Why do filmmakers...

Emp_Fab

..of fillums set in the future always overestimate the rate of technological advancement ?

e.g.  Bladerunner is set in 2019, Space 1999 in er...., 

Lixarto

See "Things to Come".

Myranda

Mostly they under estimate... 

Look at the computers in Star Trek the original series or Alien... or the data overlay in Terminator 2 when we see for the terminators eyes... 

though We still dont have hover cars ...

holnrew

I reckon if NASA had kept it's funding, 2001 a Space Odyssey, might have been possible, with a much stupider AI.

randomhandclaps

Lucas is the worst for it.  He claimed they had spaceships, hover cars, laser guns and unreliable glitch holo recordings a long time ago - albeit in a galaxy far, far away.

dogload

Well Bladerunner of course was based on the Philip Dick novel, so the notion of 'future' had to be retained otherwise the film wouldn't work. It was Dick who set it in 2019.

When you think about the real rate of technological change it is accelerating. Though as Myranda says, we sadly don't have hovercars.

My gripe with sci-fi these days is the amount of glare and reflection and sunbursts. 

vasselmeyer

Emp_Fab said:

..of fillums set in the future always overestimate the rate of technological advancement ?

e.g.  Bladerunner is set in 2019, Space 1999 in er...., 

Because they underestimate the advancement of computing power and miniaturisation (see on screen graphics, user interfaces) and overestimate the development of physical technology (see hover cars, rayguns, etc).

Sporky

dogload said:

Though as Myranda says, we sadly don't have hovercars.

Probably a good thing - they'd only follow them with hoverbikes and hoverhorses.

VimFuego

and hovercraft. If god intended us to float a few feet off the ground he's have invented us with fuck off big fans bolted to our feet.

ESBlonde

Early movies had the future with corded telephones, Biplanes and Zeppelins! If we really knew what the future holds would we be that comfortable? Reviews of predicted technology usually do little to instill confidence, although they may inspire the youths to develop Sci Fi into real technology at some point. Who'd a thunk we would be walking around talking into our calculators and listening to music on them too! It is only just over a 100 years since man first flew.

PolarityMan

vasselmeyer said:

Emp_Fab said:

..of fillums set in the future always overestimate the rate of technological advancement ?

e.g.  Bladerunner is set in 2019, Space 1999 in er...., 

Because they underestimate the advancement of computing power and miniaturisation (see on screen graphics, user interfaces) and overestimate the development of physical technology (see hover cars, rayguns, etc).

I think you are overestimating the grip Mr K Dick had on reality at all. He probably believed there actually are hovercars, proabbly trying to beam secret messages into his brain so the govenrment could steal his secrets. That man wrote some great books but he did faaaaaar to many drugs.

ICBM

The funny thing about Blade Runner is that there are replicants and hover-cars, but no mobile phones. They had them in Star Trek at least fifteen years earlier.

It's hard for future-predictors though - say you were in the Edwardian era, only 100 years ago, and you had to imagine the world of the early 21st Century. How much would you get right - bearing in mind that electronics of any sort were not invented until 1906, the Wright brothers first flew in 1903 and the internal combustion engine was only a little older. So to predict what the early 22nd Century might be like, take a current engineering advance, a new scientific curiosity and base an entire technological culture around them, and developments from them that you cannot possibly imagine...

Or just go and listen to ELO's 'Time' album - made in 1981, set in 2095 - amazingly, it hasn't actually dated that badly!

Sporky

ESBlonde said:

Early movies had the future with corded telephones

I saw someone using a payphone the other day. I was slightly taken aback by it!

this thread reminds me of something in E&T magazine (which is sci-fi themed this month) - one of the things Samsung entered as evidence in their legal proceedings with Apple was a shot from 2001 where the astronauts are using tablet computers (faked in the fillum). These tablet computers entirely conform to Apple's patent but were on film decades before Apple filed it...

Myranda

Is that the patent trial which partly boiled down to Apple having a patent on a rectangle? Which in spite of not being what patent law is about the American judge found in favour of the American company over the Korean company... I'd be less cynical, but in the one instance of the US courts finding in favour of Samsung over Apple resulting in an import ban on certain apple products was overturned by the President without trial or recourse to appeal

I think in the near future there will be a stalling of tech development due to patent issues, but I still want my hover-transport or jetpowered rocket pants

Sporky

I think all future wars will be fought over patents. Rather than bothering with expensive court cases, companies will instead have champions who will do battle in some sort of arena. Possibly in giant robots.

axisus

Lets face it, we are all waiting for teleportation. Nothing else compares.

Myranda

Just saying it over and over wont make people buy your giant death robots

Sporky

axisus said:

Lets face it, we are all waiting for teleportation. Nothing else compares.

I'm not. I know what happens to the original you.

Myranda said:

Just saying it over and over wont make people buy your giant death robots

What if it's a giant robot saying it over and over?

snakemanStoo

Holodecks are where it's at man...

fatherjack

Sporky said:

I think all future wars will be fought over patents. Rather than bothering with expensive court cases, companies will instead have champions who will do battle in some sort of arena. Possibly in giant robots.

I think that may put you in breach of US Patent 7,463,001...

Sporky

fatherjack said:

I think that may put you in breach of US Patent 7,463,001...

http://www.webomator.com/grafx2/blog/Giant_Robot.jpg