I don't need to rehash how ridiculously computers and computing are portrayed in the movies, but suffice it to say that Jeff Goldblum's hack into an alien mainframe with an Apple PowerBook in 1996's "Independence Day" represents an all-time low, surpassing even Sandra Bullock's "The Net" from the year before.
This season's entry is "The Sixth Day," starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which elevates Internet-enabled refrigerators, OnStar automobile navigation systems that actually drive the car for you, biometric security and digital cash to the big screen. Surprisingly, most of it is deftly handled. But then we get to the bigger questions/problems of the real subject of the movie -- cloning.
I've been hearing about the Web-enabled fridge and Coke machine for years now, ever since the birth of Java, and I'm still waiting for it to become a reality -- not that I want it, but I'm still waiting. While it makes sense for distributors of retail products to want to remotely check on their outlets (such as a soda machine), for the life of me I can't understand my kitchen appliances being attached to anyone's network.
(Talk about invasion of privacy. "Excuse me, sir, but you are running low on beer, vermouth and Haagen Dazs ... shall I order you some tofu and free-range chicken?")
In "The Sixth Day" the fridge is also the site of the family's calendar, represented by digital and voice displays. Schwarzenegger's family gets betrayed by that technology as the bad guys are led to his daughter's recital because of an entry prominently posted on the calendar, with address and everything.
A few futuristic elements aren't too far off. NFL quarterbacks today can receive one-way radio transmissions into their helmets from coaches on the sideline. The coaches can only relay the play being called, and the transmission is shut down well before the play is run. In Schwarzenegger's movie the quarterback is wearing a transparent visor on the helmet that relays the play but also the down and distance, the defense, and screams "BLITZ" when it's plain to see that the linebacker is about to sack the quarterback. Considering the business plan of the emerging XFL, it won't be long before such technology is enabled.
One technology trend I welcome is biometric security, which is ever-present in "The Sixth Day." Consumers even make cash payments by pressing their thumb to a touch-screen. Strangely, biometrics makes more sense than any of the technologies portrayed here, but it's the farthest off in reality. Vendors and technology adopters keep hesitating on deploying it, but I've yet to see compelling evidence that consumers would reject it.
Send in the clones
We often look to the movies and literature to help us shape our vision of the future, and more times than not, the books and films are remarkably prescient. From H.G. Wells and Jules Verne to Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury and Ursula K. Le Guin to the William Gibsons and Neal Stephensons of today, we begin to understand not what technologies are in store for us, but what our relationship with them will be. Such literature also can be bold in positing ways that the hard moral questions presented by technology are dealt with. Alas, "The Sixth Day" fails here.
It's not the first time cloning has been addressed in the cinema or popular literature, but it is the first time since the occurrence of two significant events, which the movie recounts -- the cloning of sheep and the "completion" of the human genome mapping.
The most preposterous aspect of cloning here is the ability to clone an identical human being in almost real-time. I suppose they have to do this for the sake of making an action film, but still it nearly undermines the whole message of the film, which is to throw into question the morality of cloning humans. Let me put it this way: The movie does have a point of view, but it doesn't really answer the question because there are obvious cultural and scientific arguments for both sides.
Ultimately, those questions will have to be handled by legislatures and courts -- that is, if they are done counting the ballots.
