“We are living in an age of simulation, where signs of the real, replace the real.” – Jean Baudrillard. Listen below if you wish.
This post is a compilation of my Communication and Media cohorts twitter sphere throw down on weekly films in the realm of science fiction classics that aren’t so fictitious when viewed in todays future. As someone who constantly questions the tenuous nature of our perceived reality and consciousness, throwing a new lens on some of my favourite movies has tickled my hippocampus.
Week 1 was 2001: A Space Odessey. I missed the twitter smack down that week, DOH. This movie sets the tone for this subjects content as we start to discover that some of these pioneering movies for the time were created off the back of a period of unrest for the west. Various wars, global tension and some nifty inventions are evident in the thinking behind Kubrick’s imaginative thriller. To be portraying an AI character over 50 years ago shows a phenomenal depth of imagination. This movie sets the premise for Anthropocene and the AI V Human predictions.
But what kind of world is it if we aren’t fucking and fighting? Week 2 we saddle up questionable quarter horses in West World 1973. This movie depicts Cybernetics and the potential scenario should we choose to ignore critical signs in feedback loops. The novums in this movie include artificially intelligent robots that have the capacity to malfunction and a computer controlled fantasy vacation land.
Week 3 is Blade Runner 1983 where we are once again plunged into an Anthropocene of human engineered degradation, plagued by seemingly sentient AI. We see a similar struggle here, faceless corporations defacing the Earth and beyond whilst machines question their identity and the ‘humans’ drink through this train wreck of an existence, attempting to negotiate what it means to be alive. This movie is based on the 1968 novel, Do androids dream electric sheep? which is set in a world shattered by nuclear war, This predicted future is feeling a little probable at the moment.
Next up comes Ghost in the Shell 1995, with the lens of Operations thinking and Think Tanks. This week was a hot mess of subtitles and layered concepts. These were new concepts to me and I think I drowned a bit in the viewing but my key takeaway was really at what point do we recognise sentience and what is our bench mark to measure this? If anything this week threw me a bunch of new terminology to unpack when time prevails.
This week was The Matrix which was extremely formative for me at its time of release. I like that turtles have come up twice, it’s the weirdly weird that whet’s my noodle. It was actually Voldemort ( Elon) that got me onto simulation theory moons ago but this concept, courtesy of my Tutor is a doozy. The mythological idea of a turtle world is often used as an illustration of infinite regresses. An infinite regress is an infinite series of entities governed by a recursive principle that determines how each entity in the series depends on or is produced by its predecessor. OOFT.
In summary, Midjourney has been a massive distraction, delight and tool (us humans love tools) in helping me manifest these conceptual lens imbued into Iconic pop culture classics. Here is a cyberpunk future I can deal with, one with horses.
Jane BAMBI Drew 
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