| Blade Runner |
April 3, 2018
|
| He liked to watch movies. He had more than a hundred DVDs that he had bought at a video rental shop. They sometimes sold second hand DVDs at a cheap price. On this day, he decided to see 'Blade Runner' from his collection. He couldn't remembered when he had watched it the last time, it was a long time ago. 'Blade Runner' was a very famous SF movie in which Harrison Ford appeared. Maybe it took some movie awards. The movie caused a sensation because of its stylish atmosphere and elaborate story which predicted the future. He could recall some major scenes like the scene when a female android wearing a transparent plastic coat fell down into a shop window breaking the glass when escaping from the protagonist, a humanoid hunter called 'Blade Runner'. However he couldn't remember the whole story and how the story ended. He checked the cover of the DVD and found that the movie's release year was  1982. It was 4 decades ago. He also checked the DVD's release year, it was 1991. Maybe he had watched this movie in the theater, then he bought this DVD later because it was such a good movie. Until recently, Blade Runner's world was just a world of fiction. Although the movie had some realistic feelings, nobody thought it would become real. But with recent development of robots, some scientists predicted that humanoid robots could be in use in the near future. It made him want to see this movie again. He started to watch the movie. Soon the introduction appeared: "Early in the 21st Century, THE TYRELL CORPORATION advanced Robot evolution into the NEXUS phase - a being virtually identical to a human - known as Replicant. The NEXUS 6 Replicants were superior in strength and agility, and at least equal in intelligence, to the genetic engineers who created them. Replicants were used Off-world as slave labor, in the hazardous exploration and colonization of other planets. After a bloody mutiny by a NEXUS 6 combat team in an Off- world colony, Replicants were declared illegal on earth - under penalty of death. Special police squads - BLADE RUNNER UNITS - had orders to shoot to kill, upon detection, any trespassing Replicant. This was not called execution. It was called retirement." And next, in bigger letters, "LOS ANGELES NOVEMBER, 2019". He was surprised to know that the setting year was 2019. This was now! In the movie, police cars flew in the air, human shaped androids appeared, which had red blood, and ate and drank like humans. Humans couldn't recognize them easily and Blade Runners used a machine like a polygraph. "During the time of 1982, did the director of the movie think that 40 years later, humanoid like humans would appear?" He had no idea. He checked about the year on the Internet. 1981 was the year that MS-DOS computing started. At work, he heard about this world gradually, although he didn't know what MS-DOS meant. Later he knew that MS meant 'Microsoft'. Windows 3.1 appeared in 1992. Around this year he started to use his first computer, Macintosh. Netscape Navigator was released in 1994 as an Internet search software. Windows 95 appeared, of course, in 1995, and computers spread among people. He also checked the original novel that the movie was based on. It was named 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?', the author was Philip K. Dick, an American writer. The book was published in 1968, it was 14 years before of the movie. The book's introduction read that the setting year of the story was 1992, which means that it was 24 years after the publication. Did the author think that 24 years later there would be a world where human like android robot would appear? He was not sure, again. 1968 was the year that NASA succeeded to launch 2 manned rockets. The following year, in 1969, the astronaut, the captain of the Apollo 11 rocket, Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon. So the author might have thought, "At this pace, humans would soon be on Mars." In the story, eight androids came from Mars escaping from hard labor. But, in reality, it didn't happen that soon. In fact, even with recent AI and robot technology developments, drone technology would enable flying cars, although still several years away, he thought. . In the movie an android was upset to know that she was an android and her memories were planted using certain human's history, like photos with one's childhood days. He thought it was a smart idea. The author thought that androids should need some memory. If androids needed to feel sympathy and empathy to humans, they needed to think like humans. Human beings' thinking ways are based on their history, experiences with their families, friends, relatives, coworkers, neighbors, etc. Now robots are developed in order to help people, physically. Maybe in the future, it would be mentally, he thought. |
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*transparent :§ΎΘ
*protagonist :εlφ
*corporation :Π
*evolution :i»
*virtually :ΐΏIΙ
*identical :―κΜ
*agility :q·«
*hazardous :λ―Θ
*exploration :T
*mutiny :½
*detection :Tm
*trespassing :s@Nό
*execution :Y
*manned :ζθΜ
*sympathy :―ξ
*empathy :€΄