Tag: Dystopian Future

VFFOnline: Are We Doomed by Becoming an iHuman?

In what’s terrific about this work is that we have human rights being examined. Philip Alston is just one person speaking up for every man. More can be said in this rather lengthy documentary in this category, as it’s merely scratching the surface of where AI’s use will lead to a dystopian future ala George Orwell.

Image result for ihuman poster
Note: Available to view for residents in British Columbia

Streaming Online at the Victoria Film Festival. Please get your pass here to view beginning Feb 5th, 2021

To become an iHuman is less about what applications can benefit from the use of artificial intelligence, but more on how that information is used. There are pros and cons, as everyone knows, to giving birth to a SkyNet from the movie Terminator. Is the human species doomed? Thankfully, not yet.

This documentary directed by Tonje Hessen Schei is very telling. It’s scary when considering it lists who is interested in making use of machine guided decisions. And it’s not with monitoring the habits of smartphone and computer users worldwide.

We already know about the ways Google and Facebook are using your data. The latter tracks your likes and dislikes. Even on Amazon’s mass marketplace, where you can buy anything (it’s not just about books), the website knows your tastes; when you flip to its video streaming service, the television programs you may not have heard of are on top of the recommended list!

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Out of Victoria Fringe Festival Comes Theatre SKAM’s SciFi The Rage Trials

The Rage Trials

By Ed Sum
(The Vintage Tempest)

Imagine, if you will, an alternative universe–a world just like our own, but different. Every 100 years, seven randomly selected teenagers get to decide the emotional foundation to which humanity has to adopt. The science is never explained in how one can edit the wide range of feelings a human has to express, but the option exists to wipe away the trait known as anger.

Theatre SKAM‘s The Rage Trials is not unlike The Hunger Games, The Purge or Logan’s Run of how a greater will can impose a ‘natural selection’ in the continuation of a species. Playwright Emma Leck is better known for her play Drops in a Broken Fountain which examines the human condition. It won the 2018 Winnipeg Fringe Award of Best New Play. She also wrote a similarly philosophical work How to Want (an Intrepid Theatre YOUshow with Vino Buono) which Joff Schmidt of CBC News wrote she’s a talent to watch.

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