One of my favorite movies to watch when I want to mix up mystery and humor is “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” a 1986 film starring Whoopi Goldberg as a bank worker named Terry Doolittle who uses a computer to help international clients with their transactions. She finds herself in a bit of trouble when she connects with a spy named Jack who needs Terry’s help to get out of enemy territory and return home.

When the movie first came out, there was no widespread internet for people to communicate with each other. There was no vast cyberspace database to easily access information, and tracking down a person took more shoe leather than online cloak and dagger.

Even after 40 years, I find “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” to be one of the more unique pieces of cinema. However, it’s a film concept that would not survive very well in the 21^st century. Evolution of communication and information systems would make such a story premise impossible.

Terry doesn’t actually get to see what Jack looks like until the very end, as the communication system is by text only. If Terry had today’s video technology, she would have seen Jack, and Jack would have seen her, which would have robbed viewers of seeing Jack mistake Terry for a man, even though Terry is short for Teresa.

In one scene, Terry is making a phone call from a phone booth, which are practically nonexistent, especially the enclosed ones. The bad guys snag a wrecker and attach the hook to the phone booth, dragging it around New York City as Terry begs for help. Having the villains attach a wrecker to a cellphone just doesn’t have the same level of believability.

There’s also a scene where Terry is trying to break Jack’s code key, to which she turns to listening to the lyrics for “Jumping Jack Flash” made famous by The Rolling Stones. The popular method of listening to music was cassette tapes, and so Terry had to listen over and over again to get all the words. Nowadays, all you have to do is hop on the internet and search for fill-in-the-blank lyrics.

Of course, who can forget the scene where Terry sneaks into the British consulate during a royal ball and connects with its computer to get a list of exit contacts, complete with the hilarious moment when the shredder automatically comes on and eats a good chunk of Terry’s ball gown. With today’s technology, she could hack her way into the consulate via her own computer from the comfort of home or work, not have to invade a government facility and ruining a borrowed dress.

I could see “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” being redone if kept to the original vision and time period, but trying to set the story in a modern setting would reduce it to 30 minutes because of all of today’s technology at our disposal.

However, the film is not the only thing that has been relegated to the “relics” pile of storytelling. You could also see other stories seeming odd because of modern technology.

Take “The Wizard of Oz.” A farm girl is scooped up in her home by a tornado and whisked off to a magical land, and she must wander around on foot to figure out a way to return home to Kansas. The book and the original film was written in a time when phones were affixed to a wall, and you had to have an operator connect you. Not so today with the advent of cellphones.

I could just see a tale with Dorothy possessing a cellphone go like this: “Hello? Hello, Aunt Em. It’s Dot. Yeah, the house is a total loss, but I got dropped off in this place called Oz. Can you come pick me up? Yeah, I can turn on the GPS tracker so you can locate me. Thanks, Aunt Em. See you when I see you.”

No yellow brick road. No great and powerful Oz. No Munchkins or sleep-inducing poppies. In other words, no seductive fantasy of a strange land and the perilous quest to return home.

Then there’s Superman. When the comic book hero first appeared on the scene, Clark Kent used to duck into phone booths to change into the Man of Steel. No more phone booths due to the advent of cellphones, so now, to keep his identity a secret, he has to find somewhere else to change, like a back alley—or a janitor’s closet.

Modern technology is a wonderful thing, but it wreaks havoc on keeping stories from the past relevant. As we evolve as a species, I can only wonder what other wonderful stories will be left to history.