Your fourth and final Blog entry ties into your Personal Learning Document. I want you to identify, link to and describe a writer/thinker that you’ve found online and who you follow (on Twitter, Tumblr, a blog or news site, etc.) for information and insight in an area of technology & society that you find relevant — to your life, to your learning, and/or to your current research interests.
What makes them interesting and worth following more than other commenters? How do they use their form of media effectively to communicate? Why would you include them in your own Personal Learning Network as a source of inspiration and insight?
I chose to write about the movie “Men in Black”, because it has always fascinated me with its incorporation of the idea of the existence of extraterrestrials. Also, it was one of the scariest VHS tapes (I thought as a 7 year old) we owned that I was allowed to watch, which has always stuck with me.
The plot follows two agents working for a top secret organization, who monitor alien lifeforms living on Earth cloaking their existence from ordinary people. After the opening scene the movie begins with the recruitment of character James Edwards (later known as “agent Jay”), to replace agent Kay’s retired partner. The main plot is to stop an alien known as the “Bug” species, an over-sized cockroach-like creature, who is threatening the the safety of Earth and possibly the entire galaxy. Aside from the witty humour and running gag that almost everyone you know may be an alien (celebreties, politicians…), the most memorable moments from the film, are the great one-liners and the gadgets used. The most famous of these gadgets is probably the “Neurolyzer,” in short, it erases memories; programmable for long or short term effects. My other favourite weapon in the film is the Noisy Cricket, both for its fire power, and comedic purposes.
“I feel like ima break this damn thing!” —J
There’s no question that the franchise has sparked interests in possible technologies and the existence of out of this world life. There are countless blogs and pages out there dedicated to proving the actual existence of MiB, and the actual existence of aliens. One entertaining page about alien sightings and influences here.
The futuristic technologies of this movie always seemed a bit far fetched to me. From the secret layer, to the weapons, to the cars, and even the fact that the ordinary people were completely oblivious to what was really going on. But to paraphrase Kay, I suppose they have a point when he says it would only cause panic and chaos. Though some of the science behind some of the ideas are fairly sound, we’re just not there yet (article). And it’s not like this was the only alien sci-fi movie out there, the 90’s were full of them. For example, some Star Trek films, Star Wars I, Predator 2, Aliens 3, Independence Day, Mars Attacks!, and so on… Because the movie took place in the present (1997), I never believed that the technology used in the movie could be a present or even a near future reality. Not that I wouldn’t be totally stoked to actually see the stuff in real life.
Now more about the characters: aside from some of the poor or cheesy acting from some of them, I think that where the writers and director were coming from seemed pretty believeable. In the sense that, the MiB characters all seem like dry, serious, boring, hard working people, who’s personalities may have been transformed into these traits because of their recrutment into the MiB in the first place. No contact with outsiders, their existence erased, risking their lives for the sake of those who don’t even know they exist; it seems like a hard life. It particularily shows in Kay, obviously showing signs of regret by leaving his wife for the job at the end of the movie. And it doesn’t faze me at all that Jay fits in to the whole operation without so much as double-take. Maybe with all the reported UFO sightings in the world, theories, and even movies and stories about extraterrestrials embeded into our culture and lives, that he was honestly not fazed by the idea that they are real and living among us (only in the movie of course… right?).
What would it be like to actually encounter aliens in this day and age? Would we take the news as lightly as Jay or even the Coroner? Or no? Though some of the technology in the film arguably already exist, I don’t personally think that the general public is ready for it either. Just like Kay said to Jay when he asked the question. People in general are not smart, and it would only cause panic, so maybe it isn’t such a bad idea to have the MiB looking out for us. For now at least.
What better way to reflect on the technology of the future than through the classic Men In Black? I must admit, the movie is one of my all time favourites. i am not sure why that is the case, but I have loved it since I was first allowed to watch it! (Which would have been at least a couple years after it’s release, due to my strict parents… So maybe 2000?) The movies great humor, continous action and plot set aside, the theme of technology and society is prevalent throughout the film. While the film does focus on a future where aliens are integrated into western society, it also demonstrates future technology for data tracking, education and many other essential needs. The producer’s did a great job of convincing the audience of a very futuristic setting through the use of white furniture, simplistic modern design, and of course, the unfathomable and awe inspiring gadgets and gizmos. All of these small details are facts that our group has been discussing for our final project , while they seem like minute details, they do provide a wealth of information.
Watching this movie after taking this class has made me consider different details of the film. The small sizes of the technology that yield massive impacts, the sleek design of objects and the open spaces that prevail in infrastructure design. An alternate example that prods at larger themes; the famous neurolyzer (as seen below). Is it a remark on the state of society in the future? Poking at the point that humans don’t have the capacity to accept, let alone believe, that there are other human life forms out in the universe? And rather, not only in the universe, but possibly in your office or in your plain sight. Therefore, in order for humans to deal with the fact that there are other life forms on the planet we all live on, neurolyzers have to be used to wipe the short term memory humans as if nothing ever happened.
The story of Robot & Frank is of an older man, struggling with memory loss, who is given a robotic Care Aid by his son. Frank, an ex-burglar, is at first opposed to the idea of a robot in his home, and his daughter shares the same anti-tech feelings. Though, both can agree that the robot is a big help with cleaning and cooking. Frank has a change of heart when he discovers a flaw, or a gap, in his robot’s programming: it doesn’t know much about stealing. The robot unintentionally assists him with stealing a small trinket from a soap shop, which launches Frank into his old burglary days. He teaches his robot how to pick a lock, and the robot complies as Frank tells him it is just a hobby which is good for him and his health. Frank, who served time in prison earlier in life, steals an old book from the library as well as an expensive necklace from the home of a snippy young tech guy who offended him.
Frank is one of the only patrons of his town’s library, where Jennifer works. Jennifer also has a robot, Mr. Darcy, who works with her at the library. Jennifer, now, is simply a friend who he has a crush on. In the end, we realize she was actually a larger part of his past that he has sadly forgotten. The library is just being transformed, by the snippy young tech guy’s company, into a kind of augmented reality experience. The kind of experience which has no need for printed books (a prediction similar to Gary Shteyngart’s story). The story-line gives the film an interesting interplay of past and future, a future which feels a little too close for comfort.
Books, or printed books, are predicted as becoming extinct. This idea is something people are reluctant to believe, this is the hardest pill for us to swallow. We were okay with technology doing-away with records, tapes and CDs. We were also okay with technology closing down every movie-rental store, and bulldozing over VHS tapes and soon, DVDs. But, people are holding onto their books. This love for print is endearing in our culture, and gives a kind of omni-present sadness to the comedy of Robot & Frank. There’s something about turning pages of paper which people feel nostalgic for when reading books on a screen. There’s something in the past which we don’t want to let go of and for Frank, it is Jennifer.
In the end, the police are on to Frank. The only way to clear him from trouble is by deleting his robot’s memory. Something he struggles doing, but eventually does. He is then put into a care home where everyone else has a robot except him.
The film’s portrayal of the future felt realistic, robots are helpful and butler-like for those who need help at home. Their advanced programming skews the line between friend and robot. Frank defends his robot as a friend, not a slave. It’s a connection that seems plausible, where technology becomes more of a companion or a loved-one in the future (an idea similar to that of Spike Jonze’s Her). His robot has to remind Frank that he is not a person, and deleting his memory will not do any harm. This is difficult for Frank to comprehend, as he is clearly suffering from memory loss in his old age, and does not want his own memory to be completely wiped.
Robot & Frank is an engaging look into the future as it highlights the totally mind-blowing technology, as well as its flaws and opportunities for manipulation – even by an old ex-burglar who knows little about technology. As Frank says, “the human brain, a lovely piece of hardware,” robots will never be quite as complex or intelligent as the human mind. The future holds helpful and state-of-the-art technology but manipulation is possible.
Perhaps my favourite of the film’s insight into the future was a quick line of his daughter’s answering machine: “Why are you leaving me a voicemail?” My parents and my dentist are the only ones who leave me voicemail. If voicemail becomes a thing of the past, I don’t expect to miss it.
With a new Godzilla film set to hit theatres in two months’ time, I thought I’d take this opportunity to revisit Ishiro Honda’s original version that first captured my imagination as a child. The ensuing sequels and spinoffs have garnered the franchise a reputation for silliness, but the 1954 progenitor, far from being a trashy monster flick, offers a sobering meditation on what ethical considerations should guide scientific practices.
When I decided to re-watch the original Godzilla, I discovered that the film I had seen countless times previously was an American version. Perhaps this is why it somehow never occurred to me until recently that the titular monster was created as a stand-in for the atomic bombs that devastated Japan just nine years prior to the film’s release. However, as I watched the film, it struck me as inadequate to paint the story as purely allegorical. Godzilla is not merely a proxy for nuclear weapons; he is a product of their use. Furthermore, a major plot point involves a young scientist agonizing over whether or not to unveil his secret “Oxygen Destroyer” capable of defeating Godzilla. He fears that if revealed in its current weaponized form, his device will soon be used for ill, but knows that the future of his country (and perhaps the world) depends on its deployment. Forcing the audience to confront the impact of nuclear weapons, something we know to be real, and having them coexist with fictional destructive forces like Godzilla and the Oxygen Destroyer serves as a warning that nuclear weapons are not the first, nor likely the last agents of mass destruction to be visited upon humankind by its own hand. This unflinching perspective is what makes Godzilla so powerful. Rather than limiting itself to a critique of a specific historical event, it becomes a broader commentary on the military-industrial complex and how the technology we develop in the name of progress can upset the “natural order” of things and produce unintended consequences.
Honda’s Godzilla was a serious piece of cultural analysis, and judging by the harrowing trailer, the updated version aspires to do the same. I’m eager to see if it will have anything new to say, sixty years later.
This is one of the fundamental questions Science fiction has asked and explored since it’s inception. From Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein to the far flung post-singularity future of Iain M. Banks’ culture novels our humanity is at the core of these stories. In some cases that exploration of humanity is not apparent until the end of the story. Such is the case in Duncan Jones first movie Moon.
Moon is the story of Sam Bell, played by Sam Rockwell, the lone operator of a mining facility on the moon. He is on a three year contract to be the caretaker of the facility along with an A.I. named GERTY voiced by Kevin Spacey. The product he is mining is Helium-3, an energy source that revolutionizes clean energy back on earth. As he nears the end of his three year contract a series of accidents start to reveal the truth of Sam’s situation on the moon. There is an accident and Sam wakes up in the infirmary. After healing Sam heads out to fix a broken harvester and finds a body. The body is his.
Sam slowly puts together that the company he works for has decided it is more cost effective to create a clone to continuously take care of the facility than it is to replace the caretaker every few years.
Is a life less valuable when it is a tool?
While Moon is not directly about how technology mediates or is mediated by society it explores mans relationship to technology from another vantage point; what will we do to maintain the advanced technology we have? Is even a single life too much to pay for safe and abundant energy source?
Cloning technology is nowhere near the capability to do what it does in Moon but the ethical questions surrounding human cloning are explored in a unique, intelligent, and thought provoking script. Jones does not make any judgements but he does present a situation that is not overly outlandish.
One of my favourite mysteries of Moon is that the plot is one that may or may not have happened before or could happen again. Does the world know or care what is enabling the energy needed to power their devices?
I watched the sci-fi movie titled “Her”. Not only was this movie very eye-opening but it also made me a bit excited for the future, if it is anything like in the movie.
The vision of the future that it presented was heavily involved with technology. And as many people are very vocal about being against how involved in technology as a society now, I am totally not against technology becoming more involved in our daily lives. It was evident from watching the movie that technology that is a theme in the technology of today, that it is convenient. The future that is portrayed in this film makes it seem like the technology used makes everyone’s lives easier and therefore becomes convenient. In terms of the job the main character had, that job would have been a significant amount more difficult if he had to hand-write the letters. But with the speech to text technology it made everyone’s job easier.
However, there was a negative that was portrayed in the film about the future. And that is that we become less social animals because of technology. Even though the technologies provided gave the characters in the movie a way to communicate, it also decreased their social interactions with human beings.
It made me think differently about the present society because I can see how involving more technology into our daily lives can turn into something completely negative. But on the other hand I can see how it is portrayed in the movie, how everyone gets along just fine with the amount of technology in their lives and it even makes their lives easier.
Sonya beat me to this film, but I want to take a slightly different spin on how Minority Report works tech and society. Instead of looking at a world without crime, I want to look a world without interface.
For those of you that haven’t seen the film, Minority Report‘s most recognizable scenes involve eyes and hands: your eyes (inadvertently) control advertising billboards and can be used like a debit card and your hands can control your fancy new computer as if you’re conducting an orchestra. This is amazing technological imagination…for 2002.
There are some issues with the tech the film showcases. For one, I don’t think the world would ever like to be controlled by our eyes. We’d love something (like Google Glass) that we could control WITH our eyes, but having companies base ads on our retinas would never fly. We’re close enough with tailored Facebook ads (based, in a way, on what our eyes see) and that already causes some problems. For Tom Cruise, the problems of being tracked through his own eyes are worth replacing them. With the help of a homeless guy. With eyes he found in the rankest fridge ever…
Ok, so the eyes might be a bit far-fetched and probably (hopefully) won’t be a viable reality anytime soon, but the computer interface could happen today. People have already created wavy-handy interfaces. They guy who brought the idea to Spielberg brought an actual working model, and he later went on to design the Kinect XBox 360 platform. The idea has been used in countless movies before and since, but I think Minority Report shows the most realistic version of this impractical technology because Cruise has to wear gloves. While the Kinect uses cameras and our own class’ guest speakers have used cameras for creating interactive art installations, wired tech is still the most reliable. So Tommy puts on his gloves and starts waving, avoiding any spatial or visual issues they still seem to be having in 2054…
It’s like Star Wars Force control meets steam punk, future that has collided with a world’s imagination that still can’t imagine things without touch…even though it is an interface without touch. While the film has amazing futuristic cars, jetpacks and even mind reading thingies that can stop crimes before they happen (how cool and future is that?!) they still need gloves. Maybe 2002 was a pessimistic year, but they just couldn’t go gloveless.
Now, how this movie didn’t crack the top 20 of the Top 100 Sci-Fi movies list David posted astounds me. I definitely thought this was better than Star Wars V (everyone knows A New Hope is better than Empire!), but the awesome yet impractical technology is probably keeping it where it is because the script doesn’t help.
Apparently Tom Cruise had a lot of trouble acting with that computer. The movements made him so tired (yes, that’s real sweat) that he needed to take breaks from filming every five minutes. Reminds me of GMail Motion…
Now while someone fixes the coding issues on this site, excuse me while I go watch Serenity and weep.
So for this third blog I decided to watch a movie called Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise, because let’s face it, anything starring Tom is going to be a little out there. The movie is a science-fiction thriller that was released in 2002 and directed by Steven Spielberg.
The movie is set quite far in the future, in 2045, against a backdrop of futuristic buildings lining the skyline mixed with those of the past. What is interesting is that the concept of the movie is the notion of “Pre-crime” , a term used in the movie, essentially meaning preventing a crime before it is committed. They use these “pre-cogs”, people in pods who are considered never to be wrong, to generate the names of potential violent offenders. I do not want to spoil the entire plot of the movie, because I think this is a movie that everyone should take the time out and watch.
It is extremely interesting to think about where society and technology are moving in the law enforcement field, in my opinion. If it were possible to prevent murders before they occur, this would create ripples in the crime world. Think of all the lives that could be saved. I believe society would function without a sense of fear or an increased sense of safety. These days especially where guns and other weapons are quite readily available to those who seek them, and society lives in fear of crime and violence.
This movie is definitely eye-opening and asks the question, what if there was no more murder? For this I wonder, would we be safer? Or would there be some other technology developed to get around this?
