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Title: Why Does So Much New Technology Feel Inspired by Dystopian Sci-Fi
Movies?

Link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/1...

In a recent article published in the New York Times, author Casey Michael
Henry argues that today's tech industry keeps borrowing dystopian sci-fi
aesthetics and ideas -- often the parts that were meant as warnings -- and
repackages them as exciting products without recognizing that they were
originally cautionary tales to avoid. "The tech industry is delivering on
some of the futuristic notions of late-20th-century science fiction," writes
Henry. "Yet it seems, at times, bizarrely unaware that many of those notions
were meant to be dystopian or satirical -- dismal visions of where our worst
and dumbest habits could lead us." Here's an excerpt from the report: You
worry that someone in today's tech world might watch "Gattaca" -- a film that
features a eugenicist future in which people with ordinary DNA are relegated
to menial jobs -- and see it as an inspirational launching point for a
collaboration between 23andMe and a charter school. The material on Sora, for
instance, can feel oddly similar to the jokes about crass entertainment
embedded in dystopian films and postmodern novels. In the movie "Idiocracy,"
America loved a show called "Ow! My Balls!" in which a man is hit in the
testicles in increasingly florid ways. "Robocop" imagined a show about a
goggle-eyed pervert with an inane catchphrase. "The Running Man" had a game
show in which contestants desperately collected dollar bills and climbed a
rope to escape ravenous dogs. That Sora could be prompted to imagine a game
show in which Michel Foucault chokeslams Ronald Reagan, or Prince battles an
anaconda, doesn't feel new; it feels like a gag from a 1990s writer or a film
about social decay. The echoes aren't all accidental. Modern design has been
influenced by our old techno-dystopias -- particularly the cyberpunk variety,
with its neon-noir gloss and "high tech, low life" allure. From William
Gibson novels to films like "The Matrix," the culture has taken in countless
ruined cityscapes, all-controlling megacorporations, high-tech body
modifications, V.R.-induced illnesses, deceptive A.I. paramours, mechanical
assassins and leather-clad hacker antiheroes, navigating a dissociative
cyberspace with savvily repurposed junk-tech. This was not a world many
people wanted to live in, but its style and ethos seem to reverberate in the
tech industry's boldest visions of the future.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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