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I thought the "networked tree" thing was actually quite clever. Think of it this way: Suppose you were living in Kurzweil's post-Singularity future, where you
by jcl 17y ago
I thought the "networked tree" thing was actually quite clever. Think of it this way: Suppose you were living in Kurzweil's post-Singularity future, where you have absolute command over biological and nanotechnological mechanics, and you wanted to set up a world-wide communications platform that will last forever. You wouldn't mine precious metals and sling fragile fibers as we have done. Instead, you'd engineer it into the fauna: self-repairing, self-sustaining, global.
"The spirits of your ancestors living in the trees" sounds mystical and backward, but "copying your brain to the internet to be saved forever" sounds wonderfully Kurzweillian. Cameron bridges the two, but the technology was too advanced for Kurzweil to identify it as such. :)
One thing I thought was neat about the original Avatar script that got left out of the movie was a closing threat from the Na'vi to the humans: Our giant biological computer has analyzed you and engineered a virus that will destroy you, should you return to Pandora.
- yesbabyyes 17y agoMy feelings exactly. I am quite surprised that Kurzweil misses that. After watching the film, I thought the Na'vi had pretty much mastered the whole "hooking everything to the Internet" thing. Kurzweil sounds like a child, angry because Cameron didn't let the humans have that advanced technology. In fact, it's rather Kurzweil who fails to see "beyond" today's technology, and envision a world where technology doesn't look like it does today, but is fused with nature. And Cameron didn't show that nature can be brutal? Dude, it was full of monsters. The Na'vi could be brutal. It was a badly written review, and Kurzweil didn't seem to grasp the film at all. He also seems to have a personal grudge with nature. Not cool.
- eagleal 17y agoHe looked over the Na'vi bio-networking quite superficially. But his point was that how can a rhinoceros destroy a robot like that. It's like you take an armored elephant against an M1A2 Abrams.
- sliverstorm 17y agoWe're talking about technology and life forms that don't exist, but imho: The rhinoceros was huge. A couple bullets, even from the robots, will not stop something that size in it's tracks. The robots are smaller, flimsier, and seemed to posses lesser firepower than tanks. Elephants have armor and defense nowhere in their body. The rhinoceros in Avatar looked like they had a veritable carapace to me.
- eagleal 17y agoI'm not saying that elephants have armor; I made the analogy of elephants covered with armor. The rhinoceros was about 2 times the mass of the robots (even they seem light, in realty they shouldn't, different composition, eg. man and a humanoid). The gun was at least a .50 cal. With all this advancement in technology, AI should guide the gun to Aim at the knees (technology that exists today, evaluation of damage trough pre-imposted data). And yes, you're right, it's just a movie.
- sliverstorm 17y agoNo, I understood that, but it's massively not the same. Metal armor has a lot of problems, like chinks and deformation crushing the flesh below. Plus the rest of your body needs to be geared for it. If you donned a metal helm and started butting heads with a mountain goat, you'd loose. The metal stops your head from cracking open, but that's about it, and you wind up with a host of other problems. The goat has an entire body built for the shock. There's a ton more I want to interject with, but yes. Just a movie.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- philwelch 17y agoIt's an admittedly cool idea, but it's also very blatantly set up as if it isn't technology at all, just so he can paint technology as evil. James Cameron is a white man using technology and corporations to make movies about how white men, technology, and corporations are evil. I lasted about an hour and a half through the movie before the preachiness outweighed the special effects for me. District 9 was better told and even had a more exciting mecha battle.
- cryptoz 17y agoJames Cameron does not paint technology as evil. It is very clear that he thinks the greatest technology of all is the Avatar itself; the Avatar is humanity's achievement in science and technology that allowed us to communicate with aliens in a familiar way. The dull grey ships and weapons of the military look backwards and old compared to Avatar technology.
- philwelch 17y agoI don't think the movie has anything positive to say about humanity's achievements. The avatar's only there so a white guy whom the audience identifies with can be on the "right" side of the fight, i.e. against the other humans.