Late pass, but i want to believe in the future.
October 30, 2009
As you can see, this post is quite untimely.
About two weeks ago, my NCT (New Communication Technology) class was shown a few clips from Minority Report – which I must say, is one of the best science fiction films made in recent years. The film’s plot essentially revolves around ‘Precrime’, a police department that apprehends crooks according to foreknowledge provided by psychics known as ‘precogs’ and a whole conspiracy theory which exploits flaws in the system.
Well, the film pretty much gave a possible glimpse into technology of years to come. Floating vehicles, robots, precognition used to solve crimes, advertisements that speak to the individual, virtual reality and most importantly a sixth sense of sorts – where hand gestures are used to interact with information augmented on physical objects (paraphrased from Sixth Sense).
As a start, i would describe the future envisioned in Minority Report as a dystopian utopia (oh, the irony). I guess it’s like a near-perfect society. The lack of crime due to ‘precrime’ and biometric tracking is what we would expect from an utopian society. Policemen even have intuitive spider-like machines working for them.
In a sense, such a society could also be considered a dystopia. Infringement of personal space and the assumption of future crimes committed by a person makes for abridgments of human rights. The age-old argument about whether human being possess free will or whether their actions are predestined by some higher power is thus raised – who is to determine whether what we do in the future? You? Me? Pre-cogs?
Somehow, the movie was both eye-opening and demoralizing at the same time. I wouldn’t mind the technology – jetpacks, floating bikes, virtual reality. But the social and personal repercussions when people can be convicted of murders before they commit them just offsets me. I do hope our future isn’t something like that, and this is something i definitely won’t be cynical about.
