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

171–180 of 227 posts

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

#171

Post by crdoconnor »

jodrellblank wrote: post #110
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…

From Maciej Ceglowski Second, treating the world as a software project gives us a rationale for being selfish. The old adage has it that if you are given ten minutes to cut down a tree, you should spend the first five sharpening your axe. We are used to the idea of bootstrapping ourselves into a position of maximum leverage before tackling a problem. In the real world, this has led to a pathology where the tech secto…

>Second, treating the world as a software project gives us a rationale for being selfish. The old adage has it that if you are given ten minutes to cut down a tree, you should spend the first five sharpening your axe. We are used to the idea of bootstrapping ourselves into a position of maximum leverage before tackling a problem.

>In the real world, this has led to a pathology where the tech sector maximizes its own comfort. You don't have to go far to see this. Hop on BART after the conference and take a look at Oakland, or take a stroll through downtown San Francisco and try to persuade yourself you're in the heart of a boom that has lasted for forty years. You'll see a residential theme park for tech workers, surrounded by areas of poverty and misery that have seen no benefit and ample harm from our presence. We pretend that by maximizing our convenience and productivity, we're hastening the day when we finally make life better for all those other people.

This wasn't programmers' fault. It wasn't robots. It wasn't automation. It wasn't the fault of boomers. It wasn't the fault of millenials. It wasn't the fault of "us" in any sense.

It was the fault of the same American oligarchy who conspired to suppress American wages across the country, including those of programmers: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/03/google-apple-tech-tit...

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

#172

Post by icebraining »

james-watson wrote: post #150
jodrellblank wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Maciej Ceglowski Second, treating the world as a software project gives us a rationale for being selfish. The old adage has it that if you are given ten minutes to cut down a tree, you should spend the first five sharpening your axe. We are used to the idea of bootstrapping ourselves into a position of maximum leverage before tackling a problem. In the real world, this has led to a pathology where the tech secto…

Sounds like a pretty accurate implementation of a Randian Utopia. Pure self interest isn't a difficult vector to map. The results are predictable and repeatable. "Taxation is theft!"

Except that tech workers in the Bay Area do pay a lot in taxes - a $100K/year earner pays almost 40% of his income. Calling it a Randian Utopia makes no sense.

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

#173

Post by m-i-l »

"...Cuarón’s most effective decision was to shoot so many scenes on the streets of London, without adding much except graffiti, litter and all-round squalor."

Actually, I lived around the corner from one of the locations in the film, and remember the film crew coming in and cleaning up the pretty disgusting real filth (human excrement, used needles, etc.) and painting over the real graffiti, replacing it with cleaner pretend filth (scrunched up newspapers and the like) and safer pretend graffiti.

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

#174

Post by crdoconnor »

lacampbell wrote: post #108
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 am curious, have you experienced poverty? I mean "first world poverty", like the kind you bus drives through? I have, and I want nothing to do with it. I certainly wouldn't choose to walk through it again. Have you stopped to consider you're being a bit of a slum tourist, or maybe you have a saviour complex?

>slum tourist

I've never heard this phrase used out of genuine concern for those in poverty. It's just another way of saying "don't make me feel guilty by reminding me that it exists".

The condescending presumption behind the phrase seems to be that those in poverty would actually prefer it if you hid behind your gated community.

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

#175

Post by Joeboy »

roryisok wrote: post #143

Whatever you might argue about it's prescience, Children of Men is one of the best films of the last decade. The writing, directing and acting are all stellar. It has some of the best single take shots ever filmed. There's a 20 minute running street battle at the end with tanks and explosions that is shot in a single take. It's also one of those rare occasions where the movie is far better than the original book. Boo…

> There's a 20 minute running street battle at the end with tanks and explosions that is shot in a single take.

Strictly speaking there's a cut hidden in the middle of it somewhere.

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

#176

Post by owly »

lacampbell wrote: post #108
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 am curious, have you experienced poverty? I mean "first world poverty", like the kind you bus drives through? I have, and I want nothing to do with it. I certainly wouldn't choose to walk through it again. Have you stopped to consider you're being a bit of a slum tourist, or maybe you have a saviour complex?

Maybe he's just being a good person. Have you stopped to consider those are real people?

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

#177

Post by usrusr »

unimpressive wrote: post #166
lobster_johnson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely, in William Gibson's Neuromancer, there are no cell phones, despite being set decades into the future. Gibson knows a thing or two about seeing their scifi becoming dated, of course. The famous opening line, "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" no longer resonates with anyone born the last 20 years or so (although for a number of years, many digital TVs would displa…

I was born in the last twenty years and understood the sentence just fine when I read it. Interestingly enough, youtube does static when your connection times out. (Though I grew up with CRT televison as a kid and definitely remember TV static. I also played a lot of classic video game consoles because my dad was a thrift store hound.)

Just like we do have an idea about how steam engines look and feel, but the mental image painted by words referring to one will be very different for those who only know steam engines from the Hogwarts Express, compared to those who actually stood close to one fully heated up and regulating pressure by bleed valve, turning half the station into a sauna.

Firmly establishing in those opening lines not only the future setting of Neuromancer but also the era of analog electronics it was written in will be of great benefit to future readers.

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

#178

Post by usrusr »

amiramir wrote: post #75
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…

Blade Runner's production design is beautiful and almost prefectly timeless in its depiction of a future. The only thing that dates the film for me is the cathode ray tubes. They are even in the flying cars I think. Directors and designers could start using flat blue devices so that interfaces can be re-imagined, in 2-D, or 3-D, and composited in future re-masterings. I like the non-desript tri-fold devices in Westwo…

Flat blue compositing placeholders? The gods of advertisement seem to have anticipated your request:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_placement#Re-placeme...

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

#179

Post by DanBC »

usrusr wrote: post #178
amiramir wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blade Runner's production design is beautiful and almost prefectly timeless in its depiction of a future. The only thing that dates the film for me is the cathode ray tubes. They are even in the flying cars I think. Directors and designers could start using flat blue devices so that interfaces can be re-imagined, in 2-D, or 3-D, and composited in future re-masterings. I like the non-desript tri-fold devices in Westwo…

Flat blue compositing placeholders? The gods of advertisement seem to have anticipated your request: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_placement#Re-placeme...

For some reason this reminds me of Repo Man's use of blank product labels - everything has a white label with blue writing.

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

#180

Post by deadringerr »

Joeboy wrote: post #175
roryisok wrote: post #143

Whatever you might argue about it's prescience, Children of Men is one of the best films of the last decade. The writing, directing and acting are all stellar. It has some of the best single take shots ever filmed. There's a 20 minute running street battle at the end with tanks and explosions that is shot in a single take. It's also one of those rare occasions where the movie is far better than the original book. Boo…

> There's a 20 minute running street battle at the end with tanks and explosions that is shot in a single take. Strictly speaking there's a cut hidden in the middle of it somewhere.

I think it's when they first enter the building and droplets of water get on the camera lens but are quickly removed in the next couple of frames.
Post reply on HN