hahahaha, my biggest pet peeve is people who obsess over the inaccurate representation of technology in movies and tv :D

I'm not a techie nerd by a long shot and even I get very annoyed by the magic technology on CSI and movies. Anybody with an iPhone camera (that means almost everybody) knows blowing up/zooming in your pictures only shows indecipherable fuzziness.

I actually like that there is such incredibly inaccurate tech in tv nd movies. Know why? A lot of our current tech is based on old tv and movie tech. Think about how much like a tricorder our phones are. Tons more examples, but you get the idea. The nicest tech almost always has some sort of artsy roots it seems.

That said, I actually get a bit annoyed at lighting directors and set designers. Take the interrogation room on Bones. No WAY the FBI has an all black room covered In fancy panels. Realistically it would be government issue beige with a few government issue posters taped up. But, then, realistic doesn't play across the same. Personally I'd be much more worried in a beige room than the black ones on tv.

Pretty sure that this doesn't count as the kind of tech you're talking about here, but the GC MS is not a magical instrument that gives you a printout immediately identifying the mystery substance from the sample they've cut off the end of a q-tip and put into a sample tube that won't even fit the machine (let alone the fact that it's plastic and would melt once they added the solvent necessary to run the tests).
Hands down my biggest pet peeve about crime shows.

I give them the benefit of the doubt on set dressing. No, it's almost always not accurate, but it also makes for extremely bland looking television. Every show already requires you to suspend belief, whether its fake psychics working for the police or scientists and FBI agents partnering up for cases, or Washington fixers having affairs with presidents.

The ability to step up hacking efforts with "only 30 seconds left--hurry!".

Does an elevator count as technology? People are always chased into elevators and the doors keep closing. Or the bad guy puts his arm through the doors and they just keep closing on his arms. What kind of elevator does this. In my experience they always open back up when you go through them.

if you've ever watched Dexter, every computer and phone makes the most tech-y and unrealistic sounds: from a progress bar to the opening of a file folder. it makes you start to wonder whose nephew needed a job in sound design.

I'm waiting for the day when I can get out of the car and fold it into a briefcase a la The Jetsons.

Actually, I get more annoyed by set design inaccuracies. You know, like Monica and Rachel affording that massive apartment on their salaries in NYC. I can suspend my disbelief only so much.
I expect tech inaccuracies. If forensics worked like it did on TV, we would have a lot more criminals behind bars. Instead, the reality is that there is little money directed to that area and varies greatly from state to state. http://www.npr.org/series/133208980/post-mortem-death-investigation-in-america

my only real pet peeve is the dim mood lighting in operating rooms and forensics labs. whether you're solving a mystery or about to sleep with your coworker, it happens under harsh fluorescent lighting if its happening in a lab. otherwise, when suspension of disbelief wears off, i just set aside disbelief and try to enjoy what i'm watching.

Ha! This isn't so much a tech moment, but every time they shock somebody who's flat-lining on TV, and suddenly they have a heart rhythm, I want to call some producers.

There is nothing in science that would allow the defibrillator to bring a person back if they're truly flatlining, but the whole world seems to think that's what you're supposed to do.

And maybe this is a little tangent to the post, but i was just discussing last night how disappointing it was in Star Wars when Qui Gon was able to detect the strength of the force in young anakin by measuring the amount metaclurians in blood with a tricorder type device. a misapplication of scifi tech that kind of ruined the mystery of the force for me.

every single thing angela does with her computer in "bones."

How about when they show what is supposed to be security footage, or footage shot by someone's cell phone, and it has multiple camera angles/cuts to close up? Grrrr.

My biggest annoyance is the downright awful representation of video games in most non-gaming media.

The absolute WORST offender ever is CSI: New York, hands down. They should be embarrassed.

@hanc - Angela must be the fastest 3d modeller in the world, able to conjure up new views, renderings, and animations in seconds!

@DovieAnn and Pi - I agree, the set dressings are always a bit out there. Fancy interrogation rooms and see through big screen monitors so the camera can shoot from the opposite side.

@Parnassus - Multiple angles of security footage or cell phone video plus super high res, masked by fake interlacing to imitate low res cameras!

@dc.d - I agree, I always imagined the Force to be more mystical than something measurable and Lucas killed Star Wars with those prequels.

Apart from the fact that every computer interface has swooping zooming graphics and sound effects that would drive the user to kill, kill, kill, my biggest peeve is when they assign analogue problems to digital systems.
eg:
- Mr Badguy cuts the streaming video feeds he's is taunting the good guys through and it cuts to static. Why would he keep streaming randomly generated static? At most the image might pixilate for a half second then go black and say "connection lost".
- Digital monitors get analogue ghosting effects or snowy pictues, the picture starts rolling like a missaligned vhs tape and when somebody hits it the picture bounces then goes right. A bad digital signal gives pixilation and stuttering, white snow doesn't exist digitally.
- Zaff Goodguyington is getting out of range of home base, the signal is fading, we've almost lost him and for some reason his digital radio is getting quieter even though the waveform described the the transmission still says he is talking at a normal volume.

I guess these things are all just the production team using something dramatic they know people associate with tech going wrong in the past but today it just doesn't work like that.

not the ones in my building - ouch!

As a cartographer it bugs the bejeezus out of me when the tech just rapidly types on their keyboard and instantaneously has a complete spatial analysis showing the location of where the bad guy/missing child/lost gold is. Or worse - they do spatial analysis on Google Maps!

And another thing ... I can't tell you how many times a client has sent me a low res jpeg of their company logo and they want me to digitally enhance it instead of getting a hi res version from their art dept. It's very difficult to nicely explain why that only works on tv.

this post made me smile hugely - my mate and i were discussing this last night. what we were talking about:

1) the investigators find one or two bits of info, and draw HUGE conclusions from them
2) women law enforcement doing tech work, cop work, detective work in 6" stilettos. and running in them!
3) interrogation scenes that are always hyper antagonistic and explosive/violent where the cops have major attitudes
4) 'profilers'...... as though it were an exact science!!!!!!

but yeah, makes for some compelling tv. =P

So that's where my GIS students get that crap.

I am not geeky enough to be peeved about technology but I get peeved by inaccuracies in movies stemming from scenes not being shot in sequence hence there is always something different in the actor's appearance (hair, clothes).
Anybody who watched Something's Gotta Give more than once would remember the scene at the end of the movie (on a bridge in Paris) where Jack Nicholson wears the purple scarf. Every time it's his turn on the camera, the scarf is tied differently. Those maybe subtle differences but they are noticeable (well at least to me and other similarly anal people, LOL) nevertheless.

Search engines, the sticker to cover the make of a laptop, and the "alternate" operating systems (which I assume are animations).

This isn't tech related, but it really bothers me on CSI that the lab techs are the same people who go catch the bad guy wearing bullet-proof vests and using guns.

Real time satellite footage of anywhere and at anytime.

Garcia from Criminal Minds. If you have ever seen this show then you know what I mean. Her ability to access any piece of information anywhere and without need for warrants. And she does it all by typing really fast.

Another non-tech thing, but I hate it when characters never wear the same article of clothing twice. It's one thing on a show like Sex and the City where the outfits are part of the draw of the show, but why can't Monica Geller wear the same shirt over again now and then like a real person? Or it would have been funny to see Rachel wear her favorite "Frankie Says Relax" tshirt again. At least on How I Met Your Mother they managed to turn this into a joke about Lily being a shopaholic.

@Parnassus, yes! I actually had a client argue with me about printing a poster of a small web icon by citing an episode of 24.

@MissFifi, it's a rent-controlled apartment that's being sublet to them by Monica's grandmother. But yeah, it's still huge.

Maybe this qualifies as car technology (hah, probably not), but Raylan Givens in Justified seems to jump from Lexington, KY to Harlan County, KY in 15 minutes, even though Google maps says it's a 3 hour drive one way. (though I still love the show)

Made up technology is used so often on TV/movies that I don't really give it a second thought anymore.

The way any database search flashes up each record as it searches through. Hey, tv forensic database programmers, you'll get much faster performance if you don't draw each record on screen! And maybe try indexing instead of random records.

Imagine if google had decided the way to go was to parse through and display every web page on the fly when anyone searched :D

This is totally non-tech related, but how about when two people are having a conversation and they cut to a totally new place and they are continuing their conversation like it's the next sentence, even though they've traveled some distance (in silence??)!!

The reason why Angela's computer does everything is because it wants to please someone so darn cute!

Peeves: only a few keystrokes and you've written a whole page.
Parking right in front of the building in New York/Chicago/San Francisco/insert-city-of-your-choice.
DNA match results by the afternoon, when they actually take days and weeks.

OLD TECH: telegraphs that after only a few dit-dahs and you have a whole sentence.

Apartments out of the price range of the characters. Actually I understand why they are that big: the characters need dynamic space to move around. otherwise it gets boring. On a movie, they can go for a small cramped set to get the feel. Same with a one off scene on tv. But on a weekly show, that small set really gets in the way of shot placement, character movements, etc. Also, we see the same set every week; we've memorized the space. If it were small, we'd get bored with it. Largeness breaks us out of that boredom.

Not a new issue. Watch the original Mission Impossible TV show from the late 1960s & prepare to giggle. Slap-needle drop-em-where-they-stand anesthesia? Sure. Radio-controlled gadgets that work perfectly in concrete buildings? You bet.
I can only suspend my disbelief so far before it fails & spoils the story. I know too much about dogs to believe that Lassie's trying to tell me that Timmy's in the well.

I guess that's why it's called fiction, right?

Not technology per se, but -

Main character in cop show goes to arrest bad guy with big special forces team for back up: all the special forces cops wear protective gear and helmets, main character wears sunglasses and *maybe* a backwards baseball cap.
Main offender: Criminal Minds.

Oh - and Alias always using a shot of a cobbled street to show the scene in question was in Europe. That actually bothered me more than the complete impossibility of Sydney's aeroplane travels.

@formosagirl--don't forget the hair! The women always have long hair which they always wear loose when they're at the crime scene.

Blah blah blah. No one bitched about this in the original Star Trek series -- why are you? It's tv, it's meant to be escapist. Get over it, and maybe in 30 years when everyone has a 3-d protein printer in their kitchen to make that night's dinner, you'll be looking back at the replicator and exclaiming its here! Just like the ipad, and Siri, and fill in your blank.

3D kidney: http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidney.html

http://blog.ted.com/2013/02/07/7-talks-on-the-wonder-of-3d-printing

http://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_harouni_a_primer_on_3d_printing.html

Blah blah blah. No one bitched about this in the original Star Trek series -- why are you? It's tv, it's meant to be escapist. Get over it, and maybe in 30 years when everyone has a 3-d protein printer in their kitchen to make that night's dinner, you'll be looking back at the replicator and exclaiming its here! Just like the ipad, and Siri, and fill in your blank.

3D kidney: http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidney.html

http://blog.ted.com/2013/02/07/7-talks-on-the-wonder-of-3d-printing

http://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_harouni_a_primer_on_3d_printing.html

Beep boop beep! It's the fake tech noises that drive my husband crazy. We also have an 11' 1080p projector screen, so we see detail like the fake copy in prop newspapers and fake URLs and stuff. Dexter is the WORST for consistency and attention to detail in websites, email addresses, etc. and that weird blue and white UI on every single phone on the show? Sigh.

The super-gigantic text in TV text messages drive me nuts. Is this a thing? Maybe my phone is too old.

Also non-tech related - female cops and detectives fighting and chasing down bad guys in high heels and with long, unbound hair. Seriously? Any woman who has ever had her hair in her eyes or mouth, or experienced the painfully whipping of her face in a windstorm or a convertible car, knows what I'm talking about. And high heels? Honestly.

I love the magic keyboards seen on every TV cop show. Someone says, "Do you think they have any relatives in New York?" and the cop at the computer makes three or four keystrokes and says, "YES!" and starts reading a three-generation history. Three keystrokes will also produce someone's medical history, a corporation's financial history, or every telephone call a suspect has made in the last ten years.

The tech stuff has me rolling my eyes occasionally, but what really disturbs me are all the women working in forensic labs with their long hair worn down. (I'm looking at you, CSI Miami!) It's just gross.

I agree with many of the comments that it isn't always the out-of-place technology behavior that takes the audience out of the show, but casting and odd representation of the characters.

For instance, how can someone have the body of a supermodel and work for Gregory House 16 hours a day? Sure, there are beautiful doctors in the world, but where do they find the time to work those abs and attend medical lectures, seminars, extra training and paperwork?