World of the future

    “World of Tomorrow” is a great animated film nominated for an Oscar this year (not won). Also, the film received a whole heap of awards and nominations at various competitions and film festivals.



    The plot is short. Through experimental temporary communication, little Emily (emphasis on the first syllable) communicates with her last descendant clone. Emily of the future shows the original Emily how her fate will develop (in a cloned hypostasis) and how humanity will live in a technological singularity. Everything that happens is shown in the style of children's drawings (presumably, after communication, baby Emily sketched what she saw as she managed).

    In this Friday post, we will briefly review some of the futurological concepts found in the film.

    Cloning


    In the coming death is defeated - representatives of the middle and upper classes have the opportunity to clone themselves and thus continue their existence further.

    The process is described more or less clearly for women - they carry their own clones. Then the memories of the donor are recorded in the new person. And so, the same body and the same personality. Theoretically, this can be reborn as many times as you like.

    Emily from the future belongs to the third generation. She calls little Emily Emily Prime i.e. Emily First. Emily from the future, it turns out this is Emily the Third. So we will call her.

    Men are also cloned, but the details of how this happens to them are not specified. Probably grown in incubators. Supposedly, male clones are of poorer quality than female clones.

    Outernet


    The Internet of the future is a comprehensive neural network. Data is transmitted directly to the brain. All people connected to Outernet themselves (or rather their consciousness) are part of Outernet (similar to how computers connected to the Internet now are part of it).

    Wealthy sections of society are cloning themselves. This is inaccessible to representatives of the lower layers, but they can transfer their consciousness to the global neural network and continue their existence there after physical death. However, digital immortality is illusory - "many people disappeared into the ocean of Outernet's serenity and disappeared there without a trace."

    Digitization of consciousness


    There is another economical option of eternal existence - the digitization of consciousness and placing it on a certain carrier of a cubic form. Emily the Third in this form preserved the identity of her deceased grandfather. So that the virtual relative does not get bored, every week EIII writes new books and films into the cube.

    Inside the cube, time seems to flow faster (or slower?) Than in real life by about 35 thousand times. While the hour of time is ticking in the outside world, it takes 4 years for the consciousness enclosed in the cube.

    Social stratification


    As you already understood, there is no equality in the future. Emily the Third often mentions the upper and lower strata of society. However, the lower strata (to which, obviously, the main part of the Earth’s population belongs) have unlimited access to the Outernet, and the benefits available only to the elite do not concern them much.

    Degradation


    You have to pay for everything and for pseudo-immortality as well. Cloning the body and copying consciousness degenerates the human breed. Future people have an extremely weak level of emotionality and low intelligence. Mankind has managed to enter the era of singularity and, using the available achievements of science, is gradually dying away.

    The lower strata of society expensive cloning is not available and they reproduce naturally. However, judging by the film, the lumpeniate has nothing but a self-sufficient Outernet, so their development is also stopped.

    The emotional connection between people is minimized, which leads to rather strange deviations. Throughout her life, Emily the Third fell in love with a moonstone, a gas station, a strange alien creature, and a mentally retarded male clone. EIII talks about these novels as something ordinary.

    Travels in the past


    By “reorganizing light prints on subatomic particles” it is possible to look into the past (no way to look into the future is mentioned). Residents of the future really like to contemplate the past and they can see everything that is happening here. Moreover, our descendants prefer to admire those historical eras when this technology has not yet been invented. Observing the recent past is not interesting - there are only the same observers looking at more ancient times.


    You can also send messages to the past, which is why Emily the Third was able to contact Emily Prime.

    Experimentally, you can throw people into the past and this technology is intensively tested on test clones. But this is even during Emily the Third extremely dangerous. Since time and space are connected into a single continuum, the most insignificant error in the calculations leads to the fact that the brave pioneers of time travel find themselves somewhere in outer space, they die there.


    At the slightest error, a time traveler may also find himself not in space, but somewhere in the thickness of the Earth. It happens that unlucky "tourists" fall into the prehistoric past many millions of years ago.

    EIII does not say anything about moving into the future. By the way, Emily the Third moved Emily Prime in due time and then successfully returned the girl back. Apparently, such a "back and forth" can be done only with people from the past, controlling the process from the future. But contemporaries of Emily the Third, apparently, can fall exclusively into the past, with a very high probability of dying as a result of displacement.

    AI and fear of death


    Emily the Third worked on the Moon, controlling robots performing some work on the surface of the satellite. These mechanisms functioned due to solar energy. So that they always followed the sun, EIII programmed in them the fear of death and darkness. And therefore, robots have always sought sunlight, because they did not want to die.

    Production on the moon at some point became unprofitable and was phased out. Emily the Third left the moon. As for useless robots, they continued to wander aimlessly on the lunar surface, terrifiedly fleeing from the dark. This population of senseless wanderers even had their own robopoetry, permeated with depression and hopelessness.

    Light is life.
    The robot has to go.
    Go, robot, go.
    But where?

    Go, go, go, robot.
    Go forever.


    Colonization of the Solar System


    The moon is practically unchanged; doing anything there is economically unprofitable.

    The distant frontiers of the solar system are being developed little by little, robots are doing this. A minimum of engineers is enough to control automated systems.


    Mars has undergone successful terraforming, there is a breathable atmosphere. Its open spaces are not populated. Either the Earthlings are good in Outernet, or the flight is too expensive a pleasure. It seems to me most likely that Mars was ennobled not at all in order to resettle millions of parasites there, and for the lower caste this is a closed territory. Emily the Third, belonging to the privileged class, traveled with her lover to Mars to spend the weekend riding in a balloon.

    Retrieving Memories


    Through Outernet, both Emilys can share memories. EIII briefly talked about some facts in the development of technologies for the extraction of memories.

    For a long time, it was only possible to restore individual fragments of the memory of the dead. Random combinations of neurons gave an unsteady fragmentary picture. EIII even showed business acumen by organizing a gallery of memoirs of those who are no longer alive.


    Memories from the most hidden corners of the subconscious mind in living people can be extracted using a special scanning device. Humanity faces the inevitable imminent death and Emily the Third wanted to brighten up her last days by taking from Emily Prime the memories of her mother, who for EIII were lost in the process of repeated cloning.

    Death of civilization


    At the time of the meeting of two Emilys, a meteorite flies toward the future Earth, large enough to destroy almost everything living on the planet. Despite the technical level of development, a close catastrophe (2 months before the collision) cannot be prevented. Evacuation to other planets and interplanetary stations is meaningless, since humanity outside the Earth will also be destroyed. (It is not specified why. Maybe the neural terrestrial Outernet totally controls the infrastructure in the rest of the solar system and its destruction will lead to an instant collapse of absolutely everything that people created.)


    The powers that be are hiding their clones in special repositories very deep underground. Wealthy citizens upload copies of their minds to digital cubic media and send them into space.

    Ordinary people try in vain to escape, going to the past in experimental time machines. But there are too many of them, and for everyone there is no time to calculate exactly the jump through space-time. As a result, all these unfortunate people directly fall into the orbit of the Earth, where death awaits them. The dead bodies of millions of people fall back to Earth, burning in the atmosphere and forming a beautiful "starfall".

    Only registered users can participate in the survey. Please come in.

    Which of the mentioned methods of “immortality” seems to you the most preferable?

    • 28.1% Body Cloning + Copying Consciousness 151
    • 20.1% Digitization of consciousness and placing it in Outernet 108
    • 4% Digitization of consciousness and copying it into a “cube” 22
    • 47.6% None of them 256

    Have you watched this cartoon?

    • 6.8% Yes 37
    • 58.7% I 'll see 318
    • 34.3% And not going to 186

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