From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Aug 21 2002 - 03:50:15 MDT
On Tue, Aug 20, 2002 at 05:33:13PM -0700, Regina Pancake wrote:
> Heads up kids.
> Variety reports today that there is a new movie in the works.
>
> "Revolution Studios has paid low-against mid six figures to pick up the
> pitch "Post Human" from first-timers Scott Swan and Drew McWeeny, better
> known as writer Moriarty on movie news Web site Ain't it Cool News.
> Described as an ensemble sci-fi actioner set in the real world, pic centers
> on real-life military research to create metabolically enhanced soldiers."
> and the article drones on...
>
> So, Revolution Studios picked it up just on the pitch meeting and the boys
> are now writing it.
> Talk about getting the meme out there. Jeesh!
...
> I'm think'in that the idea of "Post-Human" is gonna get a lot of mileage
> with the ad budget from this piece of up coming work.
But will it be a *positive* or *negative* spin on posthuman themes?
Linking transhumanism with supersoldiers (especially a movie trying to
draw on, or seem to draw on, real experiments) might be a bad thing.
There are already enough people who think that transhumanism is just
about helping the ruthless power elites stay in power forever using any
means necessary...
A lot of people in our community seem to be happy about our ideas being
noticed in the mainstream, regardless of the slant of the presentation.
But even a message that is not obviously negative can associate ideas
with negative images and imagined threats. The there seems to be the
idea that our ideas are so self-evidently good that everybody else will
embrace them as soon as the tech is here. But if that is true, why are
people not embracing genetics enthusiastically? In fact, the resistance
is to a large extent influenced by negative images from Hollywood.
The real issue isn't about getting people to present our ideas in a
positive way - that is nice, of course, but the really useful movies and
books would be the ones that make people think about the issues rather
than just cheer for one side. A scenario where transhuman ideas are
analysed and put in a context of other ideas, so that people could start
linking them with their own ideas.
(Of course, supersoldiers is an old concept in Hollywood. It has been
done before in all possible permutations of Van Damme, Schwartzenegger
et al. The biggest risk is maybe that the word posthuman gets associated
with yet another boring movie)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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