From: Paul McDermott (bandwidthboy@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Wed Aug 14 2002 - 06:31:47 MDT
Yep.
I thought the movie was a disappointment. A few neat visuals, but
essentially a futuristic version of "The Fugitive". And though it was nice
to see Max Von Sydow, I'd have preferred to see him in his Ming The
Merciless clobber...
On musing about the tech and whatnot of "Minority Report", I wondered about
the lack of nerve on the part of Speilberg, and not long after the so-soness
of "A.I.", too.
The idea of the Precogs, whilst visually appealing, was hokey. (Where the
short story was patchy, if it was -- not read it -- one could have expanded
or used it as a flavoring agent rather than an overall menu.) How could an
unknown effect that made an otherwise unsuccessful experiment work be
replicated so accurately that a whole army of Precogs could be popped out to
scan the possible futures of an entire nation? Maybe there was a fascist
movenment hoping to use the scientism the Precogs represented to many as a
cover...
A more effective and efficient system seems to me to simply use
neurally-interfaced nanobots on a wireless link to scan a populace's
thoughts in situ. Either the minds of the people could be left free-willed
to attempt criminal actions, the nanobots could be designed to subtly
dissuade the individual from pursuing illegal acts, or simply preconfigure
the mind from contemplating crime altogether.
All the above could be seen as on a sliding scale of initiatives of public
health. That is a good reason for the separation of therapy and the State,
in my view. However, communtities are likely to be as diverse and as
variable in local notions of law and justice as many different governments
seem to be. A tourist might have to put up with having his/her law module
modified for every different region visited.
One would hope for some kind of zone wherein one's thoughts would remain
one's own. And there would undoubtedly be hackers and black marketeers
dodging the invisible leash. It may be that extra-solar space would be such
a realm.
For every libertarian and free thinker, there'd be those who'd embrace this
scheme, to some degree. Once it becomes doable, I wonder how long it will be
before somebody somewhere tries to implement it, and even champion it. Given
the propensity of those elements of society who feel assured that their
solutions are the only right ones, such nanobots could be made into a
frightful weapon of cultural and memetic erosion. It would be a chilling
irony to have a bunch of neoluddites use nanobots to lobotomize huge swathes
of the technical intelligensia, or homogenize the entire Unthem into devout
memebers of a global flock.
A reverse Terminator might be useful here, a small band of nonhuman machine
superintelligence working to repair the damage wrought by their
flesh-wrapped progenitors, be it out of compassion, amusement or some other
unfathomably complex purpose.
Eumemicists seem to me to be more of a threat than eugenicists, I think.
When folk start trucking with uploading, I wonder if this will become even
more of a threat. I seem to recall ACC in "3001" mentioning that as Earth
adopted brain-capping, mental ailments were identified and addressed
quickly, and those who refused brain capping were considered peculiar and
needing medical attention.
As much as I respect the guy, I wish he'd explored the ethical ramifications
of that switch. Maybe one could make the case that posthumans are
fundamentally different animals to us lot, ergo our rules shouldn't apply to
how they arrange their societies.
Yet still that wrankles a bit in the context I've mentioned. And for those
using a nanobot or similar form of augmented reality, one could just as
easily give people the equivalent of pop-up windows in their vision, to let
people make informed decisions about their actions. Given the propensity of
emotion to cloud reason, that seems a useful thing. But to delimit free
will, I dunno. Slippery slope I think, the dark side of the 'golden rule'...
Anyway, that's what I got out of "Minority Report". Speilberg didn't tackle
these sorts of issues, but somebody ought to, I think. That would be a more
useful drama I think, especially as folk like Ray Kurzweil are of the view
that nanobot-driven neural implants for immersive Webbing are likely to be
in the stores in the 2030s.
I am sure that the Foresignt Institute and the Extropy Institute will have
published some policy guidelines about such matters as we get closer to
actual implementation, but a movie would offer the untechnicate (and sf
fans!) to interact with these important and confronting prospects in a safe,
fun way. Here's hoping that's not too far off. And with the preponderence of
powerful cheap movie-making gear democratizing the artform, I may
collaborate with some machines (and humans!) and try it myself some day! :-)
Best,
Paul
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
[mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of Colin Hales
Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2002 8:36 PM
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: RE: MINORITY REPORT (THE MOVIE)
Avatar Polymorph
>
> MINORITY REPORT - TECH CRITIQUE
>
> I have just seen the movie finally and found it of interest.
<snip>
> - Much of the tech is standard off-the-shelf notions that already exist.
<snip>
Somewhere via www.edge.org I think, I recently read that Jaron Lanier and a
bunch of others were summoned into a think tank for the movie people to put
together all the 'futurist' tech stuff.
How do you get on these committees?
They could have used a hand from around here I think.
Colin
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