[extropy-chat] Century City: The law show of the future

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Hal Finney <hal at finney.org> wrote:> 
> David Lubkin wrote:
> 
> > My first reaction was the rant of a younger Harlan Ellison against
> > the  stupidity of television. This show was not 2030. It was 2003
> > with a couple of new capabilities. Hair, clothing, furniture,
> > vehicles, behavior, language -- it was all a mundane now.
> 
> That's true, it was not a very whiz-bang future.  There are no robots
> or flying cars, and styles are much like today.  The one noticeable
> future technology was the holographic display, and that's not really
> technically feasible as depicted.  You can't have a gadget project
> an image into space
> without putting some kind of reflecting matter there to project onto.

We saw just a few months ago a 2d display that projects an image into
empty space, using only a sheet of prepped air to depict the image. No
reason to not expect a 3d version in 30 years. Talk about cynical 2003.

How do you KNOW that it is impossible? It could, for example, be simply
an electrostatic field holding a good amount of dust in suspension.

> 
> But after all, it's not easy to extrapolate 25 years forward.  I
> don't think that even among our small group we would find any
> consensus about the world of 2030.  And for styles, the problem
> is that just as 25 year old styles look corny to us, any realistic
> 25-year-forward styles would probably look bizarre and/or stupid,
> and distract from the story.

Styles 25 years ago look stupid because they were trying to look
cutting edge, even futuristic, in their own idea of what the future
would be (the whole New Wave thing, for example). That they were wrong
about the future in other ways is consistent with how wrong they were
about style.

> 
> The place the future technologies do show up is in the legal cases.
> One of the other problems I had with the show was that it seemed that
> the lawyers were too ignorant about the technologies of their own
> world.

This is fine. I know lots of lawyers who are ignorant of the
technologies of todays world. I take out my Handspring and start
swapping around the camera, the GPS, the occilloscope, etc and they are
all in "gee whiz" mode, even though this technology is a few years old
already.

> They reacted with shock to the suggestion of creating an anencephalic
> clone, and were amazed that the young-looking rock stars were
> actually 70.
> Presumably these developments would be of great interest and be
> widely known.

The point is to have some characters the audience can sympathize with
act as the avatars of the audience, exploring the new things of this
world for them. When the audience identifies with a character, they are
more likely to reach the conclusion the character reaches at the end of
the episode.

> 
> On the other hand it is often the case that technological
> controversies do enter the public arena by the vehicle of legal
> cases.  A technology may be running along without attracting much
> attention, until something goes wrong and it gets into the courts,
> and then the whole thing blows up, and society suddenly has to
> decide how to grapple with this new issue.
> I think that's the idea of this show, that the courts are where many
> of these questions are being dealt with for the first time.

I'd like to see a character question this, though. Perhaps a character
from the Free State being repressed in his technological expression by
the government???? ;)

=====
Mike Lorrey
Chairman, Free Town Land Development
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
Sado-Mikeyism: http://mikeysoft.zblogger.com

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