Next month, the movie Transcendence hits theatres. The trailer below seems to give the major plot points: in a future where technology is omnipresent, a radical protest group called RIFT attacks the creators of that technology, resulting in the death of a scientist played by Johnny Depp. Before he dies, his consciousness is uploaded and that sentience combined with the existing network turns into a Bigass Problem. Technology is scary.
Not sure if I’ll see this in the theatre, but I’m intrigued to see how realistic the treatment of technology is, beyond the obvious science fiction bits. The monitor with glowing green ASCII text seen when Depp’s consciousness appears could be straight out of Wargames, so that’s a little disappointing. Since this seems to be a mad scientist monster movie, I won’t expect a lot of subtlety in the portrayal of the uploaded consciousness.
We’ve hit a point in our connection with daily tech that I expect an acceleration of movies like this. It’s been a long time since the first Terminator movie threatened us with the idea of global network gone rogue and technology has become far more ubiquitous. The Transcendence website has a collection of RIFT posters and they’re envisioned well, only a short step beyond today. In fact, I’m sure I’ve seen the scene below in real life but with less interpersonal interaction.
