4 ms·
Yet it predicted the future more accurately than Blade Runner (1982) where people still use pay phones in 2019.
by bsza 4y ago
Yet it predicted the future more accurately than Blade Runner (1982) where people still use pay phones in 2019.
- eesmith 4y agoPicking nits while skipping how we don't have off-world colonies or replicants? In that case, the comic got things wrong too. You'll be hard pressed to find people wearing those clothes these days, especially the nurse's headgear. Canes and briefcases are also rare, though I suspect that those rare few wearing a bowler hat might still use them. Also, few people use a bell as their ringtone.
- LeonM 4y ago> Also, few people use a bell as their ringtone. I have always used a bell ringtone, I like it because I find it less-invasive then all the other abstract modern ringtones that only give me alarm clock PTSS. Unfortunately, Samsung removed the classing bell ringtone in their latest models :(
- dleslie 4y agoMotorola, too. But you can always add ring tones.
- eesmith 4y agoSure. Mine's a bell too. But it's still uncommon, yes? Plus, I know a lot of people who only have it on vibrate.
- themanmaran 4y agoRelevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/479/ https://xkcd.com/479/
- sidewndr46 4y agoMy understanding is in the blade runner universe the off world colonies aren't somewhere you'd want to live & the replicants are banned on earth. In other words, two things to be avoided. So we could easily advance past those points without touching them entirely.
- ekianjo 4y agoBlade Runner was never about predicting the future. It was what could become if technology went in certain ways. Japan did not end up ruling the west either.
- bena 4y agoBlade Runner isn't about the technology per se. It's about our reactions to the technology. If we create a completely autonomous artificial life, is it "a person"? Does it deserve personhood? The source book is a little better about the question. The major difference between Replicants and people is that people have empathy and Replicants don't. In the book there's a device that allows people to essentially get into this weird empathy group mind thing. It's been a hot minute since I read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" so forgive the details. And that's what the Voight-Kampf device measures. That's what the questions are designed to test. It's why the first Replicant flips out on the turtle question. He can't process the need to flip over the turtle. He can't empathise with the turtle. But he's kind of still a child. Which is a little understandable, because Replicants have a 3-year lifespan. They are babies. Toddlers. He flips out because he's throwing a tantrum. Roy Batty and Pris are closer to the end of their life, they've developed empathy, as any person would. That's what gets Deckard. He realizes Replicants are fully people and what we do to them is wrong. Batty was never the bad guy. But that's all tangential. Blade Runner is set 37 years in the future. Which is now 3 years in the past. It was trying to guess when the relevant technology will be available. I think that's a better way of thinking about it. Science Fiction isn't trying to predict what will be available in X years, it's trying to predict in how many years X will be available.
- nurettin 4y agoI think it might be an aesthetic choice. Pay phones and perpetual night scenes are more detective-noir than cellphones.
- Melatonic 4y agoDefinitely this. Bladerunner is all about being a future Noir set in Los Angeles where it is perpetually night and often raining. Surely they knew when filming it or it being written that LA is extremely sunny and never rains.
- seydor 4y agoAnd rotary phones in the matrix. I mean it s not like people don't buy record players. The cities of our future will have payphones out of boredom
- Eleison23 4y agoStar Wars did a horrible job at documenting the past, too! They invented laser beams and all the hokey religious dudes thought energy swords were better?
- lrvick 4y agoMy primary phone number rings a payphone in my office. I missed having them around.
- account42 4y agoBut the inevitable retro-futurism is one of the charms of old sci-fi!