From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Oct 11 1999 - 07:51:40 MDT
"Max M" <maxm@maxmcorp.dk> writes:
> From: Robert J. Bradbury <bradbury@www.aeiveos.com>
>
> > Its about marooning 16 people on a deserted island, you get
> > to play survival and the people who aren't playing well get
> > self-voted off the island... The prize: $1 million!
>
> Well it's running it' second season here in Denmark. It's called "The
> Robinson Ekspedition", and it is very Non-Transhuman.
I completely agree (do you get the Swedish Expedition Robinson, or are
you plagued by your own?).
> Most people actually do believe that what the producers has chosen to show
> is reality and that people where like that on the island. Naturally that is
> bull. There are not 16 24-7 camera teams on the island, only 2-3 teams as
> far as I can tell, and when they edit together the program (AFTER the winner
> has been chosen) they naturally gives the contestants "roles" to play and
> they edit the show so they wil fit those roles.
The most interesting thing about it is the media manipulation. The
symbiosis between the production company and the yellow press is
extremely obvious, and the manipulation of public interest by
scheduled "leaks" and "revelations" about the participants. At least
here in Sweden the participants have achieved celebrity status, and
being part of the show is enough to propel otherwise talentless people
into the limelight for a while so that they can start embarrassing
music careers, get into some celebrity quarrels or general flail about
before vanishing into obscurity again.
It would be fun with a transhumanist version of it, the exact
opposite. Something along the lines of Jules Verne's _The Mysterious
Island_: drop a number of people onto an island together with some
good technical manuals, and have them score by reinventing
civilization. Teamwork is rewarded (maybe they all get paid
proportional to their technological level at the end or so), and the
viewers get some ideas of how things work.
But somehow I think we will see more of Robinson instead (and
derivatives of all its descendants, Villa Medusa, Ökenguldet and so
on...)
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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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