Showing posts with label Science Fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Science Fiction. Show all posts

Monday, November 7

Growing Brain Cells


The story could have been straight out of science fiction – scientists have grown human brain cells in a lab, and taught them to play the video game Pong, similar to squash or tennis. But this didn’t happen on the big screen. It happened in a lab in Melbourne, Australia, and it raises the fundamental question of the legal status of these so-called neural networks.

Are they the property of the team that created them, or do they deserve some kind of special status – or even rights?

The reason this question needs to be asked is because the ability to play Pong may be a sign that these lab-grown brain cells have achieved sentience – often defined as the capacity to sense and respond to a world that is external to yourself.

And there is widespread consensus that sentience is an important threshold for moral status. Ethicists believe that sentient beings are capable of having the moral right not to be treated badly, and an awareness of the implications of sentience is increasingly embedded in research practices involving animals.  READ MORE...

Saturday, August 21

The Most Dystopian SciFi Movie Ever


IN THE WAVE OF SCIENCE-FICTION that came just before Star Wars, the future was frightening. Films like Planet of the Apes, A Clockwork Orange, Soylent Green, and 2001: A Space Odyssey imagined bleak realities of total authoritarianism or utter barbarism.

In the future, there were either way too many rules or none of it.

Star Wars, albeit a medieval fantasy (set “a long time ago,” even), also followed suit in its story of a hippie rebellion against fascist dominance. 

But with cool things like lightsabers and whirring TIE fighters everywhere, it was hard not to want to live inside George Lucas’ textured environments.

But before Star Wars, there was another science-fiction film with a far smaller legacy that also depicted a rotten-yet-appealing future. 

In a twist to the usual tropes that the old maintain a vise grip over the young, this film instead mused on the values of time, wisdom, and experience. It is also eerily prescient, even if none of its “predictions” about the future actually came true.

LOGAN’S RUN, directed by Michael Anderson (Around the World in 80 Days), is the movie you need to stream before it leaves HBO Max on August 31. 

Here’s why, and what you should know before you start watching.  READ MORE