Decipher Scifi : The Show About How And Why

The Novel The title was taken from a Stephen King short story which pretty much otherwise has no relationship at all to the film. This actually led to a lawsuit. Director Brett Leonard Was praised at the time for his vision. Virtuosity. 3D Graphics at the Time of the Film Wolfenstein 3D. Compact discs technology. Sega CD. The cost of this film in time and money. How impressed we all were at the time. Sega console monstrosity. The Sega Tower of Power. Virtual Reality: Past What we thought it would be at the time of the film. Virtual Reality: Present 360° “VR” movies. Google cardboard. AR. How directed do we want our experiences with art to be? Virtual Reality: Future VR training. Holodeck. Pornography. Awesome-sounding VR “theme park” in Utah. [youtube]cML814JD09g[/youtube] Becoming the Lawnmower Man Nootropics. The singularity. Controlling the real world via the internet. Community: Lawnmower Maintenance and Postnatal Care: Stream on Yahoo!Episode info on the Community

The Novel Philip K. Dick sort of wrote this about himself and his experiences with the Berkeley drug culture. “Everything in A Scanner Darkly I, actually saw.” This novel is probably the least scifi of Dick’s work. Rotoscroping Other famous examples of rotoscroping, but Linklater’s are the first to do it 100%. Interesting custom software with layering techniques. Perfect for this film with its less than firm grip on reality. Drug Addiction We are squares and we know roughly nothing about drugs. But it sure seems bad. Especially the drug in the movie: Substance D. LSD experiments like the following: [youtube]n4Sb8jCJUTw[/youtube] Here is the article about these experiments. Big Brother/Corporate Conspiracy Small conspiracies vs grand conspiracies. Big brother. Alex Jones and Linklater. Govt agencies compelling sharing by private firms. The social effects of being watched. The war on drugs. Fractured Indentity Scramble suits. How much can trust our own senses? Occam’s razor. Unwitting sacrifi

Star Trek Christopher is a big fan. Has a revelation regarding this on the show. Star Trek Fandom Christopher might be a trekkie. The movie is a loving tribute. Star Trek cast reactions to Galaxy Quest. Aliens in the movie Tend to be humanoid. Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element. Abundance, working together. Literalism in language like small human children. Silly Star Trek Tropes The movie uses them for great meta comedy. Transporter. Omega 13 device. Most important crew members go down to explore new worlds. Artemis is Really Really Awesome Here is a good example of the frivolity you could expect (skip to3:38 for gameplay): Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator: iTunesAndroid Play Store Star Trek: The Next Generation: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

author: Christopher Peterson layout: podcast_post wordpress_id: 245 categories: Guest Co-Host Joe Ruppel Podcast tags: Action Adventure army asteroid buenos aires Casper Van Dien Christopher Peterson Denise Richards Dina Meyer drill instructor intelligence Jake Busey Lee Colbert liberation of prisoners moon Nieil Patrick Harriss Paul Verhoven Science Fiction soldiers space battle space marine space ship Thriller total destruction The Movie is a Satire of the Book Heinlein wrote what amounted to military propaganda. Picture Heinlein as the teacher with the missing arm. Verhoven Dislikes Militarism and Fascism Not a surprise for someone who grew up in Nazi-occupied Holland. He thought the book was disgusting and wouldn’t finish reading it - had someone else tell him what happened. Society at Constant War Propaganda. Othering. Resources all in to the military-industrial complex. Militarism. Fascism. Insectoid Aliens and Intelligen

The Script Started Out Much Different What began as a science fiction version of an Agatha Christie mystery grew into a Will Smith blockbuster. And then the studio acquired the rights to Asimov. The Three Laws Law Zero: Robots must not harm humanity. Law One: Robots cannot harm a human. Law Two: Robots must obey humans unless it conflicts with 1 Law Three: Rzobots must avoid harm to themselves except where it conflicts with 2 or 3 Reasoning Around the Three Laws Wouldn’t want any rogue states or terrorist groups getting their hands on a VIKI. VIKI reasons her way around the laws. Tests For Intelligence Art? Emotions? People always moving the goalposts. Domain-specific masteries. Robot Workers Taking our jerbs. Amazing Amazon warehouse robots. Teachers. Service industry. Creative work the most protected, for now. How to handle the fallout from the robot worker class? Guaranteed minimum income experiment in Holland. Google Deep Dreaming:

Lone genius inventor The myth. Thomas Edison. Google. Boss guy taking credit. Standing on the shoulders of giants. Could the open source movement make great breakthroughs possible for small groups? Didn’t it already? Turing Test Commonly misunderstood. But the intelligence in this movie is way past that anyway. Testing for theory of mind might be the right track for the future. Personification of AI Being a cute, vulnerable girl AI goes a long way. Uncanny valley. Sexual attraction to non-human humanoid intelligences. AI Danger Fast/slow takeoff. AI will look back on us like pre-Sapiens fossils. It is not difficult to “escape the box.” If a person can do it, so can a superintelligence. Machine Learning/Data Collection Google might be the biggest and most successful AI project in the world. Phone spying. Black-box neural networks. Algorithmic complexity. AI Ethics Is it immoral to create an AI and not let it be free? “Do you have someone testing you who could turn you off?” Romantic inter

Movies with strict limitations in cast and location Love these! Moon is a good one, seriously only one human actor present. Other pleasing examples include Buried with Ryan Reynolds, The Man From Earth, 12 Angry Men is the greatest. Isolation Humans need other humans. Our own introversion. Solitary confinement is torture. Having the light at the end of the tunnel. Gerty Love the robot design. Practical to the extreme. He has a cupholder! The name means nothing. LOVE the smiley interface. Hal 9000 references. Space Business Multinational mega corporation with government ties. Bottom line is all that matters. The economics of evil and helium-3 mining. Exploitative labor practices. Helium 3 science. [spoiler title=’Spoiler Notes’ style=’default’ collapse_link=’true’] Cloning How would you feel to be a clone? To be an original who is cloned? A clone of you, even in adult form with implanted memories, is not “you” anymore once the copy is made. Could you work together with your clone?[/spoiler]

Wesley Snipes, irl criminal, fights Sylvester Stallone in the future while wearing hammer pants and gaudy earrings. Future sci-fi hijinx ensue. Criminal Rehabilitation Rehab or punishment? Synaptic suggestion for true rehabilitation? The time needed for the rehab process in the film. Cryogenic freezing. Stallone says he was awake, probably wasn’t. Better than prison. What if evil dictators had this technology? Implantable Skills Huge benefits. Whoah, I know kung fu. Free will. No need for college, just plug in. But who will be the lower class? Nonviolence Unreasonable to have a pacifistic society in a world with self-interested human actors? Silliness. Stagnation of martial skills. Thought Policing Anything not good for you is bad, hence illegal. Fluid transfer illegal. Can humanity move beyond sex? Maybe after the singularity. Should we even call it humanity at that point? Future Tech Communications technology prescience. Video calls on tablets. Self driving cars. Stallone is a curmudgeon

Quotes Cale: “Everyday I wake up and it’s still the present. The same grimy, boring present. I don’t think this “future” thing of yours exists. “ How mundane the miracles of technology seem once they become ubiquitous. Wikipedia. Butt-washing machines. Korso: “That the human race is outta gas. It’s circling the drain. It’s finished! The only thing that matters is grabbing whatcha can before somebody else beats ya to it.” The desperation of desperate people in desperate times. FYGM, rational self-interest. Sci-fi’s common dichotomy between high and low life with high tech. Director Donald Bluth directed. also made Dragon’s Lair, Space Ace video games. And the movies An American Tale and The Land Before Time. Fox Animation Studios closed after Titan did badly in theaters. CG/2D Space is beautiful in CG. Christopher loves the 2d hand-drawn cell animation on top of CG environments. 2.5d, perhaps. 90s The music of the 90s. 90s fashion. Mat Damon’s hair. Powerman 5000. Spaceship repair montage. Alie