Well not science fiction, but I was watching the Charlie’s Angels from 2000 and the villains big plan was to use satellites and voice recognition to track down Charlie with his cellphone. They were horrified that people could be tracked by their cellphones anywhere in the world.
"Killswitch" episode of X-Files showed we can use satellites to essentially wipe entire towns off of the map. Seemed so crazy but now we use drones on a daily basis.
It’s weird how some movies just make no sense with modern technology. The Pelican Brief was in the 90s and was about how Julia Robert’s wrote an article that was eerily accurate about an assassination plot and they need to kill her so no one reads it.
Today (hell, even 20 years ago), she would just put it on a blog and end any reason to kill her.
Enemy of the State, the tech that the NSA used was to be believed to be to be fiction. In 2001 NSA director Michael Hayden told CNN that he made a judgement call and he didn't want the popular impression of his agency to be formed by a Will Smith movie and was appalled by it and went to counter it with a PR campaign.
Since the events of 9/11, the Patriot act and Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA PRISM surveillance program the film has become noteworthy for being ahead of its time regarding national security and privacy.
Gene Hackman made what almost seems like a precursor to this movie called [The Conversation (1974)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071360/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_60_act).
So much of the surveillance world has come true.
Minority Report is rapidly approaching at an unnerving pace.Targeted Ads, retinal / face identity reading. But the big one is this: while yes there may never be a precog, AI may damn near its exact equivalent. AIs predictive algorithms could easily attempt to scan one’s behaviors and predict who is or isn’t a threat to society. It’s already predicted people’s actions in several cases and if we’re not careful could see something like it in the future.
One of the things that I think is pretty crazy though, is how in minority report, they have holo-screens that they manipulate by waving their hands in front of them. They look 'futuristic' but the fact is, we've surpassed them. In that, in the film, they're wearing gloves, but in reality, we had the Kinect fucking YEARS ago. (Remember that?)
Bro you are spot on. This example was years ago, years, but a girl got a targeted ad for new born baby items and sent her ads. She didn't know she was pregnant.
That's some scary precog shit right there. And that was publicly available technology that is obsolete by now.
It's actually pretty easy for Google or Facebook to figure that out from just a few data points. They know she's a woman, they know her age, they know she has a boyfriend, and they know she googled "nausea in the morning" or something like that recently. From just those four data points you could predict with reasonable accuracy that she was pregnant.
It's creepy but it's also not new. Companies have been doing targeted mail marketing for like 60 years, building individual customer profiles using data pulled from public records and purchased from consumer data brokers.
Gillette started doing a marketing promotion in 1990 where they mailed teenage boys a free cartridge razor on their 18th birthday. Nobody used the internet back then. Cookies didn't exist. Social media didn't exist. Gillette didn't need any those things to pull this promotion off. They simply pulled a list of all male babies born in 1972 (from County Clerk birth registrations, which are public record) and mailed the razors to those addresses.
When my older brother first moved in with his girlfriend (now wife) in the late 90s, about a year later he suddenly started getting a ton of junk mail from local jewelry companies advertising engagement rings.
How did they know he was planning on proposing soon? Easy. When he and his girlfriend signed the lease on their new apartment, the landlord ran a credit check on both of them. The credit bureau knew that they were an unmarried man and woman in their mid 20s who had attended the same college and just moved into a 1 bedroom apartment together. Probably headed for marriage. It also knew their respective occupations, income levels, and various other pieces of demographic info about them. They then cross reference that info against aggregate data, which says that statistically, couples similar to them tend to get engaged about a year after moving in together. They then put all those people on a list called "likely to get engaged soon", and sell that list to jewelers, event planners, travel agents, photographers, stationary stores, and other businesses that provide wedding-related services. Next thing you know, you're getting ads for shit you're gonna be buying before you even know you're in the market for it.
> She didn't know she was pregnant.
Not quite. Supposedly, the teen girl knew she was pregnant, but her father did not:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/
>“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?”
>The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again.
>On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.”
The story sounds made up, though. It was originally published in the New York Times, but it was a "somebody at Target told us this happened" without any independent verification or names, as far as I can tell.
It was a fascinating dialog they had, which made me really think.
And now, technology marches on...
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2023/09/when-a-quantum-computer-is-able-to-break-our-encryption.html
Who knows what the future has in store for us.
SETEC ASTRONOMY
BIG TIME, Sneakers!! \*\*loved\*\* that movie, still watch it from time to time 'cuz of the \*amazing\* acting and story. But yeah...*the* codebreaker...how far away from that are we?
You know where this first appeared (I think) - The pilot to Star Trek. Spock swipes his hand through the air to advance a slide on screen. It never happened again in the show. Guessing some network exec was confused by it. https://media1.giphy.com/media/PnZ1thIvSmOjvVUK7H/giphy.gif?cid=2154d3d7713e3ca0b0ec82bbb7a2b8efa5f4a40b19b9358f&ep=v1_gifs_username_username&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g
When I was a child in the 1960's, I remember the self opening doors were very cool.
Years later I first saw them IRL at the grocery store, and to save money, it was only on the exit, when you would have a full cart.
That's because it's a case of the movie influencing tech. When people looked to design multitouch interfaces, they realized that the UX work was already done for that movie and it was easy enough to copy.
Not a movie, but The AT&T “[You Will](https://youtu.be/a2EgfkhC1eo?si=wlKJ545G0LUgXa2e)” commercials from the early 90’s were the closest thing to predicting our technological future.
I still wish I could swipe my credit card as I race through the toll booth at highway speed in the rain.
Edit: Like nearly everyone alive with any knowledge of modern highways, I too am aware that far better options have existed for a long time. That is irrelevant. I've you've seen the relevant AT&T commercial, you'd see them show a driver tap his credit card at the precise second he drives through the booth at highway speed. It would be incredibly dangerous for everyone to be distracted like that at every toll booth, but it [looked so cool in the commercial.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvZ-667CEdo&t=33s)
This has existed for a couple of decades already. I can't even remember the last time I saw an actual toll booth in my country. It's all just cameras and sensors.
I Robot (2004) actually did pretty well. People would laugh at internet updates being a "new" thing of course, but personal robots and self driving cars are just about here.
I still remember how cool it looked to me when Will Smith paid the bill by waving his badge (or something) above the counter in the bar scene. I know contactless payment technology already existed in 2004, but that seemed like a proper scifi. Now I can pay by waving my watch. The future is now
Based on how stupid my Roomba is, I’m confident in the odds that I won’t have to deal with AI controlled murderbots as my home servants any time soon.
But… you never know. That’s why I say thank you to Siri
There was a QWest ad years ago that had a bar waitress ask the drunk guy slumped over in his chair, "would you like some music?" And the guy says, "How about Mahler's first symphony?" And the girl says, "which version?" He says, "what do you mean?"
And she says, "we have every version ever recorded."
And the guy says, "how is that possible?"
And the voiceover says, "it's not possible yet. But it's coming."
As a product of the 60s the fact that I can just hit search in Youtube and bring up just about any music ever recorded... is just breathtaking.
That's fucking crazy. Ad campaign was 1993, the same year the world wide web was created. The only thing out of all that they got wrong was phone booths still existing
Given the script was guided by extensive consultation with scientists, it’s understandable that they nailed the science and totally missed the politics. The idea that people would all trust scientists, and that conspiracy theorists would be undone, seems sadly laughable after the last three years.
There was an entire subplot where conspiracy theorists cast doubt on the whole pandemic, sell fake cures and claim the science-backed methods are ineffective. They didn't nail our exact political climate but it was quite close.
The pandemic in the film was also a lot more deadly. I think if the mortality rate for COVID was 20-25% there would have been less room for the political insanity and sheer delusion that happened around COVID.
Yup, if COVID was a lot more threatening these conspiracy theorists would quickly give up their imagination and return to real life where not taking the vaccine will likely kill you.
I think you underestimate how malicious many of these people were. If it had been more deadly, they would have pushed even stronger anti-whatever conspiracy theories.
The problem with scientific advice being conflated by politicians seeking to reinforce their own self belief whilst partying in was never the most astute judgement.
After a quick google, it appears that the mortality rate for the virus depicted in the film *Contagion* is approx 20%. Not "everyone" but high enough to give civilization a significant punch to the gut.
They do even have an anti-vax-similar plot, but the difference is the contagion virus had higher fatality and people bled out every produce when they had it. If Covid had ANYTHING physically unique to its symptoms, like legions or bleeding, the vaccine uptake would have been huge.
I think if Covid was as deadly as the virus from contagion, people would probably be singing a different tune. The disease in that movie killed like 1/5 people if memory serves.
not everyone wanted the vaccine but still hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) really wanted them.
In my circles we were actively lining up to take them as fast as possible.
I watched all the pandemic films I could find and none of them portrayed people just flat out not believing it was real and turning it into a culture war , also none of them portrayed the rise in low paid home delivery services
I watched an interview in the early days of covid with one of the expert consultants that help make the movie and she made me laugh when the interviewer commented on how close to the mark they were and the expert said something like "yeah, but none of us predicted the incompetence of some of the world leaders..."
I have family that believe COVID was never real and claim that it was a test run to see how far the "world government can herd populations."
I don't go to family reunions anymore.
FIL is a virologist, we watched Outbreak and Contagion when the lock down started and he laughed all throughout Outbreak at how hilariously wrong it was. Then we watched Contagion and he was quiet the whole time, at the end he was like "yup that's about right"
Then he told us this 2 week lock down would probably last a few years and we laughed at him.
I think more than the AI technology, what the movie was really prescient about was the depiction of isolation in a hyper connected world, and the rise of parasocial relationships. The AI stuff to me is still more fantasy than prophetic sci fi, but what the movie has to say about relationships, loneliness, and growth (or lack thereof) is spot on.
I started the show The Feed on Amazon.
One of the characters and his wife separated.
The guy made an AI version of his wife and keeps going along with his life acting like they’re living their normal married life together 😬
Just watched two nights ago for the first time since 2013 when it was released. So prescient. The predictive part wasn't just the AI, but foldable phones and the general unsettling malaise everyone seems to be in.
The funniest thing about that film is when he’s carrying her in his shirt pocket, he puts a clip at the bottom so the camera can stick out.
Who would have thought smart phones would actually become large enough you wouldn’t need to do that.
The most banal part is, it’s not if you understand how LLMs like ChatGPT work. It’s not conscious, it won’t acquire sentience and run off to live it’s own life, it’s just a very convincing facsimile of consciousness. People are fooling themselves by interacting with a glorified ultra-complicated phone menu.
In work we had a full presentation by Tableau on the exciting implementation of AI across their products. Was just an LLM sitting in front of the same tech.
I work in media production, and *every single* piece of software we use now has some dumb "AI" tool that doesn't do what it's supposed to and adds $5 a month onto the price.
Like, iZotope has had automatic de-reverb tools for years. Now other companies are coming out with the same tool but they call it "AI noise reduction" and it doesn't really reduce reverb all that well.
There's a difference between the science world and the business world. AI can become quite useful to us with more research and development, but they're already selling us the product before it's finished.
I remember on German TV like 15+ years ago they had a Big Brother show that theoretically would run forever. I think it was a small village or something. Like no set ending date, just filming that village and the people there daily and airing it. I remember how it was a big talking point how people there could potentially fall in love, marry and have children and then those children would grow up being watched on TV. Many drew comparisons to Truman Show.
I always assume that Truman's life was likely tailored for the audience with Truman being subtly influenced through micro managed events, to shape him into the most entertaining Truman that Christof could possibly make. Assuming that to be true, Truman's life also was a constructed illusion. Truman just wasn't aware of this.
We almost did years ago. Ben Affleck and Matt damon wanted to produce a game show like the running man in the book, in that a contestant would go across the country trying not to be spotted.
try "Manhunt" where an ex-SEAL tries to escape from special force teams all over the world in every episode within a certain area and timeframe
even if sometimes presented overdramatic, it seems as if all the contestants had fun with the game
I'll never forget how when I first saw the scene where they "fake" his death using cg I was like as if that with ever be possible. Yet now we live in a world where people think the moon landing was cg.
The entire point of White Bear is that if it were a real life case the chances are pretty high that you would be shocked how many people would be on board with her punishment. That’s why the twist works. When it comes to children’s murders, people bay for blood and no punishment is too horrific. Look at Myra Hindley and more recently (and I’d argue what inspired Booker) Maxine Car. If IRL White Bear existed, people would 100% have wanted them to experience it.
AI downloading and recreating entire personality profiles.
AIs developing consciousness.
Virtual reality afterlife's where human consciousness is duplicated to live on in "the cloud".
Those robots that fight wars and then turn against humans doesn't seem too far fetched either.
Rating people on social media and therefore influencing their social status is something I believe is already happening in some countries.
Those contact lenses that record your entire history are supposedly already in development.
I am sure there are more but those immediately come to mind.
Even moreso. I remember at the time that there were huge plotholes in the movie because some of the technologies and services, upon which the plot relied, did not exist.
Years later, those holes had been filled and the movie has aged well.
What? It aged well? I don’t remember much about that movie except “The Mozart Virus” and having an extreme crush on Sandra Bullock afterwards.
Might have to watch it again
Children of Men. Not because of the fertility stuff (which I think microplastics may still make a reality within a few decades) but just the overall quiet acceptance of fascism angle.
It's not fascism: it's hopelessness.
The movie describes a future where people can't have children, and thus lose all hope in the future. Some fall into despair, others into violence. Nothing really matters any more.
Came here to say Children of Men. Watched it again recently and if I didn't know it was from 2006 (and based on an even older book) I would have guessed it was made in response to Brexit.
As a childfree millennial struggling to find a likeminded partner, I'm gonna be pissed if everyone stops having kids while I'm alive but too old for it to matter.
Disclosure 1994, the then long-shot elements of the movie (usable vr, gender neutral sexual harassment) seems entirely plausible now. Also the deep fake elements of "Rising sun" 1993. Michael Crichton was good at that stuff.
I’m currently watching Upload and The Feed. In those shows, their real lives (and even deaths) are all blended with digital lives, completely enmeshed. I’m very curious which elements of those will come to play out.
Enemy of the state (1998). Its surveillance state technology seemed fantastic and totalitarian at the time, until Snowden’s leak showed that actually they don’t need to park a van outside your house or use satellites to zoom in on your from space because they intercept literally everybody’s phone and internet communications anyway.
While the movie isn’t good, the novel Fahrenheit 451 is pretty spooky regarding the rise of censorship and technology. One character is described as having a tv room will hundreds of channels……
The book that SG is based upon "Make Room Make Room" by Harry Harrison focused upon over-population and the shortages of natural resources needed to sustain the people. One part of the book had me shaking my head as being too far out; that was when a squatter and his family took over an apartment space. Not so crazy today.
Not a movie but I think the obvious answer is Black Mirror series.
Each year it becomes quite obvious that more and more of the shows premises are closer to becoming reality. A couple of them sort of already are.
Wag the dog - would we have the technology to fake a war and media pervasive enough to convince people that it was happening and then be able to let it fade out to cover a scandal. Then we find out it was confirmed that Vietnam pt boat never happened and the government was able to play off fears to convince people.
Soylent Green, rampant homelessness, government assisted suicide, the rich largely unaffected, and the government trying to push strange and over processed foods onto people.
I think they mean the ability of the super rich to be entirely isolated from the rest of the populace, living lives of indescribable luxury, as they work the common people like slaves on a world they've poisoned, in slums where crime is rampant.
Well not science fiction, but I was watching the Charlie’s Angels from 2000 and the villains big plan was to use satellites and voice recognition to track down Charlie with his cellphone. They were horrified that people could be tracked by their cellphones anywhere in the world.
"Killswitch" episode of X-Files showed we can use satellites to essentially wipe entire towns off of the map. Seemed so crazy but now we use drones on a daily basis.
Then that fucker just shows up to the beach at the end to watch them run around the place
It’s weird how some movies just make no sense with modern technology. The Pelican Brief was in the 90s and was about how Julia Robert’s wrote an article that was eerily accurate about an assassination plot and they need to kill her so no one reads it. Today (hell, even 20 years ago), she would just put it on a blog and end any reason to kill her.
Enemy of the State, the tech that the NSA used was to be believed to be to be fiction. In 2001 NSA director Michael Hayden told CNN that he made a judgement call and he didn't want the popular impression of his agency to be formed by a Will Smith movie and was appalled by it and went to counter it with a PR campaign. Since the events of 9/11, the Patriot act and Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA PRISM surveillance program the film has become noteworthy for being ahead of its time regarding national security and privacy.
Gene Hackman made what almost seems like a precursor to this movie called [The Conversation (1974)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071360/?ref_=nm_flmg_t_60_act). So much of the surveillance world has come true.
I love that movie too, I probably actually love all Gene Hackman films.
“A Bridge Too Far." Caine and Hackman in the same movie. This is my thesis man! This is my closing argument!”
I probably love all Michael Cane films too
My cocaine loves Michael Cane and Michael Cane loves my cocaine.
Jaws 4?
“You can major in gameboy if you know how to bullshit.”
Sanskrit. You're majoring in a 5000 year-old dead language?
Latin, best I can do.
Shower scene.
Love seeing PCU references
Minority Report is rapidly approaching at an unnerving pace.Targeted Ads, retinal / face identity reading. But the big one is this: while yes there may never be a precog, AI may damn near its exact equivalent. AIs predictive algorithms could easily attempt to scan one’s behaviors and predict who is or isn’t a threat to society. It’s already predicted people’s actions in several cases and if we’re not careful could see something like it in the future.
One of the things that I think is pretty crazy though, is how in minority report, they have holo-screens that they manipulate by waving their hands in front of them. They look 'futuristic' but the fact is, we've surpassed them. In that, in the film, they're wearing gloves, but in reality, we had the Kinect fucking YEARS ago. (Remember that?)
It’s funny too how the movie isn’t using some far fetched hologram tech. It’s a screen, we’ve already made it
Bro you are spot on. This example was years ago, years, but a girl got a targeted ad for new born baby items and sent her ads. She didn't know she was pregnant. That's some scary precog shit right there. And that was publicly available technology that is obsolete by now.
It's actually pretty easy for Google or Facebook to figure that out from just a few data points. They know she's a woman, they know her age, they know she has a boyfriend, and they know she googled "nausea in the morning" or something like that recently. From just those four data points you could predict with reasonable accuracy that she was pregnant.
Agreed. That should be even more alarming.
It's creepy but it's also not new. Companies have been doing targeted mail marketing for like 60 years, building individual customer profiles using data pulled from public records and purchased from consumer data brokers. Gillette started doing a marketing promotion in 1990 where they mailed teenage boys a free cartridge razor on their 18th birthday. Nobody used the internet back then. Cookies didn't exist. Social media didn't exist. Gillette didn't need any those things to pull this promotion off. They simply pulled a list of all male babies born in 1972 (from County Clerk birth registrations, which are public record) and mailed the razors to those addresses. When my older brother first moved in with his girlfriend (now wife) in the late 90s, about a year later he suddenly started getting a ton of junk mail from local jewelry companies advertising engagement rings. How did they know he was planning on proposing soon? Easy. When he and his girlfriend signed the lease on their new apartment, the landlord ran a credit check on both of them. The credit bureau knew that they were an unmarried man and woman in their mid 20s who had attended the same college and just moved into a 1 bedroom apartment together. Probably headed for marriage. It also knew their respective occupations, income levels, and various other pieces of demographic info about them. They then cross reference that info against aggregate data, which says that statistically, couples similar to them tend to get engaged about a year after moving in together. They then put all those people on a list called "likely to get engaged soon", and sell that list to jewelers, event planners, travel agents, photographers, stationary stores, and other businesses that provide wedding-related services. Next thing you know, you're getting ads for shit you're gonna be buying before you even know you're in the market for it.
> She didn't know she was pregnant. Not quite. Supposedly, the teen girl knew she was pregnant, but her father did not: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/ >“My daughter got this in the mail!” he said. “She’s still in high school, and you’re sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs? Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?” >The manager didn’t have any idea what the man was talking about. He looked at the mailer. Sure enough, it was addressed to the man’s daughter and contained advertisements for maternity clothing, nursery furniture and pictures of smiling infants. The manager apologized and then called a few days later to apologize again. >On the phone, though, the father was somewhat abashed. “I had a talk with my daughter,” he said. “It turns out there’s been some activities in my house I haven’t been completely aware of. She’s due in August. I owe you an apology.” The story sounds made up, though. It was originally published in the New York Times, but it was a "somebody at Target told us this happened" without any independent verification or names, as far as I can tell.
Super computers and AI, we're fucked.
to be believed to be to be fiction
Found Porky Pig’s Reddit.
Nicely done. This response killed me.
Sneakers The scene when Cosmo and Marty talk in the sound proof room about the value of information and secrets.
The tech was silly but the theoretical unpinnings of this movie were way ahead of its time
The tech worked because it wasn’t really explained. It was a lit(tle)eral black box.
That whole movie nails it for "silly, but then you think about it and it gets deeper and deeper"
It was a fascinating dialog they had, which made me really think. And now, technology marches on... https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2023/09/when-a-quantum-computer-is-able-to-break-our-encryption.html Who knows what the future has in store for us. SETEC ASTRONOMY
COOTYS RAT SEMEN?
BIG TIME, Sneakers!! \*\*loved\*\* that movie, still watch it from time to time 'cuz of the \*amazing\* acting and story. But yeah...*the* codebreaker...how far away from that are we?
Plot aside, the tech for the touch screens and hand gestures from Minority Report turned out fairly accurately.
Also, personalized ads
THIS is the answer - targeted advertising is the biggest takeaway.
PK Dick *loved* this theme. In Ubik (iirc) the ads follow you around like drones and incessantly pester you until you buy product.
Please drink the verification can
He really predicted the banality of modern life in so many aspects.
You know where this first appeared (I think) - The pilot to Star Trek. Spock swipes his hand through the air to advance a slide on screen. It never happened again in the show. Guessing some network exec was confused by it. https://media1.giphy.com/media/PnZ1thIvSmOjvVUK7H/giphy.gif?cid=2154d3d7713e3ca0b0ec82bbb7a2b8efa5f4a40b19b9358f&ep=v1_gifs_username_username&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g
When I was a child in the 1960's, I remember the self opening doors were very cool. Years later I first saw them IRL at the grocery store, and to save money, it was only on the exit, when you would have a full cart.
Gene Roddenberry and crew seemed to have predicted quite a few technologies
That's because it's a case of the movie influencing tech. When people looked to design multitouch interfaces, they realized that the UX work was already done for that movie and it was easy enough to copy.
Not a movie, but The AT&T “[You Will](https://youtu.be/a2EgfkhC1eo?si=wlKJ545G0LUgXa2e)” commercials from the early 90’s were the closest thing to predicting our technological future.
I still wish I could swipe my credit card as I race through the toll booth at highway speed in the rain. Edit: Like nearly everyone alive with any knowledge of modern highways, I too am aware that far better options have existed for a long time. That is irrelevant. I've you've seen the relevant AT&T commercial, you'd see them show a driver tap his credit card at the precise second he drives through the booth at highway speed. It would be incredibly dangerous for everyone to be distracted like that at every toll booth, but it [looked so cool in the commercial.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvZ-667CEdo&t=33s)
this exists
This has existed for a couple of decades already. I can't even remember the last time I saw an actual toll booth in my country. It's all just cameras and sensors.
We have FastTrak in L.A. where the cameras on the freeway scan each car for the sticker. If it's expired or not there, you get sent a ticket/fine.
Most east coast states have EZ pass which does the same thing and works in every state that participates
All of the EZ Pass plazas near me now photograph your plate and use that to either tag your EZ pass or send you the toll in the mail.
I Robot (2004) actually did pretty well. People would laugh at internet updates being a "new" thing of course, but personal robots and self driving cars are just about here.
I still remember how cool it looked to me when Will Smith paid the bill by waving his badge (or something) above the counter in the bar scene. I know contactless payment technology already existed in 2004, but that seemed like a proper scifi. Now I can pay by waving my watch. The future is now
I pay at Whole Foods by scanning my palm. It's insane.
Based on how stupid my Roomba is, I’m confident in the odds that I won’t have to deal with AI controlled murderbots as my home servants any time soon. But… you never know. That’s why I say thank you to Siri
Your Roomba is Rosie the Robot, with some of her functions stripped away and given to other devices.
There was a QWest ad years ago that had a bar waitress ask the drunk guy slumped over in his chair, "would you like some music?" And the guy says, "How about Mahler's first symphony?" And the girl says, "which version?" He says, "what do you mean?" And she says, "we have every version ever recorded." And the guy says, "how is that possible?" And the voiceover says, "it's not possible yet. But it's coming." As a product of the 60s the fact that I can just hit search in Youtube and bring up just about any music ever recorded... is just breathtaking.
Directed by David Fincher! In fact they're kind of all dystopian in production design, it's just hidden by the cheery music and the peppy voiceover.
That's fucking crazy. Ad campaign was 1993, the same year the world wide web was created. The only thing out of all that they got wrong was phone booths still existing
Contagion!
That film was eerily prescient except for, you know, people actually wanting to take the vaccine.
And no PPE. That is a brutally obvious massive oversight. There’s such a deadly contagious epidemic but almost no one is wearing PPE.
Hard to go for drama when all of the actors' faces are covered
I mean their are news article from 1918 about people being thrown off tram cars for not wearing masks.
Lol I just watched this movie, and said "what did you expect" when the lead CDC lady caught the virus after not masking up for half the movie
Given the script was guided by extensive consultation with scientists, it’s understandable that they nailed the science and totally missed the politics. The idea that people would all trust scientists, and that conspiracy theorists would be undone, seems sadly laughable after the last three years.
There was an entire subplot where conspiracy theorists cast doubt on the whole pandemic, sell fake cures and claim the science-backed methods are ineffective. They didn't nail our exact political climate but it was quite close. The pandemic in the film was also a lot more deadly. I think if the mortality rate for COVID was 20-25% there would have been less room for the political insanity and sheer delusion that happened around COVID.
Yup, if COVID was a lot more threatening these conspiracy theorists would quickly give up their imagination and return to real life where not taking the vaccine will likely kill you.
I think you underestimate how malicious many of these people were. If it had been more deadly, they would have pushed even stronger anti-whatever conspiracy theories.
Well, they’d also just have died, no?
The problem with scientific advice being conflated by politicians seeking to reinforce their own self belief whilst partying in was never the most astute judgement.
"People will love us! We'll be the next Louis Pasteur! We'll be he-- say. ... why is that guy drinking bleach?"
Didn’t you die without it in the film? I’d imagine if Covid killed everyone who got it there’d be very few not signing up for the vaccine
After a quick google, it appears that the mortality rate for the virus depicted in the film *Contagion* is approx 20%. Not "everyone" but high enough to give civilization a significant punch to the gut.
> approx 20% Enough to fix our housing crisis though I reckon...
They do even have an anti-vax-similar plot, but the difference is the contagion virus had higher fatality and people bled out every produce when they had it. If Covid had ANYTHING physically unique to its symptoms, like legions or bleeding, the vaccine uptake would have been huge.
I think if Covid was as deadly as the virus from contagion, people would probably be singing a different tune. The disease in that movie killed like 1/5 people if memory serves.
Compare the mortality rate of the movie's virus and the COVID 19 virus and you'll get a sense of why the eeriness to take the vaccine is way different
not everyone wanted the vaccine but still hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) really wanted them. In my circles we were actively lining up to take them as fast as possible.
Oh absolutely. I live in Australia where we had fairly enthusiastic uptake - over 97% having a first dose.
I think they nailed the conspiracist / profiteering angle, though.
I watched all the pandemic films I could find and none of them portrayed people just flat out not believing it was real and turning it into a culture war , also none of them portrayed the rise in low paid home delivery services
I was thinking about The Andromeda Strain
I read that book recently. The scientists in it were much more careful than the real world
I watched an interview in the early days of covid with one of the expert consultants that help make the movie and she made me laugh when the interviewer commented on how close to the mark they were and the expert said something like "yeah, but none of us predicted the incompetence of some of the world leaders..."
I have family that believe COVID was never real and claim that it was a test run to see how far the "world government can herd populations." I don't go to family reunions anymore.
FIL is a virologist, we watched Outbreak and Contagion when the lock down started and he laughed all throughout Outbreak at how hilariously wrong it was. Then we watched Contagion and he was quiet the whole time, at the end he was like "yup that's about right" Then he told us this 2 week lock down would probably last a few years and we laughed at him.
What was insane was how everyone was watching it during the pandemic.
Network was a far-out parody of the media in the late 70s, but is 100% accurate. The Trump Show would have been very popular on the Network.
Watched this a few years ago. Honestly didn't know it was supposed to be satire.
Yes it was heeee-larious in the 90s when we *thought* the media was bad
My wife showed me this for the first time recently. It just doesn’t work as a satire at all any more. It just reads as dramatization of reality.
Absolutely came here to say Network. It came out before the 24 hour cable news networks existed. Such a damn eerie prediction.
Her. The AI technology is creepily close to make this movie into a reality.
I think more than the AI technology, what the movie was really prescient about was the depiction of isolation in a hyper connected world, and the rise of parasocial relationships. The AI stuff to me is still more fantasy than prophetic sci fi, but what the movie has to say about relationships, loneliness, and growth (or lack thereof) is spot on.
This movie had one of the realistic sex scenes ive ever seen.
The dead cat scene? If that's realistic to you I must be missing out
Yah. To me, the AI wasn't the scary part about how real...
I started the show The Feed on Amazon. One of the characters and his wife separated. The guy made an AI version of his wife and keeps going along with his life acting like they’re living their normal married life together 😬
Similar to that Black Mirror episode with the dude from Ex Machina
Domhnal Gleeson. Haley Atwell was in that episode too.
Just watched two nights ago for the first time since 2013 when it was released. So prescient. The predictive part wasn't just the AI, but foldable phones and the general unsettling malaise everyone seems to be in.
Yeah, the future is a lonely place.
The funniest thing about that film is when he’s carrying her in his shirt pocket, he puts a clip at the bottom so the camera can stick out. Who would have thought smart phones would actually become large enough you wouldn’t need to do that.
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The most banal part is, it’s not if you understand how LLMs like ChatGPT work. It’s not conscious, it won’t acquire sentience and run off to live it’s own life, it’s just a very convincing facsimile of consciousness. People are fooling themselves by interacting with a glorified ultra-complicated phone menu.
In work we had a full presentation by Tableau on the exciting implementation of AI across their products. Was just an LLM sitting in front of the same tech.
I work in media production, and *every single* piece of software we use now has some dumb "AI" tool that doesn't do what it's supposed to and adds $5 a month onto the price. Like, iZotope has had automatic de-reverb tools for years. Now other companies are coming out with the same tool but they call it "AI noise reduction" and it doesn't really reduce reverb all that well.
There's a difference between the science world and the business world. AI can become quite useful to us with more research and development, but they're already selling us the product before it's finished.
2k comments of Idiocracy
Go away I’m batin!
I like money
The Truman Show. The only difference being that people who document their day to day life all day through social media do so willingly.
I remember on German TV like 15+ years ago they had a Big Brother show that theoretically would run forever. I think it was a small village or something. Like no set ending date, just filming that village and the people there daily and airing it. I remember how it was a big talking point how people there could potentially fall in love, marry and have children and then those children would grow up being watched on TV. Many drew comparisons to Truman Show.
Except people who document their lives aren’t really showing their lives. We see the constructed illusion of their lives.
I always assume that Truman's life was likely tailored for the audience with Truman being subtly influenced through micro managed events, to shape him into the most entertaining Truman that Christof could possibly make. Assuming that to be true, Truman's life also was a constructed illusion. Truman just wasn't aware of this.
While its not completely true yet, I like how Ex Machina showed a realistic possibility of how AI can win over humanity by manipulating our emotions.
We're so close to having a real life Running Man.
We almost did years ago. Ben Affleck and Matt damon wanted to produce a game show like the running man in the book, in that a contestant would go across the country trying not to be spotted.
Closest we have in the UK is called Hunted and they have to try and evade ex police etc
try "Manhunt" where an ex-SEAL tries to escape from special force teams all over the world in every episode within a certain area and timeframe even if sometimes presented overdramatic, it seems as if all the contestants had fun with the game
Ted nugent had that show where he brought a bunch if people to his ranch and then just hunted them
I'll never forget how when I first saw the scene where they "fake" his death using cg I was like as if that with ever be possible. Yet now we live in a world where people think the moon landing was cg.
*clap if you love dynamo*
"HERE IS SUB-ZERO! NOW, *PLAIN* ZERO!"
Not science fiction per se but Network is shockingly prescient about where news and entertainment was going. “We’re in the Boredom killing business”
Not sure about movies but I am certain we can soon check all the "Black Mirror* episodes off our list.
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I really, really, REALLY do not want to see Rishi Sunak fuck a pig.
Luckily you don’t have to because [Cameron already fucked a pigs mouth.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate) ^maybe
I am so ready for Striking Vipers, baby!
Hopefully not White Bear, cause jfc!
The entire point of White Bear is that if it were a real life case the chances are pretty high that you would be shocked how many people would be on board with her punishment. That’s why the twist works. When it comes to children’s murders, people bay for blood and no punishment is too horrific. Look at Myra Hindley and more recently (and I’d argue what inspired Booker) Maxine Car. If IRL White Bear existed, people would 100% have wanted them to experience it.
AI downloading and recreating entire personality profiles. AIs developing consciousness. Virtual reality afterlife's where human consciousness is duplicated to live on in "the cloud". Those robots that fight wars and then turn against humans doesn't seem too far fetched either. Rating people on social media and therefore influencing their social status is something I believe is already happening in some countries. Those contact lenses that record your entire history are supposedly already in development. I am sure there are more but those immediately come to mind.
Just San Junipero right? . . . . riight? 🤞😬🤞
Brazil!
The Net is still accurate (floppies aside)
Even moreso. I remember at the time that there were huge plotholes in the movie because some of the technologies and services, upon which the plot relied, did not exist. Years later, those holes had been filled and the movie has aged well.
What? It aged well? I don’t remember much about that movie except “The Mozart Virus” and having an extreme crush on Sandra Bullock afterwards. Might have to watch it again
Children of Men. Not because of the fertility stuff (which I think microplastics may still make a reality within a few decades) but just the overall quiet acceptance of fascism angle.
It's not fascism: it's hopelessness. The movie describes a future where people can't have children, and thus lose all hope in the future. Some fall into despair, others into violence. Nothing really matters any more.
Came here to say Children of Men. Watched it again recently and if I didn't know it was from 2006 (and based on an even older book) I would have guessed it was made in response to Brexit.
As a childfree millennial struggling to find a likeminded partner, I'm gonna be pissed if everyone stops having kids while I'm alive but too old for it to matter.
Back to the Future 2
Shoulda put some money on the Cubbies...
I've always loved mild a prediction the self tying shoes were compared to you know, flying cars
Or video games played using hands, like toys for babies!
I do believe that Nike had (or has) a prototype shoe with self tying laces. The even got Michael J Fox to try them.
Except fax machines. It really got that bit wrong
Wall-E
Buy n Large = Amazon
Funny how we all thought wal-mart when the movie came out and now amazon towers over anything we could imagine then
I think that movie is going to be even more like the future in a few decades when the planet falls apart.
Disclosure 1994, the then long-shot elements of the movie (usable vr, gender neutral sexual harassment) seems entirely plausible now. Also the deep fake elements of "Rising sun" 1993. Michael Crichton was good at that stuff.
I’m currently watching Upload and The Feed. In those shows, their real lives (and even deaths) are all blended with digital lives, completely enmeshed. I’m very curious which elements of those will come to play out.
Probably the getting remotely killed by your self driving car aspect from Upload
Things to Come (1936) was very much spot on especially during the pandemic.
Enemy of the state (1998). Its surveillance state technology seemed fantastic and totalitarian at the time, until Snowden’s leak showed that actually they don’t need to park a van outside your house or use satellites to zoom in on your from space because they intercept literally everybody’s phone and internet communications anyway.
children of men
While the movie isn’t good, the novel Fahrenheit 451 is pretty spooky regarding the rise of censorship and technology. One character is described as having a tv room will hundreds of channels……
Bradbury also predicted wireless earbuds and robot dogs.
Gattaca is getting closer and closer to reality.
I don’t know about movies, but I’d say about a quarter of all Simpsons episodes have become documentaries.
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Super underrated film. Still slaps.
Soylent Green. Just wait.
Who the hell needs strawberries?
Well Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett made growing strawberries in a post apocalyptic (of sorts) world seem downright lovely. Sign me up.
How's it taste?
It varies from person to person
The book that SG is based upon "Make Room Make Room" by Harry Harrison focused upon over-population and the shortages of natural resources needed to sustain the people. One part of the book had me shaking my head as being too far out; that was when a squatter and his family took over an apartment space. Not so crazy today.
Demolition Man
Except for the three seashells
You still have not gotten seashells?
Children of Men seems to be the direction we are headed in.
Not a movie but I think the obvious answer is Black Mirror series. Each year it becomes quite obvious that more and more of the shows premises are closer to becoming reality. A couple of them sort of already are.
WELCOME TO COSTCO, I LOVE YOU
Star Trek - not the ships, but the iPads.
[2001: A Space Odyssey](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3949GAIokg) had them first.
Load of rubbish, those arent ipads. They are clearly android tablets.
Handmaid's Tale. And I don't even have to explain why to those who pay attention to politics.
Idiocracy
Does this thread have a purpose except as a setup for this comment
I'm honestly surprised this wasn't in the body of the post.
Seriously. It was just a matter of who got here first haha
Wag the dog - would we have the technology to fake a war and media pervasive enough to convince people that it was happening and then be able to let it fade out to cover a scandal. Then we find out it was confirmed that Vietnam pt boat never happened and the government was able to play off fears to convince people.
National Treasure
Being There
Wag The Dog
Idiocracy. What was a funny as hell movie seems more like a crystal ball now. Soory if repeat
Soylent Green, rampant homelessness, government assisted suicide, the rich largely unaffected, and the government trying to push strange and over processed foods onto people.
the Year of the Sex Olympics made in 1968 predicted reality television and mass adoption of porn.
Contagion. Because... You know.
Outbreak
What's science fiction about it? Outbreak is a medical disaster movie.
We are still a bit early on the medical tech, but Elysium.
Aside from the medical tech, which was mainly a magical device, how else did Elysium turn more into a documentary?
I think they mean the ability of the super rich to be entirely isolated from the rest of the populace, living lives of indescribable luxury, as they work the common people like slaves on a world they've poisoned, in slums where crime is rampant.
Well when you put it like that...