We're all, essentially, replicants...

I have heard so much about Blade Runner in my life that I ended up putting it on a pedestal in my mind. A few years ago there was this rumor that it was oging to be put back on the big screen. I decided then that I would wait until that moment to finally see the film. When Alex said that he'd be showing it in 142, I figured that that was good enough. After 20 years of waiting, I finally got to see the legendary Blade Runner.

Honestly? I was extremely underwhelmed. I just didn't like it. Perhaps it was the hype I had created... but I don't think so. Conceptually, there is a lot going on and can certainly provide hours of conversation, discussion, and debate... but the film as a piece of entertainment did not work at all. My biggest problem was that there was so little character development. I never once actually found myself caring for Deckard. His plight did not seem interesting or captivating. On top of this, the pacing was so random that before I had enough time to understand one scenario, we were on to another. By the time we find Deckard hanging perilously from atop a high building, I really couldn't have cared less if he had fallen to his death.

I like to discuss the idea of a self-aware android, but I really feel like a broken record at this point. What more can I say on the topic? I think I have made it rather clear that I find absolutely no moral dilemma when it comes to artificial intelligence. What is it to me if we create a separate sentient entity?

However, the idea of creating memories is new to the class and highly interesting. These characters have vivid memories that give them purpose and definition. When it turns out that these are really just scripts put into their minds rather than actual recorded events that played out in their life, it makes you really wonder what the point of memories really is in our daily lives. Without memories, we really cannot know who we are because we do not know where we have been and what we have done. But then, when I really think about it, it occurs to me that it is only the memories that define us, not the actual events. If you remember something one way, that is what guides you, even if that isn't "really" how it happened. So for these androids, they feel a certain way based on the stories they believe to be their own. To me, then, it doesn't really matter at all if they are accurate. If you remember something, then it is real to you. Sure, she never LEARNED to play piano, but she remembers learning and still CAN play, so how is that any less real?

It reminds me of a strange paradox that has occurred so very many times in my short life. I like to embellish the details a little... even when I am just retelling the story in my head. The result of this is that, occasionally, I recreate history. I even remember that I made up details, but I forget which ones and the truth is lost. It bothered me at first, then I realized that however I remember it IS how it happened. The past, after all, doesn't exist. It may have at one time, but here and now is all there really is. And now, however the past is remembered is how it happened. Once something is gone, it can never be found. This angers some people, but I take solace in knowing that the universe has its truth and we, as decaying masses of flesh, have ours.

I'll be Back to the Future

Terminator. You know, I had never actually seen this in its entirety before this last Thursday. I don't know what I expected, but what I saw certainly wasn't it. I enjoyed it a lot, but I must say that I don't think that it holds up very well. This is really one of those cases where the original film relied heavily on special effects so, as time went on, those effects start to fall flat. The film just FEELS like the 80s and I don't think that it will ever escape that. That isn't to say that the story isn't still very cool, but watching it when there are movies like I, Robot or the Matrix which are just far more FUN to watch these days because of their far more polished effects. Sure, in another decade they, too, will fade, but not yet.

Time travel. One of the most popular topics in all of Science Fiction. In my opinion, however, it almost always fails. Time travel, unless taken lightly, is extremely unbelievable. I must say, however, the fact that time travel is only one way in this film makes it much more believable. The biggest problem when it can go either way is that going BACK to the future is ridiculous. Once you change the past, going back to the future is too dangerous as the world will no longer be the same place.

One thing that I did like was that Reese coming back and fathering John Connor really didn't change anything. As he said, he was just preserving it. In both "universes", he clearly acted the same way. I appreciate when time travel doesn't change anything, it is just another means of transportation. It makes me think that there really was never any way that the Terminator could have succeeded. He obviously had to fail simply because he existed at all. It basically amounts to this being a contained loop in time that should always play out the same way. Had it ever NOT done so, then it could never have been to begin with.

See how stupid that whole paragraph sounded? That's why I hate time travel. You CANNOT sound smart discussing it (unless it is with worm holes and bending light and all of that good stuff... but that is completely different!).

Help Me!

For my first catchup post, I would like to discuss my feelings on The Fly. I first saw this movie when I was about 8 years old on a night where I had a "scary movie marathon." Of course, being only 8, my parents didn't actually let me watch very many truly scary movies, but my mom was adamant that I watch The Fly. I never did find it scary, but certainly found it disturbing. Watching it again more than a decade later, my mind found whole new issues with the film.

The first is the whole idea of teleportation. Sure, this is one of the coolest superpowers that any of the X-Men ever had, but that was always explained without science to come in and ruin the fun. Here we actually find a discussion about the movement and re assemblage of atoms and molecules so that the same person or thing comes out on the otherside. I must say, even if scientists were ever able to develop such a thing, there is no chance in HELL that I would get into the thing. My reason is actually the same reason that Invasion freaked me out. I just don't believe that the person who would show up on the other side of the device would be me. To the glance of anyone else it would be... and in a way it would be a perfect remake of me that would act, think, feel, move, be the same as I was. However, I can't help but think that I would actually be dead and gone. My personal consciousness would cease to exist and that is just something that I would not be willing to risk.

Back to the film itself, I find the ending to be a fantastic theoretical question. Posed with the same dilemma of killing the half fly/half-man beast that was screaming from the web, what would you do? Personally, no matter what I did, I know that I would be utterly ruined for life. Should I save the creature, there really isn't anything I could do to help it. The rest of both their bodies was completely destroyed so there is obviously no hope of saving either animal. However, letting it die, or, killing it myself, would prevent me from ever having a good night's sleep again. Did I kill a human? Am I a murdered? Was it the right thing to do? It works well to blur the line between killing humans and animals. Sure a fly might not be entirely sentient, but there is SOME sort of consciousness there...

Fooling Yourself

I have never really been a big fan of horror films. I had a bad experience with The Exorcist when I was a child and I have generally veered away from everything that might ever slightly be in the same genre ever since. However, as I have found myself to be more and more a filmmaker, part of me realized that it was time I go back and figure out exactly what it was that scared me so damn much in the 1973 classic. After watching the film again for the first time in years, I wasn't as scared, but I was endlessly impressed. A film, a collection of photographs matched to a soundtrack, had managed to hit me on some painfully deep psychological level. If a film can move me so powerfully, be it in a positive or negative way, that is special.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers hit me on a similar level as the Exorcist. It didn't frighten me in a physical way, but it did horrify me. As someone who is almost always caught up in his own mind, I have always had an underlying fear of losing myself. I realized that this was why the Exorcist had damaged me so completely. I don't fear death, but the idea of losing control of myself while I am still alive is more frightening than anything else I can imagine. In Invasion, it was the description of how the Pod People were not the people they were trying to be. They lacked some inner light, some ethereal existence, some soul. I used to have dreams about waking up and everyone in my life would no longer be the people as I knew them. This film was a perfect representation of this ancient fear.

I was raised a Christian. I loved the idea of going to heaven and being reunited with everything and anything that I had once known. One day, it dawned on me that I didn't actually believe it. I don't even know if I ever did. I made myself THINK that I believed it because I was so afraid of the alternative, but the real faith was completely lacking. Since embracing my agnosticism, I have found life to be utterly precious. I still HOPE that it isn't true, but I feel it deep within me that this life is all there is. And should this be true, then I have to make the absolute best of the time I have. My thoughts, my body, my mind, my soul are all a single experience, and single moment in time, a one time chance at happiness. Because of this, I have grown fearful of losing any of this precious time. The idea of someone/something else taking over my body or mind and preventing me from, well, being me... that pains me to even imagine.

Another scene that bothered me was the description of what happens when you are taken over. "Every molecule, every atom" is reproduced. Very thoughts and memories are transmitted into the new body. They say it is painless and you wake up happy. This is bullshit. Similar things have been described in various other films and novels, and each time I get very angry at the idea. What is happening here is a NEW person, not at ALL the same person who was copied. To the outside would it may be the equivalent of living forever, but for the individual, it is the same as death. Immortality for the sake of others is a silly concept. Even if I could have a perfect reproduction of myself who really was alive and thought, felt, emoted, cared, believed as I do, it is not ME. My consciousness is not transfered. To my friends and family, there would be no difference at all. We could be switched and no one would ever know. Hell, the new me might not even know it happened as he would likely think that he was the original and had truly experienced everything that I had. But I would be dead. That isn't immortality. If I do not get to live forever, then fuck that.

Bigger. Faster. Stronger.

Robocop. To be completely honest, I never thought I would come across this film in an academic setting. I mean, seriously, it's ROBOCOP. The first time I saw this movie was when I was about seven years old. Even then I remember thinking that it was a bit corny. Now, thirteen years later... well, yeah, it's still a really corny movie.

That being said, it actually seems a lot more poignant in this day and age. Technology is actually starting to get to the point where we can effectively replace lost limbs. Mobility is a bit limited, of course, but more and more breakthroughs are being made in the science of the brain. Hell, just the other day I cam across an article about how they have made an artificial hand that can actually detect the difference between hot and cold. It gives me hope that in my lifetime losing a limb will be only a minor setback.

What interested me most in the film though was the whole idea of bringing someone back to life. In this area the film seemed to stay the most vague. After all, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering they never even mentioned anything about reprogramming his brain or anything. It makes me wonder how they transformed his corpse into a super cop. Because if, and this is a big assumption, they used him as a cop because he once was a cop, then it stands to reason that they (being his makers) should have expected more of his past life to show up at some point.

This leads to the whole theme of humanity. The two opposing business ideas in the film consisted of one total robot and one cyborg. The idea seemed to be that ROBOCOP was superior because he was based on human anatomy whereas ED-209 was weak because he was too bulky and poorly programmed. What confused me, however, was that everyone seemed so shocked and upset that ROBOCOP began to show human emotions and traits. I thought that the whole point of making this robot out of a human was precisely so that he would have necessary human traits. Apparently they hadn't taken consciousness into account.

Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" was a fun read. Perhaps I was supposed to take it seriously, but in my head I pictured it as being written by a robot who was angry at human society. The idea that we are all cyborgs now due to our increasing dependency on technology seems to have a certain amount of truth behind it, but the way it was written made me laugh because of just how seriously it was taken. Nevertheless, it calls to mind so many of the dystopian futures that sci-fi films like to present. Being a child of the Internet-age, the Matrix is the first film to come to mind. Unlike so many, I am not frightened at all at the thought that we are slowly integrating technology into our very consciousness. After all, who wouldn't want to have a direct uplink to the Internet at all times? I absolutely love the theory of mystic Collective Consciousness, and the Internet is truly bringing that to life in a tangible way.

9-19-2007 -- Thoughts on Colossus and Paley

While re-reading Natural Theology, I found myself rather upset throughout. This came, at first, because of, in general, the fact that Paley, clearly something of an intellectual, really loves the use, or perhaps overuse, of the comma as a way of, a linguist might say, breaking apart, and, maybe, organizing his thoughts. Alright, so he did a far better job of it than I did, but the point remains the same: sometimes it isn't so bad to use simple sentence structure.

Onto my main point, the real reason that I was upset with the argument posed by Paley was that he seemed to make the common flaw of heavily overestimating the human race. This also comes up in the conclusion of Colossus: The Forbin Project, but I will get to that in a moment. Paley's main piece of evidence is the existence of a watch. He argues that just by examining the watch and witnessing the incredible amount of work that was involved to make all of the mechanisms work, it is OBVIOUS that there was a maker, a designer, a contriver involved. And from this, of course, comes to assumption that all of existence must also have a designer. My first issue with this is that Paley's idea that it is so obvious that a watch must have had a designer. Of course we as humans would think this way considering that one of OUR kind was the designer.

My other problem is the primary reason that I am writing this and is also my biggest issue with the "theory" of intelligent design in general. Claiming that everything MUST have been designed exactly as we see it simply because we can also create things is the argument of an egomaniac. It blows my mind that so many people can't wrap their heads around the idea that nature is really as amazing and mind-blowing as it appears. Saying that God made everything to work as it does is to essentially remove the majesty of the universe.

I could continue, but I realize that at some point I would just be arguing against young-earth creationists and religious folks, and that really isn't the purpose of this class nor really anything to do at all with Paley's writing. Instead of going on an anti-religous tangent, I'll just move on to Colossus and save myself the anxiety.

So, at the end of Colossus: The Forbin Project, humanity is left in the hands of the all-powerful computer system Colossus. Of course we are supposed to believe that this is a horrible fate for humanity, but I just don't see it that way. There is a famous quote that says something to the effect of "The best government is the rule of a good dictator." I take a lot of heat for agreeing with this, but I just can't help it. My everyday experiences have taught me that the majority of humans are stupid. I really do not think that we are fit to govern ourselves. If there was a person who came about who knew how to fix all of our problems, I would gladly hand him control over us. Of course no one this capable actually exists, so I must remind everyone that this is completely theoretical and not something I ever expect to see happen.

However, Colossus seems to fit the bill rather well. From what I can tell, he (it?) has no intention of destroying mankind. He will stop war, stop hunger, and increase knowledge ten fold. Okay, so we lose our "freedom," but it isn't like freedom really exists anyways. I doubt that Colossus is going to worry much over censorship and the day to day activities of mankind. After all, he is supposed to be more rational than we could ever imagine, so he would know what does and does not actually pose a threat to himself and others. I would even go so far as to say that he wouldn't give a damn about people writing songs and movies about destroying him. It's entertainment, and Colossus clearly has enough power not to worry about a bunch of excited movie-goers leading the revolution. Anyways, I think most people would actually be quite content under his rule.

This leads me to the concept of machines eventually replacing humans as the dominant "species" on the planet. Why is this so frightening? Again I find myself calling human egomaniacs for thinking that our species means a Goddamn thing. There were trillions of species before us and it stands to reason that there will be plenty of them after we have gone. If we were to create a race of machines that was sentient and decided to destroy us, well, that's our own fault. And regardless, we would have destroyed ourselves eventually anyhow. If the machines live on, clearly they were superior and have every right to outlast us.

I cannot argue with Colossus's rationale behind controlling us. Look at history for ten seconds. We are blood-thirsty, poorly organized heathens. We have the gift of reason and logic, but they are almost always complety ignored when it really matters. I think that, if anything, we have proved to the earth that we failed. We were the first to develop sentience as a way of surviving and evolving, yet all we do is destroy that which we are given.

Yeah, we made watches... but if one was defective, we'd throw it out. If there is a God, perhaps he should be heading back to the drawing board.

That got awful pessimistic didn't it?