate us to innovate.

You’ve Got Mail taught us about how computers can bring people together whether they live in the same city or live on different contents.  Sure, mail may or may not be involved, as other social media environments provide a different mechanism, but the fact remains computers have taught us that we live on a very small planet.
Finally, how many movies can you remember that involved viruses and/or hacking?  These movies teach us the fundamentals of computer security and the presence of the ever possible “back door.”

For me, movies have taught me that computers are tools that are as good or poor as the developers who program them.  Combine that threshold with the computer users vigilance (or lack thereof) and understand of how to protect themselves from the bad guys, and you’re left with one of the primary reasons there are IT consulting firms out there.