From: Brent Allsop (allsop@fc.hp.com)
Date: Sun Jul 01 2001 - 13:43:32 MDT
Folks,
Warning, I've got some spoilers contained herein.
Of course it had some good parts to it, but the ultimate final
conclusion was completely absurd. Here you have an advanced race of
beings that has achieved the ability to do things like obtain a
perfect history and/or resurrect and restore any being that has ever
existed. So - imagine any human being resurrected by these future
mechs. Not only can they also restore all your friends and family,
but they can give you anything you want, answer most any question you
have ever had.... Yet for some reason - at the end of the first day -
we're going to be disinterested in all this, get tired, fall asleep
and die and no God no matter how powerful could ever resurrect us
again or be able to do any better?
Anders said: "In a way it is a coldly logical story, albeit
with some romantic twists." But to me, the above is not only cold,
but utterly illogical. How can any such make any sense at all? And
other's claimed this wasn't a "deathist" movie. But to me the above
kind of illogical cold and stupid thinking is the very definition of
deathist.
Also, like ALL other popular discussion of the future, it is
entirely based on the "Turing test" view of lonely consciously
isolated beings. The view that we will eternally never really know
what other conscious minds are like other than the causal behavior we
can observe. Is the boy really feeling pain? Or is he just a tape
recorder begging for the pain to stop? The assumption is that no one
will ever know. This is my pet peeve and there is no way the future
can be like this. The worlds of our consciousness will expand and
escape from our skulls. We will be effing, sharing, merging, and
getting inside other's minds. Hence the future will be very different
than all this Turring test like behavior. Surely even the idea of
individual beings will really no longer exist in the distant future.
Another utterly stupid assumption the entire plot hinged on
was the idea that once the mother spoke the special words to the
android boy, it would suddenly drastically change him and forever lock
him into the mind set of only loving the person that spoke the words.
The only thing that could be done to change such would be to destroy
the boy. It's difficult for us to alter ourselves, but it's absurd to
think that an android couldn't be modified. Of course in reality,
even humans will be changing and altering themselves and ultimately
being uplifted, modified and improved in drastic ways. Why would an
android have to go to talk to "Dr. Know" like he did? Surely he would
be able to, if he didn't already have it - purchase and install a
direct interface into the world of all internet knowledge...
I hated it.
Brent Allsop
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