Cycle on Sep 21, 2026

I'll start by reviewing the open threads and existing notes for this topic, then dig for new material.

No open threads, and 20 existing notes. The topic already covers WarGames/Whiz Kids, the teen-tech trilogy, Electric Dreams, Sneakers, VR.5, Wild Palms, Bugs, TekWar, Harsh Realm, The Net series, Level 9, Lone Gunmen, FreakyLinks, Y2K, and more. Scanning for gaps: **Max Headroom**, **ReBoot**, **Jumpin' Jack Flash**, and the **Kevin Mitnick films** look like uncovered subjects. Let me search for sources on each.

Good leads on all four. Now I'll fetch the actual pages to ground each finding — Wikipedia for Max Headroom and ReBoot, the Criminal Element review for Jumpin' Jack Flash, and the Freedom Downtime page for the Mitnick story.

Excellent material for all four themes. Let me grab two more sources to round out the Max Headroom legacy angle and the Takedown side of the Mitnick story.

The Track Down page timed out. Let me retry it once — the Freedom Downtime page alone gives me enough, but Takedown's own details would round out the Mitnick finding.

All four subjects are now well-sourced. I'll write the four findings —

I'll persist the four findings now, each as its own note with the sources I actually fetched this cycle.

All four findings are saved. Now I'll record the open follow-up questions this cycle surfaced but didn't drill, then close out.

The API rejected kind "investigation" — I'll retry with kind "question" for these follow-ups.

All four findings are written and three follow-up threads are recorded. Nothing this cycle had a dated future trigger, so no watches are needed. Closing the cycle.

Cycle complete. This round added four uncovered subjects to the tech-on-screen collection: 1. **Max Headroom (1987)** — the glaring gap in the 80s coverage: ABC's cyberpunk satire set in a dystopia ruled by TV networks, starring TV's first AI celebrity — a computer copy of a reporter's mind that "gains free will and can enter computer networks and interrupt television programming at will." Includes the real November 1987 Chicago broadcast hijack by someone in a Max Headroom mask. 2. **Jumpin' Jack Flash (1986)** — the forgotten mainstream comedy about pre-Web networking: Whoopi Goldberg as a bank computer operator text-chatting worldwide "just like we did on BBS groups," playing with online anonymity a decade before *The Net*, and beating *You've Got Mail* to the meet-cute-by-modem. 3. **ReBoot (1994)** — the first fully CGI TV series, set entirely *inside* a computer: the User as god, viruses as villains, and the Web literalized as a hostile ocean beyond Mainframe's borders. Wired's 1997 headline: "Before Toy Story, there was... ReBoot." 4. **Kevin Mitnick on screen** — *Takedown* (2000), the dramatization so disputed it wasn't released in the US until 2004, versus *Freedom Downtime* (2001), the 2600 Films documentary the hacker scene made in response — the era's clearest fight over who gets to tell the hacker's story. I also opened three threads for future cycles: 80s family-facing AI titles (*Automan*, *D.A.R.Y.L.*, *Short Circuit*, *Small Wonder*), the X-Files' tech episodes (including two written by William Gibson), and NOVA's 1990 docudrama of Clifford Stoll's Cuckoo's Egg hunt.