As far as movie themes go, the implications of technology seems to be one of the overarching themes of the new BG miniseries.
This itself sets it apart from the original series.
I'm all for adding some thought to my popcorn and entertainment, especially because most commerical action movies are so devoid of any thoughtful plot that I usually forget them after I come back home from the movie theater.
I think that's why in the new series, the villain Boltar was made into a computer scientist, while in the original series, Boltar was a politician.
It may be worthwhile for a sci-fi tv series to further explore an "AI out of control" scenario, like how the new BG is (barely) touching on.
[start rant] IMO, in reality, politicians and other professional BS artists are far more to blame for the world's ills than scientists or technicians. Scientists & engineers may create technology, but it is usually other people who misuse & abuse it.
Scientists and engineers professionally spend their time on how to think logically and solve problems.
Politicians, Executives, and other BS artists, professionally spend time on how to use other people to solve their problems.
[/end rant]
I think the take home lesson is this: Technology gives people more power to do good, or to do bad, and to create excess. Therefore, in our democracy, all levels of society should think more logically, and think more about solving the collective problems for all people. -- Rather than obsess about greedy grubbing at the expense of many, or harming society by doing anything to win politically for short term gain, rather than addressing the long term consequences.
Well, technically, the velocity of the ships did not even approach the speed of light.
There was no doppler color shift of star light or time distortions.
Most sci-fi works around the Speed Limit of light by inventing some sort of "Jump" or Space "Warping" (or folding) technology.
Those ships "jumped" to a different space coordinate. (ie... some sort of space folding technology?)
The COOLEST ending of Matrix Revolutions would have been:
The Matrix and the Machines were actually created by Humans. The Humans destroyed the environment and created the Matrix to voluntarily live in a liveable lie in a time of the best quality of life because their world was destroyed by their own foolishness.
The Matrix was a voluntary choice, when faced with the bleakness of what humans had wrought with their excess.
--That would have been a substantially satisfying ending!
From the exchange, Drexler gives the impression that matter at the atomic scale behaves in the same way as matter on the macroscopic scale that we live in.
Physicists and chemists would know that this assumption is false. The Dalton theory of atoms as billiard balls has been refuted a long time ago.
How is a mechanical manipulator going to "grab" another atom? These manipulators are also at the atomic scale! Duh.
Today near the bottom of the http://www.foresight.org/ website, it shows a unrealistic graphic of one of Drexler's proposed nanofactories. There are what appears to be spherical atoms being manipulated by machinery. -- It fails to accurately show that the machinery is no more solid than the lego atoms that the machinery is manipulating. (Unless maybe the machinery material is made of some sort of selectively reactive/nonreactive, subatomic material)
When I see pictures & notions like that being bandied about and sold to the public, I get the same feeling when people push Jules Verne's voyage to the moon as science rather than science fiction. -- Baloney.
Right now Smalley wins. He's a doer, an implementer.
Drexler may get the last laugh in the far future, but some real science must appear first to make science fiction a reality.
The really hard stuff is in the implementation. The implementers deserver the real credit.
Capitalism & free markets have done a great job in raising living standards in the US.
Quality products are made cheaply, and efficiently distributed with plentiful supply, which in turn strengthens the buying power and quality of life for average americans.
Why this doesn't work in many other societies is a big & tough question, that I won't dare address yet.
However, will free market principles, as applied to (non-manufacturing) jobs, raise living standards in the U.S. also? After all, that should be the end intent and goal for U.S. policy makers (democrats & repubs) right?
There are already bugs in this free market as applied to jobs.
The government places too much overhead & red-tape complexity on businesses wishing to hire full time employees. -- ie... health care
(health care should be nationalized, lifting this burden off business)
There usually rigorous cost cutting oversight and productivity standards enforced on low level employees. But the same is not necessarily true of management. --Especially high level management. After all, it is perfectly routine for an executive to lay off several thousand mid & low level employees, and rigorously cutting benefits and other costs given to these workers.
However, executives (as a group) also have a strong influence in setting their own salaries and benefits. That's why executive salaries & benefits soar out of control, while at the same time cutting or eliminate salaries of powers lower on the ladder.
There are no checks and balances that set fair standards within a company employee heirarchy.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as movie themes go, the implications of technology seems to be one of the overarching themes of the new BG miniseries.
This itself sets it apart from the original series.
I'm all for adding some thought to my popcorn and entertainment, especially because most commerical action movies are so devoid of any thoughtful plot that I usually forget them after I come back home from the movie theater.
I think that's why in the new series, the villain Boltar was made into a computer scientist, while in the original series, Boltar was a politician.
It may be worthwhile for a sci-fi tv series to further explore an "AI out of control" scenario, like how the new BG is (barely) touching on.
[start rant]
IMO, in reality, politicians and other professional BS artists are far more to blame for the world's ills than scientists or technicians. Scientists & engineers may create technology, but it is usually other people who misuse & abuse it.
Scientists and engineers professionally spend their time on how to think logically and solve problems.
Politicians, Executives, and other BS artists, professionally spend time on how to use other people to solve their problems.
[/end rant]
I think the take home lesson is this:
Technology gives people more power to do good, or to do bad, and to create excess.
Therefore, in our democracy, all levels of society should think more logically, and think more about solving the collective problems for all people. -- Rather than obsess about greedy grubbing at the expense of many, or harming society by doing anything to win politically for short term gain, rather than addressing the long term consequences.
Well, technically, the velocity of the ships did not even approach the speed of light. There was no doppler color shift of star light or time distortions.
Most sci-fi works around the Speed Limit of light by inventing some sort of "Jump" or Space "Warping" (or folding) technology.
Those ships "jumped" to a different space coordinate. (ie... some sort of space folding technology?)
To follow up on the Matrix tangent:
:
The COOLEST ending of Matrix Revolutions
would have been
The Matrix and the Machines were actually created by Humans.
The Humans destroyed the environment and created the Matrix to voluntarily live in a liveable lie in a time of the best quality of life because their world was destroyed by their own foolishness.
The Matrix was a voluntary choice, when faced with the bleakness of what humans had wrought with their excess.
--That would have been a substantially satisfying ending!
From the exchange, Drexler gives the impression that matter at the atomic scale behaves in the same way as matter on the macroscopic scale that we live in.
Physicists and chemists would know that this assumption is false. The Dalton theory of atoms as billiard balls has been refuted a long time ago.
How is a mechanical manipulator going to "grab" another atom? These manipulators are also at the atomic scale! Duh.
Today near the bottom of the http://www.foresight.org/ website, it shows a unrealistic graphic of one of Drexler's proposed nanofactories. There are what appears to be spherical atoms being manipulated by machinery. -- It fails to accurately show that the machinery is no more solid than the lego atoms that the machinery is manipulating. (Unless maybe the machinery material is made of some sort of selectively reactive/nonreactive, subatomic material)
When I see pictures & notions like that being bandied about and sold to the public, I get the same feeling when people push Jules Verne's voyage to the moon as science rather than science fiction. -- Baloney.
Right now Smalley wins. He's a doer, an implementer.
Drexler may get the last laugh in the far future, but some real science must appear first to make science fiction a reality.
The really hard stuff is in the implementation. The implementers deserver the real credit.
Capitalism & free markets have done a great job in raising living standards in the US.
Quality products are made cheaply, and efficiently distributed with plentiful supply, which in turn strengthens the buying power and quality of life for average americans.
Why this doesn't work in many other societies is a big & tough question, that I won't dare address yet.
However, will free market principles, as applied to (non-manufacturing) jobs, raise living standards in the U.S. also? After all, that should be the end intent and goal for U.S. policy makers (democrats & repubs) right?
There are already bugs in this free market as applied to jobs.