warning - contains spoilers for the movie Bladerunner
In the Sci Fi Classic movie Bladerunner (dir; Ridley Scott) we are introduced to a world of 2019 projected from an inception of 1982. It is a place of Flying Cars, dark post industrial landscapes, and a sky dominated by ships that have the sole purpose of advertising Off World opportunity. Seemingly, no one wants to live on Earth.
The 2019 Los Angeles skyline is owned by looming techno-ziggurats, owned by huge faceless corporations.
The street space resembles a rained out Mardi-Gras festival, mixtures of 'legacy' cultural ethnicity abound, as we can observe elements of Arabic, Turkish & Mandorin-Chinese making up the flavour of this hectically teeming, endlessly trading & fascinatingly busy future City.
Synthetic humans [replicants] are bio-engineered by the powerful Tyrell Corporation. They are made to work at space colonies as Security, while pleasure models provide sexual services to human labour. Many are Trained in secret special Ops warfare.
A fugitive group of advanced Nexus 6 model replicants have murdered their controllers & returned back to Earth.
Led by Roy Batty, the group have a mission to try to Infiltrate the Tyrell Corporation & persuade their designer to give them life extensions.
"Bladerunner" Rick Deckard is co-erced into covertly hunting these outlaws down, one at a time.
In the penultimate scenes we see Replicant leader Batty losing all hope in extending his life, after killing the head of the corporation that made him. Deckard has eliminated all but this last incredibly powerful replicant. After a running battle with Batty through the Bradbury Building, Deckard has scrambled up though a hole in the ceiling, to the roof.
The Dying Nexus 6, Roy Batty is growing more psychotic and chases Deckard to the point of no return, which sees the Bladerunner make a leap of faith to the adjacent complex. He misjudges the jump and ends up hanging on to a ledge, dangling precariously by his broken fingers. Batty leaps across with ease and watches the exhausted Detective struggle & eventually fail to keep his grip.
At the last millisecond, in perfect accuracy, Batty, the replicant saves Deckard the Bladerunner, and sits in the surroundings of a rooftop downpour, cradling a white Dove.
He then gives one of the most revered monologues of all Sci Fi film history;
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to Die"
Humanity is facing it's Roy Batty Moment;
I've seen the merging of Military, Political, Scientific, Socio-Cultural classes into a corpocracy.
I've seen regime changes, terror attacks, war, disease & famine; all used to justify greed & the furthering of the corporate agenda.
The using fear of outsiders / terror as acts of religious violence / climate catastrophy / viral pandemic
to keep a dumbed down docile population, fed on gamified reality as programmed panel & talent shows & PR along with distractions designed to make us all compliant.
Fake identity as super ego is observed, steered & repurposed. Imprinted on psyches as a Brand. Super stardom bought & sold by an empirical corporate plantation system. Traders no different from the 16th - 19th Century East India Slave merchants, & those of the same golden triangle that Opium dealers committed as a geopolitical war of dehumanisation & addiction in China. These Cartel owner Dynastys are still in power.
I've watched in ambivalence as satellite after satellite is launched knowing that eventually it will be weapons - I've gawped in open mouthed shock as humanity has made the descent into a mire of tracked & logged data analytics masked as freedom of expression, education & free opinion. I now witness The Super elite takeover of the Nation States knowing full well that this is not a Global takeover, but a solar system, and eventually interstellar drive for Hyper-Corporatist hegemony.
It is then I finally realise that we are Roy Battys Great Great Grand-parents, and Humanity will become like empty coconuts shells washed up on the beach of time, on a long lost island of futility that was once called Earth.
In the wacky & quite frankly daft, Post Lockdown new normal reality, we are told to expect
and accept a globally Reset 4th Industrial revolution future.
Autonomous cars will drive no one
to their non existent jobs
along non existent motorways
in non existent sterile office blocks...
which begs the question -
What will be the use for autonomy?
Saudi Arabia unveils its vision for a city without cars and streets
13 Jan 2021 - Saudi Arabia has unveiled plans to build a zero-carbon, hyper-connected city in a 170km straight line that will “reimagine and revitalise the future of urban living”.
The Line, located in the kingdom’s Neom development, will be a $5bn futuristic megacity near the Red Sea. It forms part of Saudi Arabia’s 2030 strategy to grow and diversify its economy and move away from dependence on oil.
Major urban development
According to the kingdom, The Line is the first time in 150 years that a major urban development has been designed around people, without cars and streets. It will also be built around nature, rather than over it, preserving large areas of land for conservation. Walkability will define life in the city with all essential daily services, such as schools, medical clinics, leisure facilities, as well as green spaces within a five-minute walk.
Ultra-high-speed transit and autonomous mobility solutions will make travel easier between the communities and give residents the opportunity to reclaim time to spend on health and wellbeing. It is expected no journey will be longer than 20 minutes.
“We need to transform the concept of a conventional city into that of a futuristic one,” said Mohammed bin Salman, crown prince of Saudi Arabia at the launch of the development.
"Today, as chairman of the board of directors of Neom, I present to you The Line. A city of a million residents with a length of 170km that preserves 95 per cent of nature within Neom, with zero cars, zero streets and zero carbon emissions."
Should Travelling just be about getting from A to B?
What about exploring?
is autonomizing this mode of travel actually
about controlling consumers along a track?
Will Humanity have to stick to prescribed routes through
a disney-fied theme park version of reality designed
and sold as freedom experienced
as a form of escapist entertainment?
Where is the theme park ride leading us all?
Bladerunner didn't have and decent car chases, so i have used Minority Report here!
Is What they want, What you want?
An internet of things
turns to minds and...
humans become things -
minds become simple storage devices of obtained data.
mind to mind transferrence
of conscious thought
Simply marked, denoted as data, mistakenly labelled as knowledge.
These will be tokenised. Exchangable as goods in the marketplace.
Dehumanisation is the agenda
What will become of human relations? of feelings?
of emotions & identity? Of love?
...in a global neo-liberal corporate communitarian mainframe?
...an architecture of control
Control of 'inner space' and of Outer Space,
You will exist inside a machine which will
allow movement only acceptable to the terms and conditions.
Your Genetics now a patent owned by Neo-colonial slavemasters.
Learning from mistakes will be eradicated as they are not feasable.
short term; the eradication of physical & mental 'inability'
is the Public relations exercise.
But being 'unable' is just as important as being
able. Peoples flaws are their inherent beauty.
What is to be expected of us mere mortals?
Flatten the curve they said...
No signs of life - flatlined
A flat infinite tone, a
beep on the machine will one day go silent...
A Heartrate below acceptable thresholds.
One day, the old & outdated legacy machine will simply be switched off.
Are we all expected to want to become Cyborgs?
The serf robotnik now has no need for a body
or a mind that is of impure irrational data,
because it cannot be hygenic in this Timid New World.
How can a robotnik replicant not know what it is?
Bred for purpose Data-Slaves
transported via light transcendance
to colonies on board HALs cousin.
Part of a mainframe.
Forever holds no meaning.
Infinity Collapses like a dying star.
An event horizon.
No time. No space. No life.
No time to die.
"Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it?... That's what it is to be a slave." - Roy Batty
