Siegfried comes to save Los Angeles

Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

It's been a long time. Hello world. 

I've been okay. C'est la vie, as the French say. There's a lot going on in today's rapidly changing world. A lot of it is terrifying, especially for a 33 year old American male, but really, for anybody, the times they are a-change-in. 

We just came out of a terrible presidency by one of the worst people on the planet and Americans are still supporting him even to this day like he's God's gift to woman. America is becoming more and more totalitarian in every way, shape, and form, and believe me folks, its not just republicans who are Attila the Hun fans, it's democrats too. My work has cameras locked onto every cashier and in every aisle to make sure nobody steals anything. Sound familiar? 

On top of that there's record inflation, soaring gas prices, we can't afford rent, we can't afford groceries, our kids are continuously getting gunned down by madmen in schools, we can't afford children we already have, the climate has gone to the dogs, and the white people have decided to ban abortions but secretly allow their women to get abortion pills and stuff like that. Don't forget climate change. 

Covid isn't going away, and rather, is evolving faster than we can create vaccines for. The workforce doesn't quite know it yet, but they've been decimated by long covid and we don't know the full extent of the long term symptoms but one of them is being tired all the time and continuous brain fog. These victims can't even read a book, I'm afraid, they wouldn't have the attention span. On top of that, other countries are taking more control over the world and America has become a lesser. Trump made our country weak and Biden couldn't fix it. And now we're stuck. Interesting times. 

Companies are becoming less and less employee focused, even Union shops, and rather, instead, they've become more like sweat shops. Ironically, more like China. This has been happening since the American early days of the robber barons. 

Welcome to America, we're the gestapo now, and we support Atilla the Hun, and my name is Siegfried, I have blonde hair and blue eyes.

But seriously, what can one do with a mess like this one? 

There's nothing you really can do except vote Democrat for the Mid Terms. They're the lesser of the two evils, they at least attempt to do the right thing, although they're no angels either.

Part of the problem is that everybody is living in a separate world in this moment of time. Nobody reads the same news, nobody watches the same tv shows, nobody plays the same video games, nobody reads the same books, nobody can agree on anything, and most people aren't smart enough to take news, facts, and information and think for themselves, rather they believe what they hear and just naturally assume that's the way it is, that it is truth, that everything they see and hear is a fact. What happened to thinking for yourselves? 

I told my friends I take the bus in LA. They said, "Be careful! There's criminals on the bus who will rob you."

I said, "What criminals? Where? Did somebody rob you on the bus?"

They said, "No, but I just heard about it on the news."

Are they all really that scared? 

That's beside the point.

What we really need is a remote coalition government that isn't controlled by government, republicans, democrats, libertarians, socialists, communists, or our parents. We all need to come together to vote Democrat, a New Great Society, but only the true believers in the good are allowed in. Are you one of us? 

The end of the beginning. More work to be done tomorrow! 

Luditas y Tecnócratas

The world today is a machine of chaos. The virus is running rampant, killing 2700 in one day. Social media sows discord and division in our populace and politics. Things aren't the way they were before, you'd hardly even recognize it anymore. We, as an organism are so attached to our technology that most of us couldn't live without it, or even imagine a world without it. Would it be like the Utopia or New Atlantis or Sir Tomas More and Francis Bacon? Maybe. Maybe not. Would I even be writing this if I knew that nobody would read it? Without the support of the internet to share my ideas, would they still be worth writing about only for myself, or just family and friends?  

Everyday is a new construct in which technology is used to maximum effect. We leave our smartphones in our pocket all day long at work and even go on them when at home at night. Our computers, televisions, and video game consoles are bastions of the shiftless biomass, the state of nature in America right now, especially under quarantine. Social media is used to no end and will probably continue to be ad infinitum. 

But not all of it is bad. Tech can be used for the good of society but more often than not, when tech is left unregulated, it becomes a tool of the super rich, powerful, technocrats. They use their mathematical scientific abilities to create apps, or websites, or algorithms that potentially can last forever until eventually replaced by another one. 

You are not a gadget. It isn't normal for a human being or animal [for man is but an animal with sense of virtue of what is good] to walk around with a computer in their pocket, forever connected to a fantasy mini universe [the internet] at all times of morning, day, or night. But we let these things happen because we're moving with the spirit of the times. If everyone has the new iPhone, then it means it's time to upgrade my old iPhone and get the newer one. Is that what you should do?

The luddites that exist in society today are borderline living on the fringe types. They might live in the woods, on a farm, or Wisconsin, or Alaska, or a wood elf type of forest area with big houses enshrouded in darkness. Isolation and loneliness isn't as much of a problem for the luddites, for they always have the natural world, the natural order of things that makes them happy. On the other side of the equation, in comparison, the technocrats have their money, power, and grand influence over the emerging world to make them happy. Who am I to deny any of them happiness? 

The way of the old world is dying and/or already dead. Language learning isn't a focus in America. Music learning isn't a focus. We no longer read books or get our kids to be interested in them. Math test scores are very low. Science scores are very low. Kids from other countries come here to learn and learn more than our kids do, taking their knowledge back to their own countries and doing good things in their worlds. We focus on getting our kids through college and getting them to work, a very fine venture but if they don't actually learn anything, are we really doing a good job?

The old world is nature, animals, music, books, art. The new world is television, video games, movies, social media, and constant overuse of technology. There are good and bad variables regarding the characteristics of the old world versus the new world, but it can't be denied that the way of the world is shifting into a deified technological statehood, being and time of the digital age. 

The cyberpunk aesthetic of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling is already here. Fundamentally, most Americans [most humans with smartphones and computers] are cyborgs. We're attached to our phones, computers, and tv's like they're an extension of our body, an extension of ourselves. Who needs to play Cyberpunk 2077 when we're living through it everyday of our lives. This is why it is important to always take time to reject technology, set it down for a set period, and come back to it at a later period. If you're interested in what a true gritty cyberpunk world looks like, read William Gibson's Neuromancer. In the Trump era, it goes without saying that we are living in the realm of science fiction and far right political ideology that is so fringe that it reminds us of Nazi Germany. The past is reminiscent of the future. When we stare into the abyss, it looks back at us. 

Will the future remember things like Plutarch, Homer, Mozart, and Charlie Bird Parker? Or will they focus more on what happened during the 2016 to 2020 elections? The world lives another day but tomorrow never knows.    

2100

Hello, how's it going? I was thinking about the current state of affairs in the world and started thinking about what planet Earth would look and be like in say, 2050, 2100. I'd like to jot down some ideas on that subject. 

1) Will we take to the Stars?

Well, technically speaking, we have already gone far in space via machinery. But to see the human race fly to the stars and live there, that would be a true scientific revolution, the likes of which haven't been seen for a long time.

2) What would a banana republic like the United States look like in say, 2100, over the current debacle going on since 2016?

Government has shown to be effective and useful when used by the right hands, working with the heads and hearts of the people. But there are always going to be bad actors in any sort of governing, thus, as bad as Trump is, is there any more worse it can get?

3) How would we react to an overheated Earth, with lots of pollution? Natural disasters that get worse and worse every year. It's already happened in the California and Australian fires recently, but the key to effective climate control is your government officials, signing laws that lessen the impact of pollution, using clean, renewable energy and resources and cracking down on companies that violate those protocols. 

4) What if there's life out there?

The potentiality of others, alien life, is always there. Perhaps not in our solar system but in another one like it, or different to it. Possibly travel there via wormholes. Wormhole technology. I surely jest with science fiction but if there's water on other planets perhaps there's a slight chance that sentient life lived there at some point in the billions of millennia.  

5) Will education fail our young?

Education is a powerful thing, especially when imposed upon the young. What we teach our youth, or even younger friends even, is what we know based on education and experience. Learning through various methods will help you get through in life, bearing a modest sentimental education. You don't have to go to college, you don't even have to have finished high school, the more you educate yourself through various activity like reading, writing, and public speaking, the better your chances. Sounding less street can get you places. 

6) Will there be hover cars? 

Of course! But probably meant for the pure novelty at first until they figure out how all the techno-gadgetry works.  

7) What will people eat?

Obviously, the world's supply of chicken, beef, and pork will run out. With a growing population, planet Earth is eventually going to run out of food. Will this inevitably bring about an apocalyptic vision that was early COVID where all retailers rationed chicken, beef, and pork to only two packages? Perhaps we will need a lot more farmers in the world and America can become like the Old West. Oh, where the buffalos roam. 

8) Will we run out of air? 

What if the oxygen on Earth runs out and we all have to fly to colonies on Mars? Or perhaps to some neighboring star?

9) Will there be laser-guns or portal-guns? 

There are some great laser-gun fights in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It gave the novel a lot of pure action. Would laser-gun tech come about easily? Likewise, it would be cool to have a real, live, portal-gun, and be able to go places through your portals. Much like the critically acclaimed Steam game, Portal.  

10) Where does humanity go from here?

Well, you ask that question to everyone and they'd all tell you something different. Some would say we need to take to the stars and colonize them. Others would say stay home and read your Bible. Yet more would say we need to improve science and technology, because, as they say, things like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cognitive learning are where it's at. We live in a postmodern philosophical world if one could even call it that. There's no telling where we as a people, as a tribe, as dna, will go. 

Excelsior! 

Metropolis (novel)

Hey! What's up everybody? Its been quiet on this page the last couple days because I've been pretty tired and I took a night off from my work (reading) so I was behind with my readings. Now I'm all caught up, as I've already finished another novel, this time Metropolis written by German female intellectual Thea von Harbou. Metropolis is also the name for the movie that was made and inspired by this book. The book came first, and the movie thereafter.

The story of the book follows closely the movie so rather than rehash what I already wrote about you can get the gist of the plot from my movie synopsis, which can be read here. There's actually not much information on this book on the Wikipedia page for it but it should be known that the end of this book concludes with Freder's father realizing that his dead wife will be with him till the ends of the Earth (she died and left a letter for him). Lets focus on the literary style and high art that is this novel.

The novel is a short two hundred and fifteen pages but the writing style can be hard to wrap your head around. This is high German art language and Thea von Harbou was quite the intellectual, you can tell by the English translation of her writing. Don't get me wrong, its not dense by any means but there's a sense that you have to really understand everything you're reading because its so highly stylized. One sentence that describes a simple thing could turn into a whole page affair but she does it in a way that you want to read more about that one thing, without making it boring or trivial. Its quite something, I don't think I've ever read anything quite like this, its a powerful novel.

The film omits references that the book made to the occult. There's tons of references and images to the occult here but because I'm not familiar with that realm I didn't see it as particularly offensive or foul by any means. I learned about some evil things I suppose but its nothing that's going to make me wet the bed at night (lol). Besides, the pentagram beside the machine-woman is pretty evil enough for 1927.

In addition, the film omits moral motivation for certain actions by the main characters. Yes, the book differs quite a bit from the movie's characters, which are more black and white. In the book the characters are much more detailed, much like real people. We don't necessarily see things as good or evil, there's all these gray areas that are quite apparent.

This book is great! I would recommend the book to any science fiction readers, women that want to get into science fiction, and people who like really old books. I liked it so much I might read it again much sooner than expected, I could see myself reading it again in a few months or so, just to see if it still has that same poetic fire and intensity from the first read through. Definitely check this book out.

HEAD and HANDS need a mediator. THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!

You Are Not A Gadget

You Are Not A Gadget (a manifesto) is a book written in 2010 by vr (virtual reality) specialist, computer programmer (that works at Microsoft), and musician Jaron Lanier. I've actually written about one of his other books before and that can be found here. In the book Lanier states that the developments of web 2.0 is elevating the collective hive mind at the expense of the individual. He uses Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, and Linux as examples. On Wikipedia we have a sort of mob rules from anonymous editors with a weakness in non-scientific content. He also criticizes the open software crowd by saying that they can't create something truly unique, new, or innovative.

In addition, he states that the open source approach has made it difficult to create a middle class of financed content, instead we have "lords of the clouds', people who by luck or virtue make it to be one of the masters of the universe within the cloud.

Lastly, and most importantly be brings up MIDI electronic notes for music. Here he makes a lot of criticisms about the new music standard and the life of musicians in modern times, how hard it is for them to make a living. He has much to say on the topic, after all he is a musician too. He was quite dark on the topic. In fact, he believes we're going through an artistic dark ages. He's probably right.

Anyways, the book is quite the manifesto. He has many ideas but all of these ideas are only useful if you look at them from every angle as a whole. The book makes me envision and wonder about the future more than ever. In some ways we're already living in the future but this book makes me aware of the fact that human evolution still has a long way to go, especially with our mammoth machines, computers, the collective hive mind, and the internet.

It was a fast and short read, only two-hundred pages. I recommend this book to internet users, computer techies, futurists, and science fiction readers. The book is pure electronic philosophy, and its engaging, fun, and intellectually stimulating.

“Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth.”  

The Stars My Destination (Tiger! Tiger!)

The Stars My Destination (also known as Tiger! Tiger) is a science fiction novel written by Alfred Bester in 1957. Bester is known for science fiction stories as well as having written for Superman and Green Lantern (he created the Green Latern oath). Its a story that takes place in the 25th century and revolves around Gully Foyle, a teleporter driven mad by revenge.

"Originally serialized in Galaxy magazine in four parts beginning with the October 1956 issue, it first appeared in book form in the United Kingdom as Tiger! Tiger! – after William Blake's poem "The Tyger", the first verse of which is printed as the first page of the novel – and the book remains widely known under that title in markets where this edition was circulated. A working title for the novel was Hell's My Destination^, and it was also associated with the name The Burning Spear." (wiki) 

Lets go over the plot. So the book starts off explaining this universe that Bester has created. Its the far future, people can teleport through their minds but not through space, and people have inhabited other planets and moons. Gully Foyle (an uneducated, unskilled, unambitious man), a monster (for many reasons, which will be explained) of a spaceman is trapped, stranded on a spaceship (the Nomad) for six months, subsisting on rations but pretty much starving and left to die.

All of a sudden he sees another spaceship (the Vorga). He sends out a distress signal and he knows the ship sees it. The ship passes him by and leaves him to die. His rage consumes him. He vows to kill whoever was on that ship, whoever gave the order to leave him there. This becomes his reason to live.

He eventually fixes the ship but gets captured by a cargo cult in the Asteroid belt. They tattoo an ugly mask of a tiger on his face, using needles etched into his face. Foyle eventually makes it back to Terra (Earth) where he makes an attempt to blow up Vorga using explosives. He fails and is captured by Presteign, a rich leader in government. Unknown to Foyle, the Nomad was carring PyrE, a substance that can make the difference between winning or losing in a war with the Outer Satellites.

Foyle goes to a juante proof (teleporting is called juanting) prison and here he meets Jisbella McQueen, and she teaches him to think clearly, and she also tells him that he needs to find out who gave the order to leave him to die, not just kill the people who were aboard the ship (Foyle's not too bright).

Together they escape the prison. Jisbella gets Foyle's tattoos removed but not completely. When Foyle gets emotional the tattoo appears. They return to the Nomad, where they take the PyrE (which is a weapon controlled by thought) and also a fortune in platinum.

Later Foyle returns as a man named "Geoffrey Fourmyle" (Foyle's alias was implanted in his subconscious mind during Dagenham's interrogation, Dagenham is a government worker), a rich dandy who is sort of silly to the other rich people. Through yoga he's learned to control his emotions and keep his tattoo from showing. He meets up with Robin Wednesbury, a one-way telepath, whom he raped earlier in the novel. He persuades her to help him charm his way through high society. The rape in the book brings to mind a problem that has existed for a long time. The rape isn't explicit but it is implied to the utmost degree. It was quite troubling and makes you sort of hate Foyle, but in the end you don't have to like Foyle or any of the characters to enjoy the story for what it is, a grand space opera, true cyberpunk. But I digress.

Foyle ends up tracking down the guys who were on the Vorga when it passed his ship but all of them were implanted with a death-reflex and die when questioned. Every time, Foyle is haunted by the image of "The Burning Man", an image of himself on fire but the fire turns out to be real and sometimes his clothes are actually burning.

At a high society party Foyle becomes smitten with Presteign's daughter Olivia. During a nuclear attack by the Outer Satellites Foyle goes to save Olivia and she says that if he is to have her he has to be as cruel and ruthless as she is. Robin is traumatized by the attack and wants out of this whole operation, so she gives Foyle information (on Vorga, on his whole mission) in exchange for her freedom and leaving this whole thing behind. Foyle takes the information then doesn't allow her to leave. Robin responds by going to Central Intelligence and betraying him.

Foyle learns that the captain of the Vorga joined a cult on Mars and had all her sensory nerves disabled, making her immune to traditional torture so Foyle kidnaps a telepath (a little kid) who interrogates the captain. From this he learns that Vorga didn't pick him up because instead it was picking up refugees, taking their belongings, and tossing them out into space. He also learns that this was all controlled by Olivia Presteign. Commandos come to arrest Foyle on Mars but Olivia ends up saving him, because she sees in him someone who can match her "hatred and need to destroy". 

Foyle becomes stricken with grief and wants to turn himself in for all the evil he's done in the universe. He gets captured by Presteign's lawyer Regis Sheffield, who turns out to be a spy for the Outer Satellites (Terra's enemy). 

"Sheffield tells Foyle that when the Nomad was attacked, Foyle was taken off the ship, transported 600,000 miles away, and set adrift in a spacesuit to be a decoy to attract ships to be ambushed. Instead, Foyle space-jaunted—a previously unknown possibility—back to the Nomad. Now, the Outer Satellites not only want PyrE, they want Foyle as well, to learn the secret of space-jaunting." (wiki)

Presteign reveals that PyrE is activated by telepaths and tells Robin to trigger it to bring out Foyle. Destruction is caused around the world but mainly at St. Patrick's Cathedral (where Sheffield brought Foyle) and it traps Foyle, leaving him unconscious.

"Suffering from synesthesia brought on by the explosion affecting his neurological implants, Foyle jauntes through space and time as The Burning Man. Finally he lands in the future, where Robin telepathically tells him how to escape from the collapsing cathedral." (wiki) 

Back in the present Foyle is pressured to hand over the PyrE and teach the world how to space-juante. He asks a robot what he should do and decides for himself. He juantes throughout Terra and throws a little bit of PyrE out to people, telling them if they want to learn how to space-jaunte they should follow him. "Either destroy yourselves or follow me into space".

Foyle realizes the key to space-jaunting is faith. He juantes from star-to-star finding places for colonization, but only reachable if he shares the secret of space-jaunting. The book ends with him back at the cargo cult, where the cultists await the holy man's revelation.

Wow, what a story! Now I'd like to go over the space opera & cyberpunk elements of this great piece of art and end with my thoughts on the work.

This book was very influential on the cyberpunk movement that would come later in the 1980's, particularly with William Gibson's Neuromancer. The ideas of the megacorporations, cybernetic enhancement (Foyle gets modded in the story, making him a killing machine), juanting (teleporting), telepathy (but limited), poetry (its partially inspired by a poem), and speculative science are all quite related to the space opera genre.

The literary style is quite stylized. In fact, once I started reading the book I couldn't put it down. The writing itself isn't complicated or highly detailed but it has a sort of "I must read more" prose. I read it at work on all my breaks. I wanted to find out more and more until I finished it, its that good. Here's a writer who is stylized, makes the reading exciting, and writes a great story in only two-hundred and thirty pages. This is quite a difference from what I usually read, third wave science fiction writers (I'm right now reading through Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer). This book is more interesting than that, more exciting, not necessarily more detailed, but better in the long run because of that. I learned a lot about writing from this book. You don't have to write a thousand pages to get your point across, because instead you can do it in two-hundred.

All that being said, this would be a great novel to come back to in a couple months or years. Twenty or thirty years from now I could read it and either get something new out of its ideas or revel in its literary and cyberpunk style. Either way, its still a fascinating book. 

Metropolis

Metropolis is a science fiction film from 1928 that's inspired by the book of the same name written by Thea von Harbou, an actress (who plays Maria, a working class prophet) in the film and also Fritz Lang's wife. Where do I start with this film? There's so much going on, much of it is open to interpretation from the viewers. Here's a basic synopsis.

The story follows Freder, the son of the city's (Metropolis) ruler and Maria, a poor worker. They try to overcome the societal differences between the poor that live beneath the city and the rich who (live above ground) wear white shirts and shorts and play tennis. The movie is said to have Communist ideas, I can see that but to me its not overtly pronounced. I see the film more for its beauty, to find that common ground between the rich and poor.

So Freder is hanging out in some sort of garden relaxing and Maria comes in with a bunch of poor kids to show them how the rich live. "Look at them. These are your brothers," Maria says. Maria and the kids get sent away but Freder follows her to a machine room. He sees an explosion that kills some workers and experiences a hallucination. In the hallucination he sees workers being fed to the Machine, a sort of Aztec sacrificial ceremony, at least that's what I thought when I saw it.

Freder tells Fredersen, his dad (and ruler of the city) but his indifference towards the treatment of the workers leaves him cold, so Freder decides to help the workers in any way he can, in an attempt to help the poor and disenfranchised. There's a lot of stuff that happens in between this as the movie is about two hours and twenty-eight minutes long but for the sake of a shorter blog post I'll summarize things more briefly.

Later, we see Maria is prophesying the arrival of a mediator who can unite the working and ruling classes together. There's a mad occult scientist who uses this machine-woman (robot) to create another version of Maria, who goes on to sow discord within the working class, creating many problems and dissent.

The workers end up destroying the Heart Machine, which the false Maria told them to do. This causes the city to flood, and all their children are left to drown unless somebody saves them. The real Maria and Freder end up saving them. The working class burn the false Maria at the stake as a witch and find out that it was just a robot, as the fire burns through to the metal. There's a fight between Freder and the mad scientist Rotwang but Rotwang ends up falling to his death. In the end Freder fulfills his role as mediator between the working class and ruling class by uniting hands with the foreman (in charge of the working class), his father, and himself, a sort of male triangular unity, perhaps even referencing the Holy Trinity, the father, son, and holy spirit.

So that's it. If you think about it and see the movie, the plot is quite simplistic. Its the ideas that go within them that's open to interpretation, which is where a lot can be said of the movie. First, I would like to point out the fact that there's a lot of science fiction based on this: the idea of a political break between the rich and poor. The poor trying to 'get whats theirs', a sort of futurist communism, although in this movie the Marxism is probably very high by today's science fiction standards, but at that time I would say its not quite as pronounced. I might be wrong on that though. So yes, the idea of social construckts, government, poor living underground, and the rich living above ground is something seen in tons of science fiction. Its quite a common trope.

Then there's the idea of love between Freder and Maria. They obviously love each other and find romance in each other. They ended up saving all the children of the underclass together, becoming surrogate parents to an entire generation. That's love for sure. One could say that Freder might have even become interested in following Maria to the Machine Room because he was interested in her, interested in a woman who wasn't from his social class. In doing this he opened up to the world around him, and found love in the process, a sense of discovery.

Then there's the ideas of science and the occult, another common idea in sci-fi. Rotwang, the mad scientist is a true screwball who planned on using the Machine-woman (named Hel) to take over Metropolis. In the scene where we first see the Machine-woman we see a giant pentagram symbol at the foot of her body. This signified a sort of luciferian procreation. Metropolis the book has more occult associations than this movie, which makes sense because its easier to do that in a book than in a movie that will be showed to thousands of people.

The science part was pretty cool. In Rotwang's lab we see all sorts of potions, tubes, lights, bells, and whistles. It was a cross between a 15th century laboratory and a science physics lab from the year 2000. Something like that. It was quite something. That was a cool scene indeed.

In the end we find that Freder has fulfilled his destiny as a mediator between the rich and poor. One could say he was swayed and perhaps even chosen by Maria to be the guy to do this. This shows us that perhaps leaders in government have to be certain kinds of people, come from certain places, have a lot of money, and perhaps be chosen for and by the people, much like the systems we have in place today for our political elections and office.

For example, if Freder wasn't the son of the guy ruling the city he wouldn't have as much power or sway over government. If he wasn't the son of the ruler Maria might not have come to him with the children. This ending gives me a lot of ideas about government and power. Can politicians come from anywhere, be anyone, and still be elected into high positions of power? I'm not so sure. I think it works in some cases and other cases it doesn't. There's a gray area for sure.

Take for example Donald Trump. He's been a media highlight for a long time and he didn't come out of nowhere. He was the son of a rich guy, thus making him rich. He started talking about government and the poor white working class of America voted him into the Presidency. It could not have happened if he didn't have those other traits: being born rich, using that money to political advantage, and using his political platform to speak to the poor white working class.

This movie makes me think about things like that, why certain politicians get elected into power. However, its probably more important to think of this movie as a great example of German expressionist art, of which it is a wonderful example.

You can watch the film here.

HEAD and HANDS need a mediator. THE MEDIATOR BETWEEN HEAD AND HANDS MUST BE THE HEART!

La Jetee

La Jetee is a French short science fiction film made in 1962. It runs at about twenty-eight minutes. The movie was a big influence on William Gibson, one of my favorite science fiction writers. The story focuses on a man as a child and adult who is watching planes take off at an airport. He sees a woman there. The last thing he remembers is seeing the woman and in that moment he knew that he saw a man die, but this is all he can discover from this. Eventually the world becomes engulfed in darkness, a sort of nuclear apocalypse perhaps? In the end we learn that what he saw was actually his own death.

Later he wakes up as an adult in this underground city, called galleries in the film. There's these scientists that are doing experiments on people so that they can go to the future to find a technology that can restore the world of the past. They decide to use this man because the strain of going to the future is hard on the mind. They think that because this guy is so attached to this idea of his youth, that moment described above, that his chances for doing it will be greater. So they put some stuff over his eyes and conduct experiments on him. In these experiments he meets (in a sort of other world) the woman he saw at the airport as a child and he comes to have a romantic relationship with her complete with jokes, conversations, and numerous hangouts every time he goes through the experiments.

Eventually during one of these experiments our protagonist finds himself in the world of the future, where the people have this black dot stuff (not all of them were dots, some were other shapes) on their foreheads. The future civilization people give him a technology that can restore the past and prevent impending doom. So he goes back to the dystopian present where his mission is completed, thus saving humanity.

Upon his arrival our main character figures out that these scientists are going to kill him. The aliens of the future ask him if he wants to leave that time permanently and go with them but the man instead asks to go back to the past so he can meet the woman. They agree to do this.

So he goes back to the past at the airport. He knows he is there as a kid. He sees the woman and just before he gets to her he dies, killed by a government agent that works for the scientists. What a movie!

The movie brings to mind a bunch ideas. Time is inescapable. Try as we might we are all subservient to time, we bend to its will in a way. We think we understand the past but we don't totally get it. Instead, we find ourselves in the hear and now, an important concept in Zen Buddhism, which I've read a little about. 

It also brings to mind the idea of dystopian modernism. If the Earth got flattened by nuclear war we would probably build cities underground, a popular idea in many science fiction movies. The surface would be contaminated by nuclear waste and we wouldn't be able to live in such nice places anymore. As the movie said we would become lords of rats.

There's ideas of utopia thrown in there as well, The scientists in the present think that the world in which they live is so horrible that they have to keep conducting experiments that probably harm peoples' minds because they want to regain what they had lost, their precious happy-go-lucky past where parents take their children to see airplanes take off at the airport. What a precious and happy thought.

Lastly, the film brings up romance. Ultimately our main character becomes attracted to the woman and keeps wanting to see her. When he finds out he's going to be killed, instead of going with the future citizens he asks them to send him back to the past so he can find the woman. When he does this it shows that he loves the woman, perhaps may want to spend the rest of his life with her. He could have gone to the future and lived the life of a revolutionary but instead he chooses love.

There you have it. A short science fiction film that displays tons of great ideas and all with still photos! I can see how and why something like this would influence William Gibson. These ideas are still portrayed in movies and talked about to this very day. You could even say that some of the virtual reality things I've been blogging about and reading are sort of related to this-science, dystopia, utopia, love, futurism, and the modern dark ages.

You can watch the film here.

Nothing distinguishes memories from ordinary moments. Only later do they become memorable by the scars they leave.

The Machine Stops

The Machine Stops is a science fiction short story written by E.M. Forster in 1909 for the Oxford and Cambridge Review. At 12,000 words its pretty detailed. This isn't your third wave science fiction folks, which is what I'm more used to.

Here we have a civilization that lives in honeycomb-like underground cities. People don't touch each other, not even for handshakes or hugs. People have become anxious when it comes to non-virtual meetings. Each pod that people live in comes with one book, The Book of the Machine. All other books and information are electronic. "All other info is electronic, and the forests, Forster explains, "had been destroyed during the literature epoch for the purpose of making newspaper pulp." The Book not only instructs which button to push when, but alleviates the trepidations of life in the Machine." (Wired) 

The story focuses on a mother and her son. The mother is a lecturer (I think she teaches music of certain civilizations) that gives these lectures from inside a room that is controlled by machines, much like how today we can do tons of things in the comfort of our homes, behind our computer screens, Iphones, and television screens. Her son is against the Machine, the electronics that give the people everything they need, from beds, email, to video (a prehistoric FaceMeet, where you can video call people). The people live underground with no sunlight of course but they can go to the surface, if they wear the proper attire (facemasks, the air can kill them) and if they have permission from the Government. We learn that this guy makes illegal trips to the surface often. He's quite the resistance type. 

Even scholarly trips to the surface are not allowed. Experts get their information about the surface from the Machine, a sort of proto-google. The Machine doesn't sustain itself forever. Life is not getting better. The music starts to get blurbs and bad quality sounds. The water has a smell. The Government says they're fixing the problems with the Machine but the repairs needed exceed the damage that keeps accumulating.

On the final day Vashti (our mother character) isn't doing so well. She's horrified to see whats outside her cubicle.

She whirled around, praying to be saved from this, at any rate, kissing the Book, pressing button after button....
An airship ... crashed downwards, exploding as it went, rending gallery after gallery with its wings of steel. For a moment they saw the nations of the dead, and, before they joined them, scraps of the untainted sky.

And I thought working a nine to five everyday for the rest of my life was scary. 

Here we have a science fiction dystopian sort of story that looks similar to the world we live in today. If all the computers in the world crashed right now the entire world would go into chaos. We're reliant upon these machines for everyday life. Could you live without a smartphone? I don't even own one and never have. We think we can do without it (modern technology) but most Americans would never put themselves through that. For them it would be torture, even for myself. Have we really empowered the machines to the degree that we've become weaker as humans? Perhaps that was what Forster was going for. Nevertheless it certainly makes for interesting science fiction writing. Everyone that likes science fiction and uses computers should read this short story, there's a lot to be gained from its dark brooding mentality about technology.

Read the full story here.