Advertising Intelligence

 Nostalgic Retro Futurism That Isn't 

Bladerunner car 1982

Nostalgia

A word that has lost its meaning, but one that is forcing emotions on us by people who have none. I don't like having my emotions trampled on, especially when it's trying to sell me a product.

Nostalgia was successful when coca-cola invoked those sweet memories of childhood Christmas with its polar bear commercials. I don't even drink coke. When polar bears became associated with melting glaciers, and consumers disliked it, the company stopped.

2025 and the internet has become the playground of advertisers that do not know how to sell their products, because they lack the emotions to do so. Zuck is one of them. Would I like a robot companion to assist me? Maybe. Would I want an "AI" companion/friend programmed by his company? Absolutely not. I, like most people like my privacy.

As to the antics of Spacey, with his emotional development of a teenager and nothing further. It sounds trite but that's what drug consumption does. I suspect that he watches a lot of science fiction movies and reads a lot of science fiction, particularly the cyberpunk vision of the 90s, which he then sells as his own ideas. There is nothing predictive or futuristic there. The symbol for his AI is the mathematical representation of a black hole in Interstellar. The truck design is from Bladerunner. A few Mars movies and we're going extinct unless we fly there. 

As to the neither futuristic nor visionary, Spacey actually wants to bring about the Culture series world of Iain Banks. Among the most intellectual of scifi novels, it describes a society thousands of years in the future. I recommend the books, wikipedia has a fairly decent review at the moment, but am truly frightened that he wants to be the creator father of this type of society.

There is a long history of science fiction inspiring science. The medical tricorder in Startrek inspired the MRI. Many others improved our lives. They weren't prototypes, but finished products.

I need CEOs who have more than the empathy of a rock and are inspired by utopian visions of improving lives, not fear mongering and dystopian visions of horror science fiction.

The irony of it all doesn't escape me; among the many themes in Bladerunner, the most significant one is Ridley Scott's exploration of what makes us human: Empathy.