Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 227 posts

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#91

Post by labster »

Laforet wrote: post #20

On a lighter note, I had a good chuckle when the article mentioned that the director deliberately avoided depiction of cellphones to avoid creating an unintentional period piece[0]. The last movie I watched in the treatre is Clint Eastwood's "Sully" and I distinctly remember the main character using a chronologically appropoaite Samsung flip phone and that single prop instantly dates the movie to the first decade of…

Just a reminder to people, All The Tropes is a fork of TV Tropes, but everything is under a free license and has no advertising. TV Tropes uses a nonfree license.[1] The same page is available here: https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Unintentional_Period_Piece

[1]: At least under Stallman's definition of nonfree: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Creati...

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#92

Post by mortenjorck »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #86
cwp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the worst (best) bit of future-past in Neuromancer is that it starts with the main character trying to fence "three megabytes of hot RAM". That seemed like a ludicrously large amount when it was written.

I think we can give Gibson the benefit of the doubt here and say the point was not the size, but the fact that it was hot RAM -- the contents was valuable. The price of 3MB, even as early as in 1984, was not so high as to make it that impressive even by the standards of the day.

Ha, I never considered that. It would fit with the data-smuggling theme of Johnny Mnemonic (the short story, at least), which is set in the same universe.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#93

Post by pravda »

walrus01 wrote: post #72
vidarh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But carrying a concealed micro-sd card with encrypted data would be a lot more convenient. Heck, you could fit many times as much data as in Johnny Mnemonic (40GB, I think?) inside your head too by shoving a micro-sd card up your nose or into your ear.

Nose, ear, really? On a more realistic note, what is the maximum microsdxc card capacity of a human rectum?

Believe it or not, that's a thing, and it's called 'keistering'! Apparently, pro's can get a cellphone 'keistered'. But I think the flip-phone style, not an iPhone.

As far as microsd cards -- I think you'd be able to 'keister' many many terabytes. They are so tiny and so thin, I'd guess hundreds would fit.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#94

Post by icelancer »

w-ll wrote: post #76

Slightly OT but pertains to "Children of Men" The scenes where main character Theo Faron (Clive Owen) is on the really nice buses, and there is classical music playing in the background, while outside the window there is so much poverty really resonated with me. I've lived in SF going on 6 years now. My apt complex has private buses that run from here to FDi in the morning and evening. The route sometimes changes but…

I worked in a gated, enclosed, guarded community in a Central American country with a bunch of expats - British, Canadian, American - and saw nothing but abject poverty outside of our small enclosure. Everything was delivered. McDonalds, Pizza Hut, local food, drinks, newspapers, groceries...

We had transportation to the local office and I saw much the same as you, but in way worse conditions.

It affected me just the same as you. I didn't last very long before taking a remote assignment and going back home.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#95

Post by ptaipale »

slededit wrote: post #87
hsitz wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pay phone definitely reveals you're dealing with an old Law & Order episode. But it's not an anachronism. Law & Order doesn't purport to display a period of time different from the one in which it was made. When you watch a 1990's Law & Order you see the world as it was in the 1990's. For it to show a scene where someone bums quarters for a pay phone is no more anachronistic than it would be for a film/tv-show de…

Law & Order purposely based its stories on topics of the day. It was a show meant to be watched in its time. Future watchers won't get the same experience out of it. That said I still enjoy the older episodes. It's like looking back in time.

That's called nostalgia. But it isn't as good as it used to be in the 1990's.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#97

Post by dang »

walrus01 wrote: post #21

Americans seem OK with watching extremely violent movies with no message or purpose with 8 year olds... People getting shot in the face in utterly inane action movies.

Please don't post nationalistic slights here. Everybody has an endless supply of these things to sling at one another if they get going. Therefore, don't get going.

We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13248373 and marked it off-topic.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#98

Post by dang »

djsumdog wrote: post #34

Ssh. Quiet. Don't rock the boat man. The reality is that the US et. al. allies have caused the war in Syria. Not just funded it or supplied the rebels with weapons. The CIA most likely started all of that, to create the distraction we now have. When I mention this to Americans, they act like I'm all crazy. The CIA caused the 1973 coupe in Chile. There's the Bay of Pigs, the Iranian Contras, MK Ultra, The School of th…

This is off topic in so many ways. HN is no place for political and ideological battle, regardless of the politics you espouse. Please don't post like this here.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13248463 and marked it off-topic.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#99

Post by dang »

nkozyra wrote: post #32
mynameishere wrote: post #28

Wow, you guys really love propaganda. You do realize that film was propaganda, right?

Would you mind tossing in a "sheeple" or two in your comment?

Please don't respond to bad comments by making the thread still worse.

Re: “Children of Men”'s vision of the future is now disturbingly familiar

#100

Post by lacampbell »

DavidAdams wrote: post #66
joelmichael wrote: post #27

It says fertility isn't an issue today, but it's a little out of touch with today's anxieties; most of Europe and Japan have such low fertility that their native populations are in decline.

The anxiety from the film is very close to Europe's anxiety, I think. In the story, England is relatively stable and prosperous in a world full of chaos, but there's a sense that if refugees were allowed in, the stability would be upended and the limited resources of the country would be unable to support the onslaught. Sure, in the world of the film, the English are trying to enjoy the last decades of human existenc…

Ironically, of course, the only workable solution to the demographic crises in Europe and Japan is immigration. Otherwise, pension responsibilities will overwhelm the working-age population and the whole society will collapse.

Staving off a demographic crisis using mass migration of middle class people from developing nations is a bit like staving off a petrochemical crisis by fracking or digging up national parks for coal. You're just shifting the problem to another time period and making irreversible changes to your country. It's not at all sustainable.

Global population will peak, so eventually every country will have to come to terms with an ageing population. In many ways, Japan is trail blazer here while the west has its head in the sand.

Post reply on HN