With new technology, everything is instant and effortless (allegedly). Setting up an internet account takes minutes. E-mail spam announces "Learn Any Secret About Anyone - In Seconds!" And search engines find anything, anywhere, instantly - so why bother to invest some time in learning how to use them properly?

It's a bit like how aliens in sci-fi movies pick up on our culture. Take Superman (1978), for example. Planet Krypton is about to explode, so the baby Superman is put in a space pod with some crystals. During his trip to Earth he gets a crash course, his father's voice teaching him about human life, from Chinese philosophy to Einstein. It's Krypton's equivalent of an 'e-learning' course on multimedia CD-ROM.

But something doesn't quite add up. It's not that you can spot a Rolex watch when they put the crystals in the starship. It's this: how does Superman's father know about Einstein? Krypton exploded in 1948 and Superman takes three years to arrive on Earth (1951), presumably around the speed of light. Yet the latest lightbeams from Earth to Krypton (before it exploded) would be about events from three light-years ago. And think of the time involved in developing any real-life multimedia education package...

In Species (1995), the alien is born here, and apparently gets no e-learning. Astronomers receive an extra-terrestrial transmission about how to splice alien and human DNA. The resultant test-tube baby grows - incredibly rapidly - in a lab cage, then mutates into a beautiful female killing machine. When she escapes, she must be destroyed before mating with a human. Somehow, though, this runaway understands what cash and credit cards signify. She knows how to drive a car and all the assumed cultural knowledge and etiquette which surrounds it - the rules of the road. Despite her brief, cocooned existence, the enfant sauvage has absorbed so much knowledge about human culture (apart from how to put on a bra).

In The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) the alien learns about us from eavesdropping on our TV signals. Thomas Jerome Newton comes to Earth to get water for his family on their doomed planet, and starts a hi-tech company (a cross between Microsoft and Howard Hughes) that produces various fundamental electronics patents. Then the military-industrial complex destroy him, and he lives out his days a drunken couch potato.

He is the alienated alien, crushed by the real bits and pieces of modern Earth culture. He is made sick by cars and lifts, and unable to understand the humans' feelings, fears and aggression. And, he says, "the strange thing about television is that it doesn't tell you everything. It shows you everything there is to know about life on Earth. Yet the mysteries remain."