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How Stephen Wolfram Devised Interstellar Travel (And Code Samples) For 'Arrival' (backchannel.com)
The new movie "Arrival" depicts first contact with aliens, and its producers faced the question of how interstellar spacecraft would actually work. They turned to futurist Stephen Wolfram, who came up with an answer overnight, and also tasked his son with writing much of the computer code seen on displays in the movie. Slashdot reader mirandakatz brings us Wolfram's story:
Christopher was well aware that code shown in movies often doesn't make sense (a favorite, regardless of context, seems to be the source code for nmap.c in Linux). But he wanted to create code that would make sense, and would actually do the analyses that would be going on in the movie... For instance, there's a nice shot of rearranging alien "handwriting," in which one sees a Wolfram Language notebook with rather elegant Wolfram Language code in it. And, yes, those lines of code actually do the transformation that's in the notebook. It's real stuff, with real computations being done...
For the movie, I wanted to have a particular theory for interstellar travel. And who knows, maybe one day in the distant future it'll turn out to be correct. But as of now, we certainly don't know. In fact, for all we know, there's just some simple "hack" in existing physics that'll immediately make interstellar travel possible.
Wolfram's theory posited that space is just one of the attributes emerging from a low-level network of nodes, where long-range connections occasionally break out of three-dimensional space altogether. His 6,900-word essay (originally published on his blog) also suggests film-making has "some structural similarities" with software development -- and grapples with the question of how we'd actually communicate with aliens once they've arrived.
For the movie, I wanted to have a particular theory for interstellar travel. And who knows, maybe one day in the distant future it'll turn out to be correct. But as of now, we certainly don't know. In fact, for all we know, there's just some simple "hack" in existing physics that'll immediately make interstellar travel possible.
Wolfram's theory posited that space is just one of the attributes emerging from a low-level network of nodes, where long-range connections occasionally break out of three-dimensional space altogether. His 6,900-word essay (originally published on his blog) also suggests film-making has "some structural similarities" with software development -- and grapples with the question of how we'd actually communicate with aliens once they've arrived.
"Elections have conquences." -- H. Obama
"They Can Come For The Ride, But They Have To Sit In Back" -- H. Obama
Spoilers: if you still want to watch this movie, don't read this.
Solid movie. The art was good, the dialogue felt alright, acting was fine, but then there's the thing of the plot.
A respected linguist achieves a once in a lifetime achievement, far beyond any researcher's dream and all this is used for is a plot where she chooses to live out her own heteronormative fantasies of getting married, being a mother and so on. Does the world around her change? Apparently not, as her husband was unaware of their daughter's condition, so I'm guessing he didn't learn this alien alphabet business (too busy being a stereotypical father?) and while she teaches a course on these symbols it seems like every single thing is the exact same as when the aliens have landed.
Basically, a deeply philosophical question means nothing more than one woman's boring dreams. And here's the thing: do you think that if the roles were reversed and the main character was a man, would the plot be about getting married and having kids? No, it would involve saving the world and "advancing humanity" or some such modernist nonsense. Hell, he ends up leaving his wife and child because apparently he has more important business.