Popular Mechanics Names 10 Most Prophetic Sci-Fi Films
Filed under: Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Fandom, Newsstand, Lists
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In honor of the late Arthur C. Clarke (see Richard von Busack's obit here), Popular Mechanics has a great piece called "The 10 Most Prophetic Sci-Fi Movies Ever," discussing the movies whose predictions of the future turned out to be eerily accurate. (They also note what the films got wrong -- at least so far). The winner? Gattaca, whose vision of a world dominated by genetic profiling has gone from a far-fetched nightmare to (according to the magazine) a very real possibility.The article puts a strange amount of emphasis on reality television -- The Running Man and The Truman Show both made the list thanks to their prediction of a culture obsessed with voyeurism and sensationalist "real-life" entertainment. But it's still a great read, often with a delightfully wry sense of humor. (For Soylent Green: "Hits: climate change; Misses: industrial cannibalism." Misses, indeed.) Be sure to take a look at their take on Minority Report, which has some great insights into changing computer interfaces (though I have to insist that swinging your arms around to use a computer would get tiring very quickly). Moreover, I can't think of many films they missed. Maybe I'd add the Terminator series for its Sky Net concept, even if an actual cyborg revolution is, I hope, still a ways off. Anything else? They did leave off Planet of the Apes...
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-28-2008 @ 3:04PM
brian said...
Wait, they left off Terminator and SkyNet? Did they even throw a cursory glance at what Google's attempting to do at their New York headquarters?
Did Popular Mechanics even see the blog "Google is Skynet?"
Did they read the Village Voice article outlining what they're building at that New York headquarters?
The world's religious entities will fight genetic engineering tooth and nail and kill it long before it reaches Gattaca status.
Google is building something most people will probably allow just to see what happens.
I call bullshit on Popular Mechanics.
Maybe it's just a ruse to get us thinking about the wrong thing?
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3-30-2008 @ 4:41AM
potato said...
As a programmer, I have to say you're dead wrong. While the privacy implications of Google's work is certainly disconcerting, we're *nowhere* near Skynet. We don't even have proper speech synthesis, recognition, or any truly adaptive learning neural network. And you expect us to have a supercomputer that can run a large military?
Sure, what Google is doing would make a takeover by a hostile AI connected to the internet startlingly easy, but someone has to come up with that AI first. Our knowledge in that field is still in its infancy, and we are DECADES out from having even a rudimentary learning system, much less something one might consider sentient.
3-28-2008 @ 3:10PM
Akbar Fazil said...
"though I have to insist that swinging your arms around to use a computer would get tiring very quickly"
The millions of Nintendo Wiis would have to disagree with that. :)
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3-28-2008 @ 7:13PM
Eugene Novikov said...
Ha -- well, they say (and I can attest) that playing Wii is terrific exercise (hence the t-shirt "Real Men Wii Standing Up). I'm not sure you'd want quite that much in the way of calisthenics every time you turn to your workstation.
3-28-2008 @ 4:36PM
Mr. R said...
Blade Runner introduces telephone cards long before they existed. 2001 shows a fairly over developed space toilet but today, astronauts have one of those and I hear it's not the easiest thing. It also did something we rarely see, no sound in space, which at the time was never an issue and for most people still isn't. It's as though we would still be happy with a movie where dinosaurs live amongst men. Sound in space? We love it.
And what about Dark City? It is well known that we are monitored by aliens in a fake world...
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