The 5 Dumbest Things In Transcendence

[Tim Chuma]

I've seen stupider.

"The enemy is a computer. The images you see are materialisations of its energy. To destroy it press button for it's elimination, probable colour - RED!"
Cosmos: War of the Planets
(The evil computer tells the hero it will take over the galaxy if he replaces it's circuit board and he still does it anyway.)

Edit - was a list of computers in movies from a discussion in alt.folklore.computers
http://neil.franklin.ch/Usenet/alt.folklore.computers/20041129_Computers_in_movies

 

[Nimzabaat]

There are no pros and cons to science. Science furthers understanding. The pro/con situation comes into play when people start applying the knowledge gained through science. You can't stop the world from turning or people from learning.

I generally agree but... people stop learning all the time. I've seen a lot of people (mostly online) who will accept a certain amount of information and then stop accepting more. It's like the difference between an atheist and an agnostic I guess that covers the RIFT people in this movie.

 

[vxicepickxv]

Technically, it sounds like they got the power part right.

The way the network power grid switches work is via the internet. When the host switches are disabled, they limit power distribution to local areas only, leaving pockets of the world with power, and most of it in the dark. Large cities would have power if there's a power plant nearby, but there would be a lot of brownouts, and good chunks of most countries would be without power, because there would be no way to monitor the grid.

 

[Clovus]

Hey, even if coal, natural gas, hydro, and solar power somehow stops working when the internet gets unplugged, it is pretty ridiculous to claim that leads to no electricity!

We'd still have human beings that can be stuck in goo filled pods to create electricity. That's an idea that doesn't at all contradict the "Ten percent law" and makes perfect sense.

(Heh, one of my badges agrees!)

 

[Adventurer2626]

I apparently watched a different movie then 90% of the people talking about it. I think rather than looking at the movie critically as a self-contained work of art to be examined neutrally, I climbed right up inside it's mind and started poking around, empathizing with it and letting my imagination run wild with the "what if's." Hell, near as I can tell I seem to have completely glossed over most of what was actually there. There were definitely some things wrong with it that are well documented by now, like the horizontal copper shielding, no internet = Revolution-style apocalypse, and everyone forgets about the murderous and incoherent terrorist entity we're supposed to get on board with against the evil AI that hasn't actually done anything wrong yet (aside from making humans into willing slaves). Humans got scared and acted like humans. Also the "AI" went wrong not because it was AI but because it was a human that got...well, transcended without actually knowing what that meant. Absolute power, corrupts absolutely? Sure seems to. Depp's character lost himself to his vision. He ignored his own advice to his wife.

I look at it not as the movie saying "science is bad and scary because it wants to become God" so much as "'science is bad and scary because it wants to become God.' That's what you sound like right now." It's a critique on the way we rationalize our fears and end up doing something worse than what we're trying to prevent. This movie to me is just a thought provoker and discussion stimulator (which it succeeded in by the way) not a cinematic work of art to have Oscars thrown at it because critics said so. This pretty much is Frankenstein's nanotech monster. Not an original piece, just a modern remix to get us thinking. The problem is the delivery not the story itself, which people, understandably, are getting hung up on.

 

[Disthron]

About your point on R.I.F.T.. I can totally believe that a Luddite group would have no clear rational behind there hatred of technology. Because there opinions are irrational and fuelled by there emotions.

Too bad about the small scope.

 

[Ayasano]

Aside from the obvious problems like a lack of understanding about Faraday Cages and such, my main problem with the movie was the fact that it was constrained by a need to have the humans "win" in the end.

They showed just how far ahead an AI would be in some places (Making millions on the stock market, being able to almost read people's thoughts simply by analyzing their biochemistry and physical reactions, etc.) and even showed how such an AI would be able to change its own source code and make a billion backups of itself, and then proceed to completely ignore that and have it taken down by a virus somehow based on its source code. Even if the virus worked, have they never heard of external hard drives? USB sticks?

If you're going to write a cautionary tale, don't have a massive cop-out at the end. (Especially if the caution in question is about humans shooting first)

[possible spoilers here]
That being said, depending on how you interpret the ending, maybe they did take offline storage thing into account after all.
[/end possible spoilers]