Why Does So Much New Technology Feel Inspired by Dystopian Sci-Fi Movies? (nytimes.com)
- Reference: 0179988586
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/11/07/0057237/why-does-so-much-new-technology-feel-inspired-by-dystopian-sci-fi-movies
- Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/magazine/ai-tech-industry-sora-science-fiction.html
> You worry that someone in today's tech world might watch "Gattaca" -- a film that features a eugenicist future in which people with ordinary DNA are relegated to menial jobs -- and see it as an inspirational launching point for a collaboration between 23andMe and a charter school. The material on Sora, for instance, can feel oddly similar to the jokes about crass entertainment embedded in dystopian films and postmodern novels. In the movie "Idiocracy," America loved a show called "Ow! My Balls!" in which a man is hit in the testicles in increasingly florid ways. "Robocop" imagined a show about a goggle-eyed pervert with an inane catchphrase. "The Running Man" had a game show in which contestants desperately collected dollar bills and climbed a rope to escape ravenous dogs. That Sora could be prompted to imagine a game show in which Michel Foucault chokeslams Ronald Reagan, or Prince battles an anaconda, doesn't feel new; it feels like a gag from a 1990s writer or a film about social decay.
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> The echoes aren't all accidental. Modern design has been influenced by our old techno-dystopias -- particularly the cyberpunk variety, with its neon-noir gloss and "high tech, low life" allure. From William Gibson novels to films like "The Matrix," the culture has taken in countless ruined cityscapes, all-controlling megacorporations, high-tech body modifications, V.R.-induced illnesses, deceptive A.I. paramours, mechanical assassins and leather-clad hacker antiheroes, navigating a dissociative cyberspace with savvily repurposed junk-tech. This was not a world many people wanted to live in, but its style and ethos seem to reverberate in the tech industry's boldest visions of the future.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/05/magazine/ai-tech-industry-sora-science-fiction.html
Cause it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously because the techbros pushing this stuff don't have the self-reflection necessary to go "wait, is this good for society?"
Like just look at "Beast Games" inspiration Squidgame.
There is a morbid curiosity to see if something fictional actually works in reality. When it comes to battle royale/deathgames, you can't do that IRL, but an IRL facsimile where the stakes are not as deadly, may still lead to people being more amenable to psychopathic behavior being normalized.
Just look at death sentences. People want blood when the crime is heinous enough. When pedophiles get sent to prison, the inmates will often murder the convicted pedophile, and everyone will look the other way, including the guards. We need look no further then Epstein to see this, but there is a guy on youtube who has been basically a pro-bono lawyer for inmates and knows this happens.
Social media has people launching death threats at game developers, artists, actors, voice actors, who work on games where their character they have a crush on dies, and can't separate the villain in their fictional work from the person voicing the lines.
That is a problem. So all these dystopian futures we see are basically that long erosion of empathy that religions have as cornerstones. If you have no empathy for people suffering, then you're basically at end-stage psychopathy.
We make these films because ultimately writers are artists, and artists often hold left-center views that greed is bad, and unchecked-green is a slippery slope where life is not valued.
Re: (Score:2)
And, I'll just add that free market capitalism knows no bounds without strong regulations. When the greed is unbound, it's a race to the bottom.
1984 anyone? (Score:2)
No comment.
Look at the new "Iron" robot (Score:2)
That must be a nexus-1.
Won't be long before you can have a Leon for the heavy gardening work, a Pris for "company", and a Zhora to take out your enemies.
Perhaps even a Roy to discuss philosophy. Just don't make him mad by referring to the four-year lifespan.
Idiocracy is spot on (Score:2)
It simply extrapolated human nature over technology progress. We're almost there.
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No. The film was explicitly about lower average IQs as a result of adverse sexual selection.
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Clearly a problem world-wide.
Not so clear what to do about it, although education helps in some countries.
Art isn't reality. (Score:3)
Art distorts reality in order to show us different perspectives and perhaps give a warning.
Could the world of Bladerunner 2049 be a thing? Absolutely. Is it likely to be exactly like that? Probably not. Same with Gattaca.
I love cyberpunk literature. I've been reading it since my teens. It prepared me for everything that's happening these days. And what I really like about that is that some things have been outpaced by reality. In many places we are already in post cyberpunk utopia before we even reached cyberpunk.
As Deni Villeneuve said to the Google engineers:"You guys are making it really difficult for us to write science fiction."
Which pretty much sums up the state of things with fiction vs. reality.
My personal theory? (Score:2)
The super rich tech bros are bored and want to see just how far they can push the envelope.
I mean look at people like Bezos, Zuckerberg and Musk. You'd think having made billions in net worth (which isn't the same as actually having billions), at some point they'd be content with their image but noooo...
These people never outgrew their own underdeveloped self-esteem. I mean these poor sonsabitches... They have practically if not literally unlimited money, Everybody knows their names and tens of thousands of
Re:My personal theory? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if they get to see making money as a high score, you "must" be productive at all times even if you have well over enough - people get stuck playing looter games even when they have basically completed it, so much that "end-game content" is a big thing - got to get that latest loot.
So these people never wake up one morning, with the alarm going for a business meeting or whatever, they never sit and think "Wait, I am worth 50 billion dollars, I can just relax and go fishing for the next week, next month learn to paint", whatever. Even if they that for a month or so they'll get bored eventually and go back to chasing that high score.
Unfortunately the high score isn't "Would this be best for society?" - it's "Would this make me money regardless of what it does to society?" If they introduce something that is bad for society it doesn't matter, as long as it makes the extra 20 billion - even if that extra money materially wouldn't make much of a difference to the upper classes lives. I've made this extra money therefor I must be a good person right ? All the anger of the underclass is because they are failures, if only they would have made the business deal that I made, invested that 100G in what I invested in, they'd be winners like me.
Some of the great Sci-Fi involves "what would people do if they had everything" e.g. the Post-Scarcity Culture series. What would bring your life meaning if you had billionaire resources. A question we need to start asking, let alone answering.
And of course you must remember 50% of the human race (probably 90%...) is just not that smart and definitely not capable of introspection. So there's that.
And even when they do start charitable organisations, how often to they even benefit those at the bottom? The homeless people by me all waiting for government funded homing, none get a dime from any charity ? Yes a lot of them do good work e.g. Uncle Bill's foundation releases the Our World in Data series. But then you see them throwing billions around in deals and wonder "does this benefit anyone beyond the odd toilet being built in Uganda?"
IANAE (I am not an economist, obviously!)
Maybe it's just easier? (Score:2)
FTL, life-extension, space elevators, replicators? That's hard. 1984? Much more straightforward.
Idiocracy feels more like the current society (Score:3)
I thought it was meant as a comedy.
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Many in the tech industry know HOW to build moreso than WHAT to build.
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Idiocracy/Black Mirror
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You probably drink water too, like out of the toilet.