Monday, December 21, 2009
Surrogates
The term 'virtual reality' takes on a whole new meaning in the 2009 movie Surrogates. In the movie humans live in isolation while only communicating with their fellow man through robots that serve as social surrogates and are better-looking versions of their human counterparts. Humans sit in "stem chairs" and use the "power of their mind" to control these human-like robots with the durability of a machine. You can be who you want to be and live your life without limitations. I haven't seen the movie but from what I can gather, this wonderful lifestyle doesn't quite work out in the end. However, we can wonder if this type of technology will be developed in the future - and if so - if this really happens, does that mean: virtual reality = reality?
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Your description of the movie Surrogates made me think of The Matrix, which seems to have a similar premise. When people today hear the word "matrix" they tend to think of the action-packed Keanu Reeves movie made in 1999. However, page 2 of Communication and Cyberspace will tell you that the word was actually coined by author William Gibson fifteen years earlier, in 1984. Gibson's description of the matrix is as follows...
ReplyDelete"The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games,' said the voice-over, 'in early graphics programs and military experimentation with cranial jacks.' On the Sony, a two-dimensional space war faded behind a forest of mathematically generated forms, demonstrating the possibilities of logarithmic spirals; cold blue military footage burned through, lab animals wired into test systems, helmets feeding into fire control circuits of tanks and war planes. 'Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts...A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding."
these ads were so creepy!! They were all over the subway a couple of months ago and I'm so glad they took them down. As for promotion for the movie, I think they did they're job. It's a scary thought to think that this could eventually become reality!
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