Future world
"World of the Future" ("World of Tomorrow") - an excellent animated film nominated this year for an Oscar (did not win). The film also received a whole heap of awards and nominations at various competitions and film festivals.
The plot is short. Through experimental temporal communication, little Emily (stress on the first syllable) communicates with her last descendant clone. Emily of the future shows the original Emily how her fate will be formed (in a cloned incarnation) and how humanity will live under the conditions of technological singularity. Everything that happens is shown in the style of children's drawings (presumably, after talking, baby Emily sketched what she saw as she could).
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In this Friday post we will make a brief overview of some futurological concepts encountered in the film.
In the future, death is conquered - middle and upper class representatives have the opportunity to clone themselves and thus continue their existence further.
More or less clearly the process is described for women - they bear their own clones. Then the donor's memories are recorded in the new person. And so, the same body and the same person. Theoretically, you can be reborn as many times as you like.
Emily from the future belongs to the third generation. Little Emily she calls Emily Prime ie Emily First. Emily from the future, it turns out, is Emily the Third. So we will call her.
Men are also cloned, but the details of how this happens for them are not specified. Probably grown in incubators. Presumably, male clones are of worse quality than female clones.
The Internet of the future is a comprehensive neural network. The data is transmitted directly to the brain. All people connected to Outernet and themselves (or rather their consciousness) are part of Outernet (just as computers connected to the Internet are part of it now).
The wealthy strata of society clone themselves. It is inaccessible to representatives of the lower strata, however they can transfer their consciousness to the global neural network and continue to exist there after physical death. However, digital immortality is illusory - “many people disappeared into the ocean of Outernet serenity, and disappeared there without a trace.”
There is another economical variant of eternal existence - digitization of consciousness and placing it on some carrier of a cubic form. Emily the Third has preserved the identity of her deceased grandfather. That the virtual relative did not miss, every week EIII writes new books and films in a cube.
Inside the cube, time as it flows faster (or slower?) Than in real life, about 35 thousand times. While in the outside world an hour is ticking - 4 years pass for the consciousness in a cube.
As you already understood, there is no equality in the future. Emily the Third often mentions the higher and lower strata of society. However, the lower strata (to whom, apparently, the bulk of the population of the Earth belongs) have unlimited access to the Outernet, and the benefits that are only available for the elite are of little concern to them.
You have to pay for everything and for pseudo-immortality as well. The cloning of the body and the copying of consciousness degenerate the human breed. Future people have an extremely weak level of emotionality and low intelligence. Mankind has managed to enter the era of singularity and, using the available achievements of science, is gradually fading away.
Expensive cloning is not available to the lower strata of society and they multiply naturally. However, judging by the film, the lumpeniata has nothing but the self-sufficient Outernet, so their development has also stopped.
The emotional connection between people is minimized, which leads to rather strange deviations. Throughout her life, Emily III fell in love with a moonstone, a gas station, a strange alien creature, and a mentally retarded clone-man. About these novels EIII tells as about something ordinary.
By “reorganizing light prints on subatomic particles,” it is possible to look into the past (there is no mention of any way to look into the future). Residents of the future like to contemplate the past and they can see everything that is happening here now. At the same time, our descendants prefer to admire those historical eras when this technology has not yet been invented. It is not interesting to observe the recent past - unless there are similar observers looking at more ancient times.
Also in the past, you can send messages, which is why Emily the Third was able to contact Emily Prime.
It is experimentally possible to throw people into the past, and this technology is being intensively tested on test clones. But this even during the time of Emily the Third is extremely dangerous. Since time and space are connected in a single continuum, the smallest error in the calculations leads to the fact that the brave pioneers of time travel are somewhere in outer space, and there they die.
With the slightest mistakes, the time traveler may also end up not in space, but somewhere deep in the Earth. It happens that the hapless "tourists" fall into the prehistoric past for many millions of years ago.
On moving to the future, EIII says nothing. By the way, Emily the Third moved Emily Prime at one time and then successfully returned the girl back. Apparently, such a “back and forth” can only be done with people from the past, controlling the process from the future. But the contemporaries of Emily III, apparently, can only fall into the past, with a very high probability of dying as a result of the displacement.
Emily the Third worked on the Moon, driving robots doing some work on the surface of the satellite. These mechanisms functioned at the expense of solar energy. So that they always go after the Sun, EIII has programmed in them the fear of death and darkness. And so the robots have always sought to sunlight, because they did not want to die.
Production on the moon at some point became unprofitable and was minimized. Emily III left the moon. As for the useless robots, they continued to wander aimlessly on the lunar surface, running away from the darkness in horror. This population of senseless wanderers even had its own robopoesy, permeated with depression and hopelessness.
Light is life.
The robot must go.
Go, robot, go.
But where?
Go, go, go, robot.
Go on forever.
The moon is practically unchanged, it is not economically profitable to do anything there.
The distant frontiers of the solar system are gradually being developed, robots are doing it. To control automated systems, a minimum number of engineers is sufficient.
Mars has been successfully terraformed, there is a breathable atmosphere. Its open spaces are not inhabited. Either it is good for earthlings and in Outernet, or flight is too expensive. It seems to me most likely that Mars was not ennobled to relocate millions of parasites there and for the lower caste it is a closed territory. Emily the Third, belonging to a privileged class, went to Mars with her lover to spend the weekend riding a hot-air balloon.
Through Outernet, both Emily can share memories. EIII spoke briefly about some facts in the development of technologies for the extraction of memories.
For a long time, it was only possible to restore individual fragments of the memory of the dead. Random combinations of neurons gave a fragile fragmentary image. EIII even showed a business acumen by organizing a gallery of memories of those who are no longer alive.
Memories from the most hidden corners of the subconscious mind of living people can be extracted using a special scanning device. Humanity is facing an inevitable death soon, and Emily the Third wanted to brighten up her last days by taking Emily Prime’s memories of her mother, who for EIII were lost in the process of repeated cloning.
At the time of the meeting of two Emily towards the Earth of the future, a meteorite is flying, large enough to destroy almost all life on the planet. Despite the technical level of development, the near catastrophe (2 months before the collision) cannot be prevented. Evacuation to other planets and interplanetary stations is meaningless, since mankind outside the Earth will also be exterminated. (It doesn’t specify why. Maybe the neural terrestrial Outernet totally controls the infrastructure in the rest of the solar system and its destruction will lead to an instant collapse of absolutely everything that people have created.)
The powers that be hide their clones in special vaults very deep underground. Secured citizens upload copies of their minds to digital cubic carriers and send them into space.
Ordinary people are trying in vain to escape, going back in time on experimental time machines. But there are too many of them, and for everyone it is no time to calculate the exact jump through space-time. As a result, all these unfortunate straighters fall directly into the orbit of the Earth, where death awaits them. The dead bodies of millions of people fall back to Earth, burning in the atmosphere and forming a beautiful “star-fall”.
The plot is short. Through experimental temporal communication, little Emily (stress on the first syllable) communicates with her last descendant clone. Emily of the future shows the original Emily how her fate will be formed (in a cloned incarnation) and how humanity will live under the conditions of technological singularity. Everything that happens is shown in the style of children's drawings (presumably, after talking, baby Emily sketched what she saw as she could).
')
In this Friday post we will make a brief overview of some futurological concepts encountered in the film.
Cloning
In the future, death is conquered - middle and upper class representatives have the opportunity to clone themselves and thus continue their existence further.
More or less clearly the process is described for women - they bear their own clones. Then the donor's memories are recorded in the new person. And so, the same body and the same person. Theoretically, you can be reborn as many times as you like.
Emily from the future belongs to the third generation. Little Emily she calls Emily Prime ie Emily First. Emily from the future, it turns out, is Emily the Third. So we will call her.
Men are also cloned, but the details of how this happens for them are not specified. Probably grown in incubators. Presumably, male clones are of worse quality than female clones.
Outernet
The Internet of the future is a comprehensive neural network. The data is transmitted directly to the brain. All people connected to Outernet and themselves (or rather their consciousness) are part of Outernet (just as computers connected to the Internet are part of it now).
The wealthy strata of society clone themselves. It is inaccessible to representatives of the lower strata, however they can transfer their consciousness to the global neural network and continue to exist there after physical death. However, digital immortality is illusory - “many people disappeared into the ocean of Outernet serenity, and disappeared there without a trace.”
Consciousness digitization
There is another economical variant of eternal existence - digitization of consciousness and placing it on some carrier of a cubic form. Emily the Third has preserved the identity of her deceased grandfather. That the virtual relative did not miss, every week EIII writes new books and films in a cube.
Inside the cube, time as it flows faster (or slower?) Than in real life, about 35 thousand times. While in the outside world an hour is ticking - 4 years pass for the consciousness in a cube.
Social stratification
As you already understood, there is no equality in the future. Emily the Third often mentions the higher and lower strata of society. However, the lower strata (to whom, apparently, the bulk of the population of the Earth belongs) have unlimited access to the Outernet, and the benefits that are only available for the elite are of little concern to them.
Degradation
You have to pay for everything and for pseudo-immortality as well. The cloning of the body and the copying of consciousness degenerate the human breed. Future people have an extremely weak level of emotionality and low intelligence. Mankind has managed to enter the era of singularity and, using the available achievements of science, is gradually fading away.
Expensive cloning is not available to the lower strata of society and they multiply naturally. However, judging by the film, the lumpeniata has nothing but the self-sufficient Outernet, so their development has also stopped.
The emotional connection between people is minimized, which leads to rather strange deviations. Throughout her life, Emily III fell in love with a moonstone, a gas station, a strange alien creature, and a mentally retarded clone-man. About these novels EIII tells as about something ordinary.
Travel to the past
By “reorganizing light prints on subatomic particles,” it is possible to look into the past (there is no mention of any way to look into the future). Residents of the future like to contemplate the past and they can see everything that is happening here now. At the same time, our descendants prefer to admire those historical eras when this technology has not yet been invented. It is not interesting to observe the recent past - unless there are similar observers looking at more ancient times.
Also in the past, you can send messages, which is why Emily the Third was able to contact Emily Prime.
It is experimentally possible to throw people into the past, and this technology is being intensively tested on test clones. But this even during the time of Emily the Third is extremely dangerous. Since time and space are connected in a single continuum, the smallest error in the calculations leads to the fact that the brave pioneers of time travel are somewhere in outer space, and there they die.
With the slightest mistakes, the time traveler may also end up not in space, but somewhere deep in the Earth. It happens that the hapless "tourists" fall into the prehistoric past for many millions of years ago.
On moving to the future, EIII says nothing. By the way, Emily the Third moved Emily Prime at one time and then successfully returned the girl back. Apparently, such a “back and forth” can only be done with people from the past, controlling the process from the future. But the contemporaries of Emily III, apparently, can only fall into the past, with a very high probability of dying as a result of the displacement.
AI and the fear of death
Emily the Third worked on the Moon, driving robots doing some work on the surface of the satellite. These mechanisms functioned at the expense of solar energy. So that they always go after the Sun, EIII has programmed in them the fear of death and darkness. And so the robots have always sought to sunlight, because they did not want to die.
Production on the moon at some point became unprofitable and was minimized. Emily III left the moon. As for the useless robots, they continued to wander aimlessly on the lunar surface, running away from the darkness in horror. This population of senseless wanderers even had its own robopoesy, permeated with depression and hopelessness.
Light is life.
The robot must go.
Go, robot, go.
But where?
Go, go, go, robot.
Go on forever.
Colonization of the Solar System
The moon is practically unchanged, it is not economically profitable to do anything there.
The distant frontiers of the solar system are gradually being developed, robots are doing it. To control automated systems, a minimum number of engineers is sufficient.
Mars has been successfully terraformed, there is a breathable atmosphere. Its open spaces are not inhabited. Either it is good for earthlings and in Outernet, or flight is too expensive. It seems to me most likely that Mars was not ennobled to relocate millions of parasites there and for the lower caste it is a closed territory. Emily the Third, belonging to a privileged class, went to Mars with her lover to spend the weekend riding a hot-air balloon.
Removing memories
Through Outernet, both Emily can share memories. EIII spoke briefly about some facts in the development of technologies for the extraction of memories.
For a long time, it was only possible to restore individual fragments of the memory of the dead. Random combinations of neurons gave a fragile fragmentary image. EIII even showed a business acumen by organizing a gallery of memories of those who are no longer alive.
Memories from the most hidden corners of the subconscious mind of living people can be extracted using a special scanning device. Humanity is facing an inevitable death soon, and Emily the Third wanted to brighten up her last days by taking Emily Prime’s memories of her mother, who for EIII were lost in the process of repeated cloning.
Death of civilization
At the time of the meeting of two Emily towards the Earth of the future, a meteorite is flying, large enough to destroy almost all life on the planet. Despite the technical level of development, the near catastrophe (2 months before the collision) cannot be prevented. Evacuation to other planets and interplanetary stations is meaningless, since mankind outside the Earth will also be exterminated. (It doesn’t specify why. Maybe the neural terrestrial Outernet totally controls the infrastructure in the rest of the solar system and its destruction will lead to an instant collapse of absolutely everything that people have created.)
The powers that be hide their clones in special vaults very deep underground. Secured citizens upload copies of their minds to digital cubic carriers and send them into space.
Ordinary people are trying in vain to escape, going back in time on experimental time machines. But there are too many of them, and for everyone it is no time to calculate the exact jump through space-time. As a result, all these unfortunate straighters fall directly into the orbit of the Earth, where death awaits them. The dead bodies of millions of people fall back to Earth, burning in the atmosphere and forming a beautiful “star-fall”.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/372233/
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