How do the industrial, digital and information era revolutions impact and inform future predictions? We once again got spicy on Twitter with our weekly viewings of media that challenged our interconnectedness as a species and the ways in which we prognosticate about our vision of the future in an increasingly A.I saturated landscape. Knowledge of the Anthropocene has become an audible hum in my cortex and a new lens in which to dissect the pop culture that inherently steers our global narratives. The following is a mashup of my tweets brought to you in part by Midjourney and ChatGPT which was a delightfully intriguing dance between these tools, the observer and myself.
The movie Her is a grim musing on our psychological grapplings with connection and what constitutes being human. Perhaps I am aligned pessimist view of the future, as Elon Musk suggests, ‘A.I is making humans an endangered species.’ Big love to everyones thirst for this film, to me it a nihilistic vision of connectivity.
I have no doubt everyones relieved to have a break from my #midjourney monstrosities but by golly if A.I can ideate this quickly then I’m not so sure I care about Yuval Hariri saying that there is a likely occurrence that non conscious algorithms will know us better then we know ourselves. Bring it. Take away of this week? That Her compels us to question technological determinism in the micro and macro sense as the tide of A.I swallows our social and psychological realities. Shout out to Alan Watt’s sentiments slithering into this film, it is so easy to get weighed down by gravity but he reminds us that we are star dust bound by human entropy.
Arrival has arrived. What an absolute slay of a movie that shines light on language being a tool that can unite or weaponise us or in this case a construct that needs to be unpacked in order to communicate with ‘others’. This movie questions time being a linear construct in a human sense but circular for Hetapods, this is a massive rethink for humanity feedback loops and a positive for futurists in circumnavigating action for a liveable tomorrow. This movie made me ponder the authenticity of the language model #chatGPT have a good laugh at the memory of my parents in high school when phones were brand new and they thought that language would die because we all used abbreviations lol. Critical decision making was illuminated here with the impact on humanity being depicted in Alice’s decisions.
Key takeaway comes from Hans Moravec who states we need to navigate between the apocalyptic and complacent poles of post humanism.
Next up was Alita Battle Angel which felt like a pragmatic view of the future overshadowed by the idea that free will is non existent as we co evolve with myriad overlapping systems. We are introduced to the concept of trans humanism which is augmenting the human with technology so that we can better our condition on a whole. The need for reductive labels can begin to be a thing of the past as cyborgs have no gender and are comprised of many parts and thus not constrained by historical paradigms. This is an important awareness for the future as unity is needed globally for timely climate action. Please tell me you’ve seen the Rick and Morty ep called Unity. Marshall Mcleun formed much of my conceptual architecture for this subject including this movie, he says that all technologies are extensions of our own nervous systems to increase power and speed and that any extension affects our whole psychic and social complex. We have normalised technological adaptation to the point but the introduction of A.I language models has thrown our blinkers off seen global ethical discussions ensue.
Ready Player made me realise that Cyberspace is a type of reality that feels genuine and is described as social conditions that emerge from the use of computer networks with Bruce Stirling describing it as ‘the place between phones.’ This immersion in ‘other’ realities can be traced back hundreds of years as Roman paintings created a sense of illusion and has now transgressed to the use of VR headsets where users can be literally enclosed in this space which causes an effect on essence which scares me. So we have gone from observation of these spaces to be incorporated in them which provides feedback systems within the human and cybernetic systems. I find the name OASIS (ontologically anthropocentric sensory immersive simulation) quite a paradox as a space that users fled to escape a humdrum reality yet for me a horrifying alternative akin to Dani Cavallero’s statement, “There is a risk of idealising the information network space as a total conquest of human kind, a perpetuation of conventional illusions of mastery.” I found the sensory overload of this movie super hard to handle but the pop culture references were divine.
Does life feel like it’s flying rapidly by these days? That’s because our persona has amalgamated beyond our tactile selves and been splintered across a multitude of on online realities, the public sphere has blown open the fourth estate an we are in a paradigm shift era. EEAAO ripped open the fabric of our negotiation with not only ourselves but the cybernetic extensions of what it means to exist in the here and now. Historical ideas of top down power and one way mediated interactions are a thing of the past as we experience online empowerment through transmogrification. Stuart Hall says that the audience isn’t an empty vessel anymore, rather they are active in negotiating media text and this plays out splendidly in this movie as the characters negotiate and realise there power in multiple dimensions. The most poignant line for me was that ‘nothing matters’. We are exposed to an infinite amount of ideas these days and it is almost impossible to maintain a consistent view as overwhelm, comparison and endless possibility bombard our waking existence.
Key take away, in order to engage in the multiverse in a healthy way, you need to decide what doesn’t matter to you. The attention economy is blossoming and as media creators we need to amplify and advocate for the planet and inject and action the public sphere to a better vision of the future.
Whilst I’m glad my sensory overload Thursdays have ceased I am once again left to ponder the intricacies of our existence that have become so intertwined with technology and the meta questions of love, sentience and the web of language that defines a ‘human life.’
Jane BAMBI Drew 
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