It's Time For Sci-Friday
The Final Cut and a 1980s Sci-Fi sitcom called Small Wonder.
Happy Sci-Friday to you all!
For this week’s Sci-Friday I am going to recommend taking a look at a film called The Final Cut (2004).
The film explores the idea that a brain implant (BCI) can be used to record someone’s entire life all from a first-person perspective.
In this futuristic world, professionals called “cutters” are hired to edit the recorded lives of unsavory characters into uncritical memorials to be played at funerals.
These memories are cut into feature-length films so they can be relived by their loved ones indefinitely.
This idea makes for a good story, but does this ever sound like a bad idea?
We have to face that nobody on earth has lived a perfect life, and the notion that you would only have to edit the lives of unsavory characters is a fallacy, after all, if we haven’t done completely horrible stuff, I’m sure that most of us have at least been an idiot once or twice in our lives and who wants to be remembered for being a moron, but that is the best case scenario.
The other scenario is one where the deceased was thought to be a good person, but it’s found out upon reviewing the life recording that they were a horrible person who had some very dark secrets to hide.
In this case, what are the moral and ethical implications of the editor? Do they inform their loved ones or the victims of their horrendous deeds? What are the legal implications of scrubbing crimes from someone’s life highlight reel?
If you haven’t seen this one or haven’t in a while go check it out. In 2004 when it was released, brain implants were not something we thought would be seen for a long time, well, that time has finally come.
Does anyone remember the 1980s Sci-Fi sitcom “Small Wonder”?
Somehow I came across this show the other day, that’s what the internet is great for! I hadn’t seen this show because, for me, the only 1980s Sci-Fi sitcom was ALF.
Small Wonder ran for 4 seasons from the mid to late 1980s.
The story revolves around V.I.C.I. (an acronym for Voice Input Child Identicant, pronounced "Vicki"), an android in the form of a 10-year-old girl. Vicki was built by Ted Lawson, an engineer/inventor for United Robotronics, to assist handicapped children. Ted then takes the robot girl home to his family so she can learn the ways of the human.
Vicki possesses superhuman strength and speed. She comes fully equipped with an AC outlet under her right arm, a data port under her left arm, and an access panel in her back, she’s a full-on robot, weird!
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The Final Cut looks very interesting. I was heads-down in college at the time that this came out, so I'm not too surprised that I missed it at the time, but the fact that I'm only hearing of it twenty years later tells me that it must have been met with some criticism. That said, this is Robin Williams, so that automatically makes it a "must-see."
Alley watched Small Wonder as a kid, and I did not. It's a weird discrepancy for us, where we normally had a lot of shared cultural experiences.
I very much appreciate Robin Williams, and if my watch log wasn't so jammed up, this one would probably enter the queue.