Slashdot Mirror
Spielberg on Privacy, Minority Report
Staring at Nothing writes "In this ABC News story famed Hollywood director Steven Spielberg voices some concerns over the current state of privacy and paranoia in a post-9/11 world. Some of Spielberg's recent movies, like AI and Minority Report have brought us haunting views of the future, but the present may be just as scary. He mentions software being developed to monitor "abnormal behavior" and concerns about originality being misconstrued as dangerous behavior." The story has some minor plot spoilers about Minority Report.
Maybe he's gotten to the point in his career where he wants to send a message with his movies. Not that I'm asking for Flintstones III any time soon.
A winner is you!
Some of the scenes of targeted marketing, projecting ads towards you as you walk down the hallway, all tailored just for yuo are pretty spooky.
some of the depicted technology looks downrigt creepy. and that is just from the marketing side, nevermind the government side.
the ultimate in spam, everywhere you go.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
and don't listen to anyone who states their opinion as though it's some kind of fact. I also got back from seeing this movie about an hour ago, and have already decided I consider it the best of the year so far. and I have a feeling a won't be able to forget it overnight.
I'm not going to post a full review here, but suffice to say my only criticisms are that it felt a bit long, and that some of the ideas could have been better developed (there's a LOT of ideas in this movie). but concepts aside, it absolutely grabbed me on a viscreral and emotional level. I knew it had worked for me when I walked out of the theater and took several minutes to fully reacclimate to the normal world--it was almost like culture shock. to each their own opinion, I say.
sean
Maybe that's what he's doing, but the message that you can't trust a pre-emptive police state is written pretty obviously throughout the movie, and it went into production before 9/11. So he's capitalizing on a wider social context than just the current hysteria/paranoia. And why shouldn't he? Don't artists get to criticize society? And does doing a kiddie movie like E.T. automatically and forever prevent him from having anything to say about the world?
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Have you read George Orwell's 1984?
The three slogans of the Party say it all:
War Is Peace
Slavery Is Freedom
Ignorance Is Strength
Not a large jump from those to Speilberg's "Safety Is Freedom".
(Check out http://www.newspeakdictionary.com for more, including the full text of 1984.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Even though were off topic by now:
Here in Boulder, CO, Roger Ebert shows up every year and shows a film. He takes a week to go all the way through it, at about 2 hours a day. Anytime someone sees something they would like to discuss they can yell out 'STOP!', and Ebert will pause the film, and the audience is free to discuss. It's a pretty good time, with an audience of 500 or so, and he usually picks very interesting movies.
Anywho, I saw him last year while he did Fight Club. He spent about half an hour on the first day discussing symbolism. His idea is that there are three types of symbolism:
1. That which the artist placed.
2. That which you placed.
3. That which got there on it's own, but is undeniable.
The goal for the critic is to not place his own symbolism. If every movie you see references some specific thing, chances are you are putting it there. Now here in the west, it is rare to find a work that doesn't reference Christianity in some way. It's a cultural response, too deep for most artists to remove. But if every concept you see goes right to the parting of the red sea, you are no longer objective. (I hope I am being clear so far)
As far as the "deepness" of AI, I would say that is symbolism that you are adding, without the help from the work itself.
I personally hated the movie because Spielberg has become condesending, and assumes that I cannot understand what his philosophical point is. He doesn't leave anything in the air anymore.
Anywho, just my thoughts, with the citation of Ebert.
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
When ever the debate about monitoring and privacy comes up, I always say that I truly hate being monitored all the time. And the answer you always get is that you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear. Well that's really an entire different discussion.
I like turning my cell phone off when I am not working. Often worries friends and family because they can't reach me when I'm not home. What's up with that. 5 years ago one would travel around Europe and the only thing they would hear from you was a postcard. These days where you can bring your phone all over and people can reach you it destroys all the fun.
This brings me back to the part about monitoring. If something as simple as the ability of people to reach you everywhere via your phone has clearly changed the behavior and our culture. If we were to be monitored all over inside and outside our house, I am quite sure that it would change our behavior as well. Now I am no psychiatrist so I can't really give any conclusions about how we would change, but somehow I doubt that it would be for the better. I would say that it would generate far more problems than it solve. Well it help that I does not all happens at once. This is of course often the fear that people are not aware of all the little changes that ends up in total monitoring of your life and when it does happen, we would all have got used to it(?) and not worry about it at all because it would happen so slowly that the culture would be able to change and adapt.
my sig
You're a little mistaken, as there are _several_ schools of thought: 1) Destiny. Herein, the universe unfolds in a deterministic way that is entirely based on the original configuration of the universe including it's laws. In this universe, free will is illusory: the world can only exist in a single way. 2) Chaos. Herein, chance plays a function [to varying degrees] in every event, from the subatomic to the universal. In this universe, free will may be free (though its easy to debate). Now, Chaos has subclasses: 2a) Many-Worlds. This is based off the quantum mechanical theory that there are countless parallel universes, branching from each other at every event as a junction. In this multiverse, there are countless universes that represent every possible configuration of the universe. In such a universe, it is possible that the PreCogs sense the state the future will take in the current universe, then the PreCrime agents prevent that future, pushing the universe into a parallel path. In other words, both futures exist, but PreCrime enables the police to choose a more desireable option. 2b) SingleWorld. This is a varation on the above: there is a single universe, but it has a predictable future state given all the current information. However, PreCogs sense that future state, and provide PreCrime with enough information to alter the configuration and result in a different future. In this world, PreCogs are not "seeing the future," but instead making incredibly accurate predictions based on the current configuration. There are more, but I'm just making the point that its more complex than you're suggesting...
"Stumble before you crawl"
Feel 'free' to add to these. (pardon my pun)
"Now we must choose between safety and freedom, we must not flinch if freedom means anything." - Dennis Burke, USA Today
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."- Benjamin Franklin
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." - Somerset Maugham
"My greatest fear is that too many members of the public will embrace the government's call to give up some freedom in return for greater safety, only to find that they have lost freedom without gaining safety." - Nadine Strossen, President ACLU
"Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain." - John F. Kennedy
"Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Dolores Ibarruri
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression." - Thomas Paine
"I know not what course others may take but as for me: give me liberty or give me death." - Patrick Henry
"When the rights of just one individual are denied, the rights of all are in jeopardy!" - Jo Ann Roach
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
OpenSecrets link to Spielberg's soft money campaign contributors
He's just another phony liberal in the great Hollywood phony liberal tradition. When he finds another set of buzzwords and social concerns that'll pull in his target demographic, he'll use them, i.e. don't be surprised if he sounds like Rush Limbaugh someday.
Right now, he's using the right buzzwords for people who pretend to themselves that they still have social concerns while providing the dollars that bought the politicians that enacted obscenities like DMCA passed and worse legislation to follow.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I haven't seen the movie yet, but from the look of the trailers, there is a basic flaw in the concept.
1. The legal system works on the principle that we have a choice in what we do. You choose to do bad things, you get punished.
2. MR shows Tom seeing things before they happen and subsequently arresting people for a "crime they are yet to commit."
3. This means that Fate no longer exists and that we live in a determinist world. Thus, someone who committed a crime had no say in the matter. It was going to happen no matter what the "criminal" did. To convict someone of murder, you have to prove intent.
So unless there is some explaining in the movie on why Tom arrests people for doing something they had no say in, I can't see how the movie can be plausible.