A couple of interesting things happened shortly before i left my flat to go watch Wall-E (2008).

First, i finished reading Citizen Cyborg by James Hughes. The book, which i will soon review on this blog, makes a compelling case for Democratic Transhumanism, and as a subset of this, for extending certain rights to non-Humans (be it Apes, Dolphins, Elephants, Robots or Aliens…), under the argument that we have an obligation to treat anyone or anything capable of feelings and of self-awareness in the same manner (or almost the same manner, depending on various criteria) that we would (should) treat our fellow human beings. The second thing that happened is that i came across two very recent articles that proved timely and appropriate in their relevance to Pixar’s new film: Emotional robots in the spotlight and When Human Rights Extend to Nonhumans.

As a Democratic Transhumanist and Technogaianist who grew up absorbing large quantities of Science Fiction cinema and literature, i have never felt anything remotely bizarre or ‘abnormal’ in the idea of giving human rights (and one day, equal rights) to non-human creatures. It is a very arrogant notion to think that only human beings deserve the right to not be tortured, beaten or imprisoned. All animals today deserve at least to be treated with fairness and in a similar fashion to the way we (should) treat human beings who suffer from mental or physical handicaps. And the more intelligent animals are and then become (through genetic engineering), the more rights they should receive. The same applies to robots. Many people continue to harbor negative feelings towards robots, and most cinematic or media representations of robots and artificial intelligences still tend to focus on dystopic visions and worse-case scenarios for the future, but as soon as you place these people in front of a little machine that makes cute sounds or starts to even remotely act human (Honda’s ASIMO or Sony’s Qrio for example), their fear begins to alleviate and the possibility suddenly arises that this machine might be worthy of our empathy after all. As machines become more intelligent and more human, we will learn to treat them with respect, and one day, we might even forget that they are machines. This process will not be easy and we can expect to meet many Luddites and robot-haters (human-racists) along the way, the type of narrow-minded and hateful people that Steven Spielberg portrayed in his film Artificial Intelligence: A.I (2001). But ultimately, old-style humans will become just one of several types of creatures existing on Earth and on other planets, and issues of rights will turn out to be increasingly relevant and important.

Enters WALL-E, Pixar’s latest magical creation, a little box of a robot (who looks uncannily like E.T (1982)) designed to collect the waste that has covered the surface of the Earth. Humans have long left the planet, unable to co-exist with the garbage that they created. Instead, they now live in gigantic spaceships, their every need attended to by machines, and their humanity slowly disappearing as they become fat, illiterate and totally devoid of social aptitudes. This dystopic representation of the future is very much based on early 21st century fears regarding our abuse of the environment and of natural resources, obesity, sedentary lifestyles, addiction to the internet, and loss of old-fashioned values and traditions, but it fails to take into account the technological advances that will make some of these problems obsolete. Still, these issues are today very real, and even if progress helps us overcome them in the future, they must nonetheless be addressed today. The pollution of our planet, for example, by our relentless need for energy and consumption, and by the greed of corporations, is slowly turning into a global catastrophe with potentially dire consequences for Earth and its inhabitants.

It is thus on this fairly bleak canvas that Pixar paints a love story between two robots who risk their lives to help bring life and humanity back to a desolate Earth. Pixar has repeatedly shown with Toy Story (1995), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), and Ratatouille (2007) that animation has the power to move adults and children alike and that animated films deserve to be given the same credit as non-animated features. With WALL-E, they manage to develop a powerful and extremely moving love story between two machines, and to raise several pertinent current issues in the process. Some have argued that the film loses some of its edge as it goes along, especially with its fairly cliché happy ending. However, and i like bleakness as much as the next Frenchman, i personally see WALL-E as a fairy tale that needs no apology for its happy resolution. Pixar already pushed the envelope plenty with this animated feature and I don’t think that keeping the bleakness going to the very end would have been appropriate. So simply let the joy and entertainment of ‘WALL-E the love story’ overcome you and view its morale as a call for awareness and action rather than as an apocalyptic message. Oh, and don’t forget: robots can be human too.

I once submitted several questions to the online discussion platform for social and environmental change www.droppingknowledge.org (a platform which I helped build). One of these questions raised the issue of whether it makes sense to spend so much money on space exploration when so much needs to be done on earth. I asked the question because this theme is of interest to me, although I have never believed that reducing our investment in space programs would directly and positively affect problems such as poverty or pollution. It is not more money that we need to overcome these problems. It is commitment and sacrifices of another type. Nonetheless, I have encountered many social thinkers and environmentalists who see no purpose in space exploration and regard it as a waste of resources and while I can see their point to a certain extent, I remain fully convinced in the beauty and mystery of space exploration. I also believe that man’s destiny lies in the stars and that it will not be long before some of us begin to leave the blue planet behind.

In the Shadow of the Moon is a outstanding documentary film on the Apollo Space Program (the Mercury Program is briefly mentioned, referencing The Right Stuff, the book by Tom Wolf, which was turned into an excellent film by Philip Kaufman in 1983), narrated by the small group of men who had the privilege, and courage, to be the first humans to step on an alien world. The film is remarkably well put together and adroitly combines the fascinating tales and emotional insights of the astronauts with some amazing footage from NASA. It all feels so real that one immediately forgets that the film is an assemblage of original footage taken 35 years ago by cameras in cockpits or attached to spacecrafts and lunar modules. This footage is so skilfully intertwined with the narrative that one could be forgiven for thinking that the film crew shot additional footage to serve the storyline. What can not be forgiven however, after watching this brilliant and intensely touching film, is to continue thinking that the moon landings were a creation of the US government and that they in fact never took place. I believe there is plenty of proof in In the Shadow of the Moon to dispel any such absurd notions.

But what stands out the most for me after watching this film is the spirituality that these men developed after experiencing not only the beauty of the cosmos but also the serenity and fragility of our planet as seen from space. Some of the shots of Earth taken by the astronauts during the various Apollo flights have become omnipresent in our media over the past 30 years and, more importantly, have become synonymous in certain circles with a visualization of our planet as the self-regulating homeostatic organism named Gaia. First proposed by Dr. James Lovelock (who incidentally started developing his theory while working for NASA) in the early 70s, but already hinted at by Vladimir Vernadsky in the 20s in his seminal book The Biosphere, the Gaia theory has been embraced by most people who feel empathy towards our planet and who regard it as a connected and living organism that deserves our respect and attention. And while Gaianism has been around for a while, and has even regained some of its momentum in the past few years in connection with the increased number of environmental issues facing our planet, a new belief has emerged, one that merges a deep respect for the Earth and all of its living creatures with a conviction in the powers of technology to help us overcome these issues and to, in the process, achieve a deeper spirituality and a global consciousness. Drawing, among others, on the work of the French monk Teilhard de Chardin who believed that technology would help us reach The Omega Point which is a higher state of global consciousness, these believers, and i am one of them, in TechnoGaianism tend to also be transhumanists with a social agenda and a democratic slant (James Hughes’ Citizen Cyborg is a particularly good reference on this latter subject).

Perhaps we do need Space and to get closer to the stars to remind us not to forget our duties towards Earth. Where some people might detect an irony or even an incompatibility between space exploration and the preservation and love of our planet, I see an interconnectedness following its logical progress and taking the human race to its next step in evolution, clearly driven for the first time in history by Man itself and in agreement with a desire to see all living and non living creatures existing in perfect harmony with this or any other planet and thus, with the cosmos as a whole.

So here I am, hanging out in the flavellas of Rio de Janeiro, taking some well deserved time off from my busy schedule and hoping to find inspiration for my next screenplay, when, sadly, I come across a film shoot: Hulk número duas.
I observe silently for a few minutes until Louis Letterier comes over, greets me and proceeds to tell me about how this Hulk movie is going to kick some serious ass but also how it will skilfully marry action, adventure, mystery and emotional depth. A new level in comic book adaptation, a work of such intensity that people will quickly forget the mediocrity of Ang Lee’s first Hulk, he says…a portrayal of emotionally troubled creatures who long for the acceptance of the world and the normalness of others…a story of love, betrayal, courage and sacrifice…a timeless piece that, yada yada yada yada…

At that moment, feeling a sudden craving for a Mojito, I pull one of my best disappearing acts, leaving this man behind who is still talking to no one, and knowing only too well that this Hulk film is going to be a disaster of monstrous proportions.

Once in a while, one stumbles upon a work of such quality that one cannot help but to be baffled at how such a work could escape one’s notice for so long. Diaspora, written in 1997 by Greg Egan, is one of the most powerful, mind bending and far reaching book I have ever read.

As I have posted several times before, one of the drawbacks of many Sci-Fi representations and stories brought to the silver screen, is the difficulty in reaching the right balance between depicting a credible future, sometimes a distant future, while at the same time preserving some sense of ‘normality’ as well as traditional frames of references in order to not alienate the viewer. Unfortunately, this balance is rarely reached and most of Hollywood’s visualizations tend to be very limited and writers or directors seem content to show us the same old humans with the same old problems, values and physical characteristics, regardless of when in the future the story might be occurring. Just place these archaic visions of the past in front of a couple of futuristic looking buildings, add some fancy cars with doors that slide vertically and complete the package with the occasional gismo to obtain your average run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi flick.

While Sci-Fi literature offers many possibilities for more credible, fleshed out and geeky visions of the future, there has still been an over-reliance on ‘traditional’ humans as lead or even as only characters. This seems to have changed in the past few years, and the implications of Transhumanisn are increasingly being used as material for many Sci-Fi books. In Diaspora, Greg Egan describes in great detail how the ‘human race’ might split and evolve towards a post human future. While the process of becoming more than human will most likely be very gradual, with humans combining with machines and vice versa (a process that has already started with the adoption of pacemakers, Cochlear implants, prosthetic limbs, or even the mobile phone which has become a natural extension of ourselves), Egan portrays a future a few hundred years hence dominated by three main forms of beings: the Fleshers, ‘traditional’ humans with or without genetic modifications, the Gleisner Robots, robotic shells inhabited by human minds, and the Polis Citizens, the uploaded minds of humans ‘living’ in computer and simulated worlds. In addition, on rare occasions, the polis creates a new mind, a purely artificially conceived one, albeit very human in many ways.

Over a period of several thousand years, Egan traces the quest of some of these Polis Citizens as they attempt to prevent and then escape the destruction of our universe (an early consequence of this destruction is the end of the Fleshers, and thus, the end of humanity as we know it today). This quest will lead these highly advanced non-physical entities, our descendants, to some of the most far-reaching destinations the mind could possibly conceive.

Egan doesn’t shy away from grand mathematical and physical speculation, and for the average reader, his lengthy descriptions of the universe’s most innate workings will seem a bit tedious at times. But sticking through these sections is quite worth it as one is rewarded by an avalanche of fantastic and awe-inspiring concepts. There is plenty to ponder in Diaspora and anyone interested in what existence might be like as an uploaded mind, in a possible direction for the future of the human race, in parallel universes and multi-dimensions, in the potential for alien life, or simply in the infinite mystery and beauty of the cosmos, then this book is an absolute must-read.

I am still somewhat perplexed by Ken MacLeod’s decision to conspicuously display ‘A Space Opera’ on the cover of his book, directly below the title. Is he trying to inform us from the very start that because it is a space opera, we shouldn’t take some of its content too seriously? Is this a way to excuse or justify a certain lightness and comic approach to this story about the future of the human race 400 years from now, after a singularity-type explosion of technological advancement has led to war on earth and to the splitting of the remaining humans in various gangs that compete with one another in space? If yes, is this disclaimer powerful enough to lessen one’s disappointment when reading that the future will be led by a gang of swearing Capitalist Scots or by some East-Asian Communist community of terraformers? Is this fun for 300 pages? I certainly didn’t think so and was bored after 50. The ideas brought forth in Newton’s Wake do not feel challenging and thought provoking enough or have been better depicted in other novels. They seem to rely on a very 20th century understanding of human nature, communication and social interactions. In addition, the lead characters are all quite uninspiring and, in fact, not really likeable, as exemplified by one of the stories which revolves around two musicians who are, in my opinion, two of the most boring characters I have read in a book recently.
In conclusion, my first exposure to the work of a man who is supposedly a new force in Sci-Fi and transhumanist literature has not been a very enjoyable one and it might be a while before I attempt to read another one of his books.

A friend of mine recently commented that, as a child, he couldn’t get into Iron Man because as far as super heroes went, IM was pretty lame. I also never quite got into the exoskeleton-wearing playboy myself, and I must agree that without fancy super powers, radioactive bugs, hammers from the Gods, extravagant nemesis, or mystical origins, Iron Man in fact offered very little to tickle the imagination of young men looking for something beyond what can sometimes be perceived as the boring limitations of reality.

Iron Man in 2008 tries to connect us to the realities of terrorism and war, attempting perhaps to distance itself from the traditional comic book approach and target market. The Man of Steel (of nano fiber would be more appropriate) can help us win the war on terrorism and the world would be a better place if all the greedy businessmen like Tony Stark, Iron Man’s alter ego, would realize that there is more to gain by helping their fellow human beings than by profiting from them. Thus, a weak and overly simple morality angle underpins a film that also happens to have very little action in it. Following unsuccessfully in the footsteps of the Spiderman franchise, Iron Man tries to be too smart for its own good and is filled with cheap lessons about life. Oh and it banks all of its coolness factor on everyone’s latest and most favourite celebrity: Robert Downey Jr.

Don’t get me wrong; I like the guy as much as anyone else. He oozes so much coolness, he ought to patent it. And ever since I watched Less than Zero (1987) eons ago, I learned to appreciate his mannerisms and the overall modus operandi that is so specific to his acting. But I have also come to understand that this is exactly where the problem is with his performances. One is always watching Robert Downey Jr., and rarely the characters that he portrays. Whatever film of his one watches, one can always expect to see Robert Downey Jr. turning up. But because he is so likeable, and now bankable, roles are made to fit around this set of mannerisms. Whether in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), Fur (2006), A Scanner Darkly (2006), Zodiac (2007), and now Iron Man, the Robert Downey Jr. persona is stronger than the character he is supposed to impersonate, even if this character is perfectly suited to his mannerisms.

There are so many comic book film adaptations these days that each film must find an edge, a unique selling proposition, to make it appealing and marketable. Personally, I think the angles that they found as an excuse to resuscitate Iron Man - current world events, Robert Downey Jr., and possibly the relevance of some of the technology (building such an exoskeleton with the capacity for enhanced strength, vision, communication, endurance, etc…has today nothing to do anymore with Sci-Fi. This is one of the many things that DARPA has been working on for years) on display in the film - are not enough to make this a compelling picture. The characters are by and large poorly developed (which can sometimes be tolerated in comic book adaptations, as long as something else compensate for it), the storyline is fairly weak and predictable, and the action sorely lacking. If one is not going to include much action in such a film, they should ensure that at least other aspects of the film are strong enough to support the overall experience. The end result is that Iron Man is unfortunately a bit bland.

Taking place in the Paris of the very near future, this French cyber thriller, reminiscent of the slightly better Renaissance (2006), tries very hard to be noir, cool and hip but pretty much fails on all levels.

The de rigueur techno bluish-chrome cinematography is of little help in bringing this story about cloning and memory implants to an above average level.
The lead character can’t act even if his life depended on it, making one wonder why some directors seem to think that mediocre actors are a good choice to play unemotional black turtleneck-wearing tough guys.

There are a couple of somewhat interesting scenes where the technology discussed in the film is displayed, such as remote surgery and memory removal and implantation, but, overall, Chrysalis is a bit of a yawner.

And we would like to thank all the corporate sponsors whose brands are shamelessly and promiscuously displayed throughout the film….

A sometimes poorly structured and organized documentary with a moderator whose voice would put you to sleep if the topic wasn’t so interesting, The Future of Food nonetheless provides an interesting look into the dangers of genetically modified foods and is a good companion piece to the better We Feed the World (2005).

As people across the globe slowly become accustomed to hearing about genetically modified corn, canola or soybeans and fail to fully understand how it impacts them, corporations such as Monsanto are busy patenting seeds (and thus life; a horrifying thought to ponder. Big pharma is now beginning to patent genes), developing and planting new genetically modified crops, unbeknownst to most, and suing farmers in an effort to pressure them to use these corporations’ seeds. These corporations are also consolidating the food supply, thereby reducing the diversity of our crops and produces and driving many farming communities out of business, both in the Western and Third Worlds. In a word, everything awful that you have ever heard about what motivates corporations is unfortunately also applicable to the world of agriculture and genetically modified foods.

But this is not new. Monsanto’s main pesticide and herbicide, which has been used widely for decades in numerous countries, is based on military technology from World War Two, particularly on nerve gas and on the famous Agent Orange. Has Monsanto ever bothered to try to really understand what this means in the long term for the people eating crops or eating the animals that eat the crops sprayed with this stuff? Probably not. As one Monsanto executive stated about genetically modified foods, their only responsibility is to sell their product and to make money, not to ensure their safety, which they regard as the responsibility of the government. Unfortunately for all of us, most of the individuals with the real power in the two branches of the government that are supposedly looking after our safety (Federal Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture) are ex-Monsanto employees or are directly affiliated with the corporate world, in a manner reminiscent of the Bush’s administration’s various ties to many corporations that benefited from the war in Iraq. We live at a time when compassion and empathy are badly needed, but these are clearly not a corporation’s forte.

Therefore, it is up to us to ensure the safety of our food by living an organic lifestyle, by informing ourselves and by putting pressure on these corporations to increase the safety of their products and to provide us with more transparency on their actions and on which foods contain GMOs. The most naïve thing people can do is to assume that their voice or actions do not count. In the same way that something as simple and easy as replacing the light bulbs in your house can make a difference and reduce your energy consumption, buying organic produces, supporting your local farmers and encouraging sustainable farming can have an impact on the system, as well as on your health.

As I have stated before, we live at what I consider to be the most important and interesting time in our history. Our mastery of science is increasingly enabling us to consider new horizons and to change our destiny in ways that would have seemed impossible not so long ago. I believe in technology and I believe that it can have a positive impact on society. As a futurist, I also believe in the inevitability of progress and that whatever we fear today, we will accept tomorrow. For this reason, I am not opposed to genetically modified foods in the long run, in the same way that I am not opposed to genetic engineering in general. Yet, I believe that we are at the early stages of these developments and that they are currently not safe. Consequently, it is out duty to ensure their safety by pressuring the system. A year ago, driving back from the G8 demonstrations in Northern Germany, a friend asked me why I resisted GMO’s if I loved technology. I answered that I fight it to ensure its safety as quickly as possible, before it does too much damage, rather than to try to ensure that it never happens. I also do it because corporations are out of control and are ruling too many aspects of our lives. Their power must be reduced and their greed controlled. It is our choice to decide if we want to try to make a difference.

http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto

http://www.thecampaign.org/

http://www.monsantowatch.org/

http://www.ucsusa.org/

Terrible acting, incredibly badly written script, poorly developed characters, horrendous and annoying soundtrack, total rip off of previous films, complete lack of creativity in terms of visualizing the future 25 years from now, amateurish film making…that about sums us this so-called film about a quarantined Scotland in the year 2030 after a virus has killed most of the population.

Any credibility that Neil Marshall gained with The Descent (boy am I glad that I did not join many others in praising it) should be immediately revoked and his name sent back to the depths of obscurity from which it came.

Doomsday has got to be one of the worst films in recent memory and I am very sorry I watched it.

I recently asked a New Yorker if he had watched I am Legend (2007). His reply was that since 9/11, he has had no desire to watch any film that deals with the destruction of his city. While I am Legend didn’t draw obvious parallels to that fateful day seven years ago, it is however difficult to miss them in Cloverfield and to consequently not feel at times slightly uncomfortable at the sight of people dying and being trapped in situations in which they have absolutely no control over their fate.

Cloverfield is an old-fashioned 1950’s monster flick (see my post on sci-fi/horror and the city) that draws heavily on current filmmaking and social trends, especially in its depiction of a YouTube/Facebook need to document and share everything about one’s self, one’s experiences, even possibly about one’s death (everything leading up to death that is, which is clearly a lot more voyeuristic and contemporary than wanting to document what happens after death, which was the premise of the 80’s film Brainstorm (1983)). The Blair Witch Project (1999) had already caught on to these ‘self-documenting’ trends years ago, and as such, proved to be a groundbreaking film. Cloverfield, on the other hand, can only rehash what has been done before, and puts the documenting so much in the foreground that it often takes away from the believability of some of the scenes. It feels too much that the story is built around the idea of documenting whereas in The Blair Witch Project documenting was more seamlessly integrated into a solid narrative. In addition, the intensity and the wobbliness of the camera movements, while effective for the most part, can sometimes be confusing and even tiring.

Yet, Cloverfield also manages to keep us on the edge of our seat and to deliver an overall intense, and at times, frightening experience. The first half of the movie is the most effective since we are left guessing as to what exactly is terrorizing the city. One of the many things that Alien (1979) taught us (its impact on the horror/sci-fi genre has been inestimable) is that one can probably create more tension and suspense by showing less and by letting the potent powers of the imagination do the visualizing, which is most often based on one’s worst fears. Once we have become acquainted with the monster(s) of Cloverfied, the film starts to lose some of its pace and power, a fact reinforced by the increasing silliness of the protagonists’ decision-making. But a nice twist in the last ten minutes saves us from the unexpected dreadful and predictable ending.

In the end, running at a short 85 minutes, Cloverfield turns out to be a decently enjoyable viewing experience that is clearly in a higher league than recent monster films and remakes such as the dreadful Godzilla (1998).

Occasionally, driven by some masochistic need, I subject myself to some trash flick knowing only too well that I am going to regret it two hours later. These films are usually bad Sci-Fi films and the reason I keep doing this to myself is to check how they deal with various futurist topics.
In the case of Jumper, which, as I feared it would be, is a mediocre film, the concept of teleportation serves as a backdrop for a boring romantic and action-driven story line with a strong teen accent. The acting is on the most part dreadful, especially Hayden Christensen in the lead role, and one can only wonder why Samuel L. Jackson seems so interested in playing in so many appalling films. Perhaps he just wants to have fun.

It is however interesting to speculate about the possibility of teleportation. Teleportation has always fascinated Sci-Fi aficionados due to the potential that it offers. Who would not want to be at home in Paris and in San Francisco two minutes later for dinner? Just imaging the possibilities, on earth and across space and galaxies, when these are one day populated by our descendents.
In Jumper, some genetic anomaly allows certain people to teleport themselves anywhere simply by visualizing a preferred destination. This teleportation method, sometimes called p-teleportation or psychoportation in Sci-Fi literature, differs from the usual TV or cinema depiction which traditionally relies on the help of some technological device as seen, for example, in both The Fly (1986) and Star Trek (1979). While teleportation through simply wishing it seems a distant possibility, the more conventional vision is actually not too far-fetched. It is today possible to quantum teleport the information contained within photons and atoms. Scientists are not yet able to teleport matter or energy, but there is no reason to think that this will not happen at some point in the near future (especially if we count on the Singularity). Naturally, enormous problems remain to be solved, such as how to capture accurately all the information contained in the human body so that this information can be copied and reconstructed at destination, or how to ensure that even a perfect copy based on atoms, DNA and molecules, is not missing one key ingredient: consciousness. Depending on one’s religious beliefs, the destruction of one’s original body could be seen as unethical, in the same way that cloning is considered by many to be morally wrong. In addition, for these same people, the idea of transferring the soul into a copy, if this were to be feasible, would constitute a serious act of immoral transgression. All of this will obviously not stop the scientific community from further exploring the concept of teleportation until it is one day possible to record, deconstruct, send and reassemble a human being, soul included, in a fraction of a second and to any destination desired.

In quantum healing circles, it is argued that consciousness, and perhaps the soul, is contained, not in some part of the brain or in some abstract location, but rather in every atom and DNA strand of our bodies. Each cell in our organism contains our mind and has the power to affect every other cell, making our brain the messenger rather than the control room for many aspects of our lives. Furthermore, according to Laszlo’s Integral Theory and Connectivity Hypothesis (which i reviewed here), our cells, and thus our mind, are also connected to the cosmos and all that it contains, making the transfer of information between remote places and entities an opportunity that might exist within all of us but that we unfortunately forgot long ago. If this is indeed true, and I believe it is, the teleportation concept described earlier might even be easier to implement since consciousness might not need to be regarded as separate (and if it is, perhaps Mind Uploading can take care of that part). This could also increase the likelihood that psychoportation, as portrayed in Jumper, whereby one person wishes his or her DNA to be somewhere else, will one day be achievable. After all, Charles Fort coined the term teleportation in 1931 in an attempt to describe paranormal phenomenon which traditional science could not explain. Integral theorists also believe that the paranormal and mystical has a place alongside traditional science in trying to understand our world. Paranormal events might only be a part of a reality which we became blind to.

On a closing note, it is worth mentioning that another method of teleportation could too become reality, albeit probably much later. Using wormholes, another favorite of Sci-Fi literature, to go through space-time is an established possibility within scientific circles and could one day allow us to use gates to move easily and instantaneously throughout our universe or across parallel universes. In a recent article for New Scientist, Michio Kaku actually considers both the teleportation of a person and the use of wormholes to be what he refers to as Class II impossibilities. This means that scientists firmly believe that, although out of the reach of today’s knowledge and technology, these feats are certain to become reality within a few centuries.

From a futurist perspective, the possibility that everything in the universe is connected by a quantum vacuum (or Akashic field, or any other name that might help define what remains an elusive theory), from the smallest particles to the largest cosmic phenomenon, is a fascinating idea to contemplate.
Many transhumanists, such as Raymond Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, believe in the concept of a future global consciousness, enabled through the merging of the human brain with technology, particularly artificial intelligence. Already today, many are pointing at the rise of social applications, the increasing use of mobile technology and at the speed at which the Internet is evolving, to draw comparisons with various aspects of the human brain. Could the Internet become conscious? It is indeed a possibility that is not to be discounted.
Likewise, it is very likely that, sooner than most people realize, human beings, through mind upload and the development of AI, will be able to achieve a pooled consciousness, which one can only hope will lead to a betterment of many ills that plague our world today.
Yet, this connectivity exists already today, as it has for as long as the universe has existed. Moreover, if we believe the System Theorist and Integral Theorist Ervin Laszlo, our universe, having benefited from the infinite learning of this connectivity and coherence, is itself only an enhancement of previous universes, thereby explaining the ultimate perfection that enables every aspect of our cosmic life to come together and function.
Laszlo further speculates that every atom in our body is connected to every atom in the universe, including naturally to those of our fellow biological entities. To support these claims of connectivity between human beings and the cosmos, Laszlo provides a plethora of examples and scientific tests that have been performed over the past 100 years. Regrettably, the troubling and fascinating results from these tests have been mostly ignored by the scientific community (and by the medical community as well, as explained by, for example, Deepak Chopra in his books on Quantum Healing) and by the public as a whole, who prefers instead to discount them and to classify them as alternative and mystical belief.

This loss of ‘focus’ keeps us as a species from reaching towards global consciousness and higher states of being, a realm which is today the exclusivity of a very few, usually those practicing meditation or those gifted with certain abilities such as healing, clairvoyance or even deep compassion and empathy. While technology can be the promise for a better future, there is no need to wait for the Singularity and beyond for the merging of our minds with that of machines to reach global consciousness. We can renew a process that was lost a long time ago by reaching out to the cosmos and by embracing the possibilities of the quantum vacuum that exists all around us and within us. Because we are the cosmos.

This channel 4 documentary, narrated by Christopher Sykes provides an overview of Aubrey de Grey’s efforts to defeat aging. An interesting look at the man who believes that we can perhaps abolish death within the next three decades and whose SENS research into aging is the source of much controversy, it nonetheless offers little new information for those of us who follow de Grey’s work on a regular basis.

I personally even found the selection of shots and angles to be at times purposely unflattering towards the various people that make up the anti-aging group by depicting them as a bit wacky and outside of the ‘norm’. In most cases, the pro-de Grey individuals are interviewed in their home or in a ‘non-institutionalized’ setting, which provides more opportunity for personal judgement and subjective conclusions, whereas the anti-longevity group is mainly seen in laboratories or expensive offices filled with books, as if to tell us that these people know what they are talking about and thus, that they should be trusted.

Does one need to be weird to want to live forever? That seems to be what this documentary would want you to believe. It also reinforces the cliché that if you are not within the norm (whatever this means) then you are strange and eccentric.
As I already explained when I reviewed Radical Evolution, it is interesting that the people who tend to be opposed to a drastically increased or to an unlimited lifespan tend to view those who seek to abolish death as mad geniuses who will do the world more harm than good. They also believe that today’s definition of normal is the one that must be upheld forever, the one that must endure. This obviously implies a complete disregard for what used to be considered normal (a very slippery concept when appraised in the context of history and within cultural considerations), and naturally, for what could become normal. It also implies, in my view, a total selfishness and narrow-minded belief that what we have today is as good as it is ever going to get and that our 20th and 21st century values (or rather, their values) are better and more appropriate than past or future values.

The ‘humanistic’ and preferred angle chosen by many who are opposed to eternal life is that death is what gives meaning to it all (see my review of The Fountain). Without death, one wouldn’t fully be alive. Quoting Freeman Dyson, ‘our humanity depends on the old ones getting out of the way’. Perhaps it is so; perhaps our definition of humanity today depends on newer generations replacing the old ones. But at the centre of these discussions is the word humanity. The anti-aging camp, and futurists in general, accept the idea that our humanity, which is what defines us in terms of values, belief systems, qualities and characteristics, can continue to evolve, even if it means abandoning today’s definition. The critics, on the other hand, seem incapable of accepting a future that will have redefined what it means to be human, especially not if we are the ones who have taken over the process of evolution.
Leave it to nature they say. Do not interfere with the natural order of things. But many of the humans race’s great accomplishments have occurred due to its interference with the natural order of things. If this were not the case, we would be living in a very different world today. I believe it is in the nature of Man to seek control over its own destiny. We live at a time when technology has given us the tools to do so with unparalleled assertion, confidence and power. We are now in control and to negate this potential would be foolish. Rather than negation, what we need is proper monitoring and ethical management of these issues and for the sceptics to apply their knowledge and concerns towards ensuring, not that this research does not happen since it will regardless, but rather, that it does happen in the safest and most beneficial way for all.

Documentaries can be very manipulative and can often play to the already established opinions and beliefs of its viewers. While watching ‘Do you want to live Forever?’, I couldn’t help using my own biases to filter the information I was absorbing. And in doing so, I found Sherwin Nuland and Preston Estep’s (despite Etep’s role in anti-aging research) opinions and arguments against de Grey to be filled with the exact same fear, envy and selfishness that they accuse him of. I tremble when I hear Nuland stating that the world could be destroyed by people such as de Grey and I fear that it is instead the Nulands of this world, the people who keep telling others what is best for them and who keep referring to the norm as the ideal mode of living, as if stuck in some 1950’s suburban ideology, whom we must fear the most.

De Grey is an enigmatic character who has made it his purpose to defeat aging. Whatever his reasons are (and this is another aspect of the documentary that I had problems with; this need to connect de Grey’s quest with a lack of love as a child or with some kind of egomaniac drive), his passion is undeniable and his approach, as unorthodox and threatening as it may be to some of the established scientific community, can only bring freshness, challenge, increased awareness and interest, and, let us hope, faster results.

Related websites:

www.Mprize.org
www.ImmInst.org
www.sens.org
www.longevitymeme.org
www.fightaging.org

I am grateful to Francis Lawrence, who previously directed the decent comic book adaptation Constantine (2005), for bringing seriousness, darkness and sobriety to the Hollywood Sci-Fi blockbuster. In a world where the Michael Bays are working hard to reduce the global IQ and EQ levels with mind numbing big budget action, it is refreshing to see a director trying to add cleverness to escapist entertainment.

I am Legend is based on the 1954 influential novel by Richard Matheson, and it is now the third time that this apocalyptic tale of the last man on earth, somehow immune to a virus that has either killed everyone else or turned them into vampire/zombie hybrids, has been made into a film. The Last Man on Earth (1964) with Vincent Price, has become a cult classic and set the standard for all future zombie films (George A. Romero has often credited the novel as his inspiration for Night of the Living Dead (1968)) while The Omega Man (1971) with Charlton Heston, who brings to the film his Planet of the Apes (1968) / Soylent Green (1973) ’screw the world’ cynism, does the original novel less justice and suffers from several problems, least of which is the laughability of its creatures.

One of the most annoying trademarks of Hollywood blockbusters, at least to me, is the supposedly funny one-liners that the hero typically spurts out in the most improbable situations. Normally used to alleviate tension and to bring lightness where there should be none, the blockbuster funny one-liner dumbs down and cheapens the cinematic experience. I was able to count only one in I am Legend (‘I like Shrek’) which is a major improvement over the number that can be found, for example, in two of Will Smith’s previous Sci-Fi efforts, Independence Day (1996) and I, Robot (2004) or in Michael Bay’s most recent disaster, Transformers (2007).
One is also the figure I came up with for the number of really poorly scripted scenes (Bob Marley Sr.), which, again, is quite an achievement for a film this expensive and this heavily marketed.

That is not to say that I am Legend has no other flaws but, again, when measured within the greater considerations of the blockbuster, these seem fairly harmless and do not detract too much from the overall viewing experience. The sobriety is at times reminiscent of The Quiet Earth (1985) while a couple of chilling scenes will bring 28 Days Later (2002) to mind and even The Descent (2005) in one case.

In 2001, Judith Berman stated that Science Fiction literature was suffering from a failure of imagination and that the best most writers could offer us these days is Sci-Fi without the Future. This point was made again more recently by Alex Steffen in WorldChanging. After all, even Sci-Fi and Cyberpunk supremos William Gibson and Neil Stephenson have decided to take a break from the future in favour of the present or the past. In the words of Gibson himself, ‘the future is already here. I have become convinced that it is silly to try to imagine futures these days‘. Some writers now find it difficult, and perhaps also less fun and challenging, to write about a future, the near future at least, that has caught up with us. Cyberpunk’s not dead some might retort, but a strong case can be made that we are today experiencing the future more strongly than ever before.

One man for whom the very near future continues to be a source of inspiration is Vernor Vinge. Vinge, an ex-mathematician and computer science professor from San Diego State University, whose novels A Fire Upon the Deep (92) and A Deepness in the Sky (99) I can highly recommend, achieved notoriety in Futurist circles when he proposed his theory of The Singularity at a NASA conference in 1993. Vinge, along with many other fellow futurists such as Raymond Kurzweil and Nick Bostrom, believes that we are fast approaching the point at which technological advancement will become so rapid that the possibilities will become endless.

In Rainbows End, which won the Hugo prize in 2007, he explores, by way of a cyber thriller, the impact of this exponential growth in technology on the merging of the real world with the 4 scenarios described in the 2007 report The Metaverse Roadmap issued by The Acceleration Studies Foundation: Virtual Worlds, Mirror Worlds, Augmented Reality and Lifelogging.

What makes this novel a convincing and compelling read is not necessarily its big ideas or even the underlying plot. Instead, it is the amount of details that Vinge uses to describe everyday life circa 2025. Almost any field of progress that is being discussed today is represented and elaborated on in Rainbows End, providing for an overall depiction of a richly constructed ‘reality’ that feels extremely believable. While great strides have been made in areas such as health, transportation, building and construction, and genetic engineering, it is around the 4 Metaverse scenarios mentioned earlier that Vinge builds its portrayal of a near-term society. As it is envisioned in The Metaverse Roadmap, reality in 2025 is a mishmash of the ‘real’, the virtual and the augmented, with the later two (both enhanced and complemented by lifelogging) increasingly replacing the first one as the preferred choice for socializing, learning, communicating, and for entertainment. Vinge uses an ‘old-fashioned’ character, Robert Gu, a man born in the 1960s and cured of Alzheimer in 2025, to not only advance the plot of the story, but also to contrast two worlds and sets of beliefs and to attempt to answer the question: what would life be like for a person with prejudices about the future and about technology if this person woke up in 2025? How would he or she deal with a society where most people below a certain age now wear special contact lenses connected to an astounding amount of computer power embedded in their clothing, thereby allowing them to access instantly information about anything they could possibly want to access, to communicate immediately with anyone on the planet, to create whatever virtual spaces they desire to enable this communication and to see in various layers of augmented reality the fruits of their creation or the results of their requests for information and interaction? In short, how would such a person feel if reality as they knew it had pretty much ceased to exist?

But Vinge doesn’t stop there. He also goes into a fair amount of details about the technology itself and about issues that are already important today with regards to the internet and the WWW and that will obviously become even more so in the future: open source vs proprietary, free vs fee-based, security, privacy, gender, identity, laws and regulations, universal currency, trust, reputation…

If this sounds like a lot to chew on, credit must go to Vinge for adroitly incorporating these discussions into the plot and into the daily life of the characters without the dialogue ever sounding preachy or pedagogic. It’s good entertainment all the way but skilfully mixed with all that you might need to know about the technological, social, economical and philosophical benefits and challenges facing humanity within the next 20 to 30 years.

We live in a world where the artificial and the real are merging at an increasing speed. Indeed, the word real started to lose its original meaning many years ago, particularly in the 80s, as exemplified by the works of people such as Beaudrillard and Fukuyama.  Simulation, simulacrum, hyperreal, virtual reality, augmented reality, alternate reality, all different ways to describe variations of what is slowly replacing the real as we used to know it. As i described in this post and in this essay, animation is an ideal tool to explore these alternate realities and to depict visions of the future. But there are different ways of using animation in film, and some are better than others, depending on the criteria that one uses to judge a film.

Robert Zemeckis, who in 1988 was already exploring the merging of real characters and animation with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, brings his Polar Express (04) performance capture technology to Beowulf, the classic 8th century English poem. Performance capture, another term for motion capture, means that ‘real’ actors, equiped with sensors, act out the scenes in front of a bluescreen, which are then rendered as digi-animations. In most cases, performance capture is used to capture movement. In the case of Beowulf, it is also used to capture visual appearance. And this is where Zemeckis lost of a lot of critics.

For these people, watching The Incredibles (04) or Ratatouille (07) is one thing. In these films, it is clear that the animated humans are not real, even if the story takes place in a copy of our world. Therefore, their acting is not judged on the same level as that of a human actor. However, in Beowulf, the digital characters look a bit like Angelina Jolie and Anthony Hopkins. Hence, a natural reaction for many is to expect more from these characters than they would from an animated one. Afterall, acting is an essential element of solid filmmaking. If this acting is not properly conveyed due to technological limitations, then the film naturally suffers. For this reason (and a couple of others connected to the script), films such as Beowulf can not be as effective and impactful on the collective psyche as animated features have become. But it’s probably only a matter of time and Zemeckis must be given credit for pushing the envelope and for playing with the medium.

But Beowulf is also very entertaining and if one can see beyond the limitations mentioned above, there is plenty of action and escapist fun to be had with this tale of warriors, demons and dragons.

I have never drunk a liter of corn syrup, but i can imagine that it must feel pretty similar to watching The Astronaut Farmer. After a very brief initial period of enjoyment, discomfort sets in, followed rapidly by nausea, resulting in the end in sickness.

This film, about a discharged NASA officer turned farmer who still harbors dreams of going into space and decides to build a rocket in his backyard, has enough cliches and cheap, preachy lines to make you want to forget that the Polish brothers once managed to make two decent films: Northfork (2003) and Twin Falls Idaho (1999) . But the Cohen brothers they are not.

It never ceases to amaze me how much bad acting and miscasting (only Virginia Madsen and Bruce Dern are properly cast and deliver interesting performances) and amateurish writing can still make it to the screen.

Some will be able to look beyond the film’s obvious flaws and will find this feel-good tale entertaining. But its cheap sentimentalism and messages of family, heroism, courage and of the importance of role-models will probably hold more appeal to the US market than to us European cynics.

As we approach the fourth and final season of the TV series Battlestar Galactica, based on the 1978 cult Sci-Fi series of the same name, and with the recent release of the excellent Razor, it is worth stating how surprisingly addictive this modern version is. I can’t remember ever following a TV series for three years in a row, but that is exactly what I have been doing with Galactica, even though I initially got into it somewhat reluctantly, assuming that modern television, which I have come to associate for the most part with trash TV, could not possibly deliver on the promise of the original series, and to a larger extent, could not, week after week, year after year, provide intelligent Sci-Fi.

But Galactica has done just that. There have been many moments when the different style and vision of a new director became too obvious and created a disjunction in the viewing experience and, in some cases, resulted in quite boring episodes, but overall, the series has been consistently solid, entertaining and clever.

Being the cynic that I am, I spent the first few episodes listing all the inconsistencies I could find (and there were many) and why certain things such as fashion, books, pens, products designs, allergies, cancer, city architecture, and much more, all looked and felt so terribly 20th century. A civilization that has mastered the ability to build ships that travel across space but that still writes with pens, uses notebooks and can’t find a cure for breast cancer…At that point, I felt that the problem with Galactica was that it failed where so many Sci-Fi films or series have failed before…it failed to effectively and convincingly create the world that it is supposed to create. Whether for budget reasons or for wanting to keep the viewers in an area of familiarity, or simply, for lack of trying, Galactica uses a large number of current human metaphors, traditions, and habits to portray a world that exists far into the future (or into the past)….but that world should in fact look nothing like today’s world. A civilisation that is capable of building faster-than-light ships, a civilisation that split a long time ago from the civilisation that lived on earth, so long ago in fact that new myths have had time to develop, would dress, eat, behave, live, and possibly even look very different from the way we do today.

But I suppose only Sci-Fi nerds like myself would let that bother them, and in all fairness, I fully realize that sustaining a TV series for 4 years without making these types of mistakes would require a higher budget and/or an increasing reliance on animation and, ultimately, the series would probably end up with a much smaller audience due to a lack of familiar, earth-like, frames of reference.

Despite these initial concerns, I found myself slowly captivated and sucked into this world that adroitly combines human and personal stories with larger issues that draw on current events (torture, war, terrorism, tolerance, politics, genetics….) that also seem fairly plausible as potential issues for the future; well, for the near future at least, since if one looks seriously deep into the future, one would expect some of these issues to be resolved, or at least, to have taken on a very different meaning.
Most of the characters are well developed and cast, and each episode (with the occasional exception) has at its core a strong storyline that offers its own rewards but rarely seems disjointed from the overall and consistent thread of the series.

In the end, it is refreshing and pleasing to see a Sci-Fi TV series being handled with such genuineness and earnest. Battlestar Galactica has definitively done its bit towards restoring credibility to televised Sci-Fi and to Sci-Fi in general.

What do Michael Clayton (07) and The Man from Earth, two very different films which I watched this week, have in common?
They are both respectable and honourable efforts with dreadful endings. They both deal with beautiful shades of grey that sadly bend and dissolve under the pressure of the all-too easy and ever so reassuring black and white. They speak of ambiguity, uncertainty and ambivalence, but can only snap back, or break, like a rubber band that has been stretched too far, to the comfort and familiarity of the expected.
The Man from Earth is one of those talking films that relies on one location only, in this case a living room, the type of film that seems to be taken straight out of the world of Theatre. Such films need to be adroitly directed and require a very tight script to keep an audience that’s been trained to expect something else from the film medium, from feeling boredom. I remember being bored to tears once watching the arrogant and tedious, one-room only, Friendship’s Death (87). But The Man from Earth, about a man explaining to his friends that he must move away and leave them because he is 14,000 years old and does not want to see them age (and does not want to attract unwelcome curiosity), is much closer to 12 Angry Men (57), or even the more recent Primer (04), and moves at a good enough pace to keep us interested in the possibilities that the discussion raises. Like the characters in the film, the friends who do not know if they should send this man they have known for 10 years to the asylum (perhaps to hang out with that guy from K-Pax) or if they should believe him, but who at the same time can’t stop themselves from asking him more questions, we find ourselves wanting to hear more of their questions and more of his answers. As mad and implausible as his revelations may sound, the screenplay, completed by Sci-Fi short story writer Jerome Bixby shortly before his death in 1998, is so smartly written and laced with so much sharp and plausible dialogue that one begins to think: why not?
Sadly, as mentioned earlier, this nicely challenging and entertaining low budget film falls apart at the end, closing with two scenes that are simply too sweet, convenient and that seem to exist for no other purpose than to raise the audience’s feel good factor…

Planet Terror has over-indulgent geekiness written all over it. B-movies have always been made with a specific crowd in mind, the type that can easily look beyond the obvious cinematic limitations of the movie and instead can find in it an interesting form of entertainment, and in some cases, the epitome of coolness, whatever that may mean. With the passing of time, these movies also have the potential to attract additional viewers through the ‘nostalgia effect’. When watching such films, one is taken back to the 50s, 60s, or, as it relates to Planet Terror, to the 70s when the Grindhouse double bill developed its legions of followers. Personally, and obviously one can deduce from this that I am not an admirer of these Grindhouse films, I believe that it is the knowledge of going back to a specific point in time, to experience a piece of ‘culture’ from a certain decade and country, that makes some of these films watcheable, and, at times, enjoyable. Most of them were bad films, but they were not always made with the knowledge that they were bad, or if they were, time has taught us to look back on them with anthropological compassion and with some kind of tolerant understanding.
However, when Tarantino and Rodriguez had the bright idea to come up with a deliberately bad double feature called Grindhouse (Planet Terror and Death Proof, marketed separately in Europe), to honor the past, and in Tarantino’s words, to offer viewers something ‘fresh and original’, they either must have assumed that the entire world lives on the same geeky film planet as they do and would rush to the cinemas to see their films, or, as is most likely the case, they just decided that they wanted to please themselves and do something to pay homage to a form of cinema they both love. I can just picture the both of them sitting in some room, writing the script, and telling each other: ‘a machine gun instead of a leg? Right on!’, ‘let’s make the reel look old. Now that’s fresh’, ‘and then the head explodes…how cool is that?’
The problem is that none of this is in fact that fresh or original (unlike both director’s early work). It’s old. And it only works as new for about 15 minutes and then wears off quickly, leaving behind a profusion of mindless and silly gore, and, regrettably, not one iota of scariness…even worse: the film is not funny. What kind of a Zombie film does not make you either laugh or scream?
I said to a friend ‘it’s a bad movie’. To which he responded: ‘That’s the point’. But, no, I believe his answer is the one missing the point. The real point is: it’s a bad movie. The fact that it is an intentional bad movie does not turn it into a good movie. And let us not be deceived by an artsy-fartsy, Rodriguez/Tarantino-can-do-no-wrong-because-they-are-so-cool, you-either-get-it-or-you-don’t temptation to see something that isn’t there. Remove the names of the directors, and the appeal of the film drastically goes down.

Of course, the debate between B-movies lovers and bashers has been raging for decades and it will not be solved today. If Rodriguez and Tarantino were hoping to please the lovers, they probably succeeded. If, on the other hand, they were attempting to attract some of the skeptics, I believe they failed.