The Ultimate Attraction Gabriella Hall

FRINGE: FAUST FOLLOWING THE EDGE OF REALITY '

Richard

Night's Nightmare flies aboard a plane to Boston, but no one notices until a passenger begins literally liquefies. The epidemic raging lightning, but guided by the autopilot the aircraft lands without damage, delivering her safely to the macabre and ironic load of skeletons.
are the first, horrifying scenes of Fringe, the new serial by JJ Abrams, creator of Felicity, Alias \u200b\u200band Lost lucky, the TV series that began with another plane crashed on the mysterious island. Maybe syndrome September 11, the fact is that the Fringe strangeness at high altitudes are at home.
Produced by Warner Bros. and Bad Robot Productions, aired on Fox 8 last September and by January 31 on Premium Gallery of Mediaset's digital terrestrial (but waiting to land within a year of general networks) Fringe promises to be the natural successor to X-Files Chris Carter or much older The Twilight Zone. As you know, "fringe" means "edge", "fringe," but also "borderline", ie the limes, which once separated the land from the regions known wonderful, mysterious or terrible, placed beyond the mythical columns of Hercules. But
translated "Fringe" stands for "pseudoscience" or "parascience" categories indicate that those searches that go beyond the strict boundaries of rationality, from time travel with teleportation, psychokinesis but also from suspended animation to control the mind. Here is the keystone of the disturbing new the serial narrative structure more like a hypertext in a linear script, which manages to combine the themes of science fiction without smudging or borderline at the spy-noir story.
fact, when the flight 627 from Hamburg landed with his belly full of dead passengers and liquid enters the FBI agent Olivia Dunham (the beautiful, intriguing Anna Torv). The case seems unsolvable. It then sought the help of Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble), the universal genius, who in the '80s at Harvard University held secret research on behalf of the military. There's only one problem: seventeen years Bishop was in a prison mental hospital and the only one that to release it under protection is the son of the scientist, Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson), brilliant as the father figure but reckless, rebellious, always around the world, upset in the deep by a parent that a child out of the ordinary seemed distracted , that is.
forced by events, reluctantly takes the child under supervision his father, so the traditional roles are reversed, and the beginning of a mutual discovery. Birth of a dialogue between generations too long shunned, but also shows intellectual understanding, based on our common passion for the mysteries of the universe.
Abrams and his collaborators Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci have focused on the exaltation of values \u200b\u200bthat seemed sunsets: family, friendship, team. If at the beginning of the main characters are like monads unhappy, without roots, scattered by the trade winds that blow in a globalized world and meaningless, with the progress of the bets they intertwine complex emotional ties. The estimate, understanding and even love their way through the hardships of the chaotic present and anxieties of a dark future, announced by the strange cases that the protagonists are from time to time resolve.
something for every taste, from the lethal virus mutants demihumans from time capsules to "observers" to other dimensions. At the center of it all stands the figure of Bishop, a synthesis between Einstein and Dr. Frankentein, but emotionally fragile, helpless, as bright as naive, and the name was not random. Bishop stands for "bishop" and "bishop". In one episode draws attention to the polysemy of this surname. A name, a destiny. The laboratory is his board and his church, but if the day between retorts and stills, he studies the clinging of the mind or the "openness" of DNA, it can be seen at night wandering around with a Bible in his hands, as was also Newton .
In reality, the figure of Bishop in many respects is based on that of the heterodox neuroscientist and inventor John Cunningham Lilly, known exponent of the psychedelic movement in California, investigator and psychotropic substances and by the way inventor of the so-called "sensory deprivation tank, then used by NASA to simulate a state of absolute detachment from the world situation considered similar to that experienced by astronauts launched into deep space. The figure of Lilly inspired Ken Russell's Altered States, sci-fi cult '80s, Abrams makes no secret that you have thoroughly looted. In the old film a professor of psychophysiology in search of experiences extrasensory experiences the tub taking hallucinogenic substances that cause biological mutations and genetic return to the brutal conditions of early (and here comes the salvation of human relations, the relationship with his wife and daughters that extracts the hero from the abyss of unknowns when he was about to lose). In laboratory
Bishop stands precisely a tank of its kind, the scientist becomes a sort of mental spacecraft agent Dunham, who experiences thus indecipherable immersion in the unconscious of a fatally wounded colleague. We are beyond the limits of plausibility? Not necessarily, because the great innovations have always broken prejudices considered "scientific." Instead, they must grapple with the mystery as a challenge, an opportunity to emphasize that there is no boundary or limit that man by nature has a duty to overcome. But there
other. Just because I look back over the past decades to establish the extent to which science and technology have affected the system of thought, shaping beliefs, hopes, beliefs, fears, desires and expectations.
In Fringe the new framework that would replace the current is called the "Scheme", a ghost that lingers in every episode, although the original English calls it "Pattern", a term of the psychology of more nuanced form of its translation. Because the pattern is a pattern, a type, an ideal.
Productions widely consumed as Fringe suggest that we must get used to the idea that scientific categories of our present in less than a quarter-century will change drastically, and they also spread the technology. You must put aside the idea that our conceptual frame of reference is the only existing and valid. The Scheme, or patterns, whatever you want, is just that: an entity of the reasons unspecified, that changes our reality, making old dreams of science fiction, from cloning to genetic mutations induced by time travel, teleportation, from cyborgs to superdroghe . And speaking
. On this factor governs the "acceleration". An agent systemic, unavoidable and collectively, which took into account seriously sputtering Enchanted certain ideology deconstructive one that has' time is the most popular in political circles or intellectual regressively "progressive." Such as the ideology of "decline", advocated by sociologist-economist Serge Latouche.
Fringe, like other similar products, suggests instead that technological acceleration is inescapable, that the driving force, if you want to Promethean, sometimes even destructive, it can not be stopped in any way. In
Fringe organization that embodies this is the Faustian desire multinational Massive Dynamic, the giant economic and scientific ambiguous role, incidentally, founded by Bishop's closest collaborator, so that while the second gear in a mental institution, the first was stealing the ideas and getting rich. The heads of the FBI is using the Massive Dynamic technologies continue to draw on for generations, but one senses that this structure through its superior science seeks to gain absolute power. But we have to wait for more next month. After thirteen episodes, the production is now paused. From the opening shot of the next seven, with a finale that promises to be breathtaking, far beyond the "Twilight Zone".

Stop Bleeding On Roof

MACHINA EX MACHINA


LAST NIGHT BOOK OF RICCARDO


INTRODUCTION

One day it could happen to sit at a the negotiating table very special. On the one hand, the seats will be occupied by the great earth. The representatives of the United Nations, the heads of state, Nobel laureates and the highest religious hierarchies of all denominations in the world. But on the other singular beings will line up of metal and silicon, possibly humanoid, perhaps by the whimsical shapes and even unimaginable. If so will our descendants will assist in Interplan, the future version of the Internet, accessible through a chip implanted directly into the brain, one of the most surreal negotiations that has ever been recorded in living memory. And in memory of the machine. Why are the protagonists of the great debate could be their machines, that is smart and sensitive devices. In a word, the robot.
This unique assembly will have much to discuss. We will have to establish laws, regulations and penalties, but we will also verify the feasibility of some critical social exchange. Purist, fundamentalist and racist of all types and species may be against the morality of certain "trade". Insinuate that someone has gone too far, that certain forms of promiscuity show that society is in disarray, that someone should put things in place, it is necessary to return to the good old days, when cars were cars and men's men.
But it will be a minority, and without arguments. Hopefully.
The scenario described above could raise a smile. In fact we wanted to exaggerate, but then not so much. The future could really restrict what Isaac Asimov had called the Iron Age / Carbon, to designate the merger, but the misunderstanding and sometimes conflict between the two forms of intelligence and feeling very different: one is born the genius of the other, but both on the road on the same street as parents and children are in the path of life.
Today some of these scenarios are the subject of international conferences at the highest level, where among other things discussing "roboethics", a new discipline that combines robotics, jurisprudence and ethics. Of course, in these debates at the heart of the problem today concerns the relationship between the military robotics industry. You may use weapons more intelligent? How far you can venture into this kind of research? There is a no? How did the war change the robotics concept of conflict? And so on. But there are more radical questions, test themselves on which philosophers and scientists who are trying to rethink the problem of man-machine relationship in light of current impressive progress.
Similar discussions are born of urgency, since it seems that the fascinating weave of plastic and metal, invented by poets and artists, multiplied in a thousand different artists and scattered throughout the film industry in over a century old, is to break the mold of the imagination to play somewhat the role of reality.
The robot with the unlikely appearance of the Terminator or C3PO is a popular subject in the iconography so ingrained as to be credible in any event, in spite of everything, even in spite of the obvious concerns that come at any time by the real designers of intelligent machines , ambassadors of the extreme modernity.
The persistence of a symbol is almost always the work of mental tyranny of a "meme" efficient. If, as is believed, the meme is the informational and cultural equivalent of the gene, then a successful meme must replicate from mind to mind, just as the virus multiplies from one cell to another. If this replication process will lead to undifferentiated cell death is not a virus problem. Similarly, if the meme in question bears within itself the potential to destroy its host, well, is not an issue of the meme, especially if its host cell will prove to be so efficient and helpful to put him in a position to live on their own. But these are nightmares, which flourished alongside the many beautiful dreams. The robotics
meme is born without doubt the popular imagination, and in any latitude. It is therefore an inexplicable universal cultural trait, which can not be explained using the theories spread. Its persistence has influenced an entire field of scientific research, so we are in the presence of one of those rare cases where a product of the imagination under himself, emerges from the realm of ghosts to play the role of the harsh reality.
imagery precedes every installation. And this is the thread of Machina ex machina, a book that, like all books, was born from a gap, however, in this case, a personal shortcoming. In the book You, Robot, which precedes this text, it lacked an overview of the imaginary robotic developed mainly by the film industry, flying diffuse projections. Machina ex machina attempt to address these shortcomings by taking inspiration from the four cardinal points of human experience: love, hate, freedom and power. The book is largely devoted to the critical examination of known and lesser-known films in which the robot is the protagonist or the victim, God or infamous creature. Those who try will find it is not complete, although the author has collected more than four years of research in an impressive amount of material. The films are hundreds of robotic theme, and not necessarily the most famous are also the best. Therefore it is critical to cutting the privileged philological completeness, hoping not to have exaggerated in the synthesis.
This book would never be born without the help of the Korean Inkyung Hwang, who has been able to find materials unavailable to the author. And then having to express special gratitude to all those who for years have endured endless discussions on the limits and potential of the robot, which had to be typed reading and rereading of obscure or boring. Hard to believe that the robot can be fascinating topic of conversation over a candlelit, at least not for more than five minutes.