Name me one science fiction film that Hollywood produced in the last 25 years in which technology is portrayed in a positive light, in which it’s not dystopian, it doesn’t kill people, it doesn’t destroy the world, it doesn’t not work, etc., etc.
Contact, Interstellar, The Martian, Hidden Figures.
Technology does play the villain in a lot of movies, but you don’t need a sinister reason for that: if you’re writing a dramatic story that prominently features a nonhuman entity/force/environment, the most narratively convenient place to fit it in is as the antagonist. Most movies where people are in the wilderness end up being Man vs Nature, for the same reason.
Your argument is correct but the premise, that common media coverage on technology is black/white and that futuristic media is mostly dystopian still holds.
I haven’t ran any studies on this but the relationship we have to technology is very important (“robot took my job so now I can be a writer, wohoo!”). When we have the impression that technology will further deepen the rifts in society, then we are unlikely to act on deepening rifts in society. When we assume that social progress needs to go hand in hand with technological progress then we are far more likely to act and say “AI can be really helpful but using it to identify non-productive employees can be very anti-social and discriminatory”.
using it to identify non-productive employees can be very anti-social and discriminatory
I believe the opposite is true; Not rewarding the productive ones and punishing the unproductive workers is clearly discriminating against the good people. Sure, giving everyone a UBI that doesn’t break the economy is a very humane thing to do, but forcefully making productive workers subsidize bad ones, without giving them social/economic credit, is plain evil.
Contact, Interstellar, The Martian, Hidden Figures.
Technology does play the villain in a lot of movies, but you don’t need a sinister reason for that: if you’re writing a dramatic story that prominently features a nonhuman entity/force/environment, the most narratively convenient place to fit it in is as the antagonist. Most movies where people are in the wilderness end up being Man vs Nature, for the same reason.
Your argument is correct but the premise, that common media coverage on technology is black/white and that futuristic media is mostly dystopian still holds.
I haven’t ran any studies on this but the relationship we have to technology is very important (“robot took my job so now I can be a writer, wohoo!”). When we have the impression that technology will further deepen the rifts in society, then we are unlikely to act on deepening rifts in society. When we assume that social progress needs to go hand in hand with technological progress then we are far more likely to act and say “AI can be really helpful but using it to identify non-productive employees can be very anti-social and discriminatory”.
I believe the opposite is true; Not rewarding the productive ones and punishing the unproductive workers is clearly discriminating against the good people. Sure, giving everyone a UBI that doesn’t break the economy is a very humane thing to do, but forcefully making productive workers subsidize bad ones, without giving them social/economic credit, is plain evil.