Spielberg on Privacy, Minority Report 366
Staring at Nothing writes "In this ABC News story famed Hollywood director Steven Spielberg voices some concerns over the current state of privacy and paranoia in a post-9/11 world. Some of Spielberg's recent movies, like AI and Minority Report have brought us haunting views of the future, but the present may be just as scary. He mentions software being developed to monitor "abnormal behavior" and concerns about originality being misconstrued as dangerous behavior." The story has some minor plot spoilers about Minority Report.
Spielberg's 180 (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe he's gotten to the point in his career where he wants to send a message with his movies. Not that I'm asking for Flintstones III any time soon.
creepy future. (Score:4, Interesting)
Some of the scenes of targeted marketing, projecting ads towards you as you walk down the hallway, all tailored just for yuo are pretty spooky.
some of the depicted technology looks downrigt creepy. and that is just from the marketing side, nevermind the government side.
the ultimate in spam, everywhere you go.
babbling (Score:5, Interesting)
In regards to this discussion, I'm unsure about how we've managed to have this society where we watch so carefully airport passengers, yet allow millions of people to drive, AFTER undergoing a test of their aptitude when they shouldn't be able to drive at all. Besides that, there are stories of STOP signs being removed, stop lights malfunctioning, etc. We all know driving is dangerous, yet no one seems to care about preventing accidents when it should be so balantantly easy if things were as tight as they are in the FAA. Flying sucks, I grew up enjoying flying, but I'm not sure where it went wrong. I feel like I've done something wrong when I fly and I don't like it.
can't let that go (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not going to post a full review here, but suffice to say my only criticisms are that it felt a bit long, and that some of the ideas could have been better developed (there's a LOT of ideas in this movie). but concepts aside, it absolutely grabbed me on a viscreral and emotional level. I knew it had worked for me when I walked out of the theater and took several minutes to fully reacclimate to the normal world--it was almost like culture shock. to each their own opinion, I say.
sean
Spielberg has been dystopian since AI (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as tracking and privacy goes, well we're going to have to expect a loss of privacy in public spaces. Its inevitable, so lets do it smart. The biggest and in my opinion most valid criticism of profiling software is that it just doesn't work. False positives are the norm and when it does work I wonder how much of a role lady luck in the form of lousy software played. Either its going to be Joe the Security Guard calling the shots or the software, and it looks like Joe's intuition at this point outperforms software.
As far as Columbine profiling paranoia goes, I'm certainly against it. But minors don't enjoy the rights the 18 and over crowd does and that isn't going to change soon. So if schools do start profiling the anti-social (or whomever) it would behoove all parties involved to look at the data objectively. I would prefer the end result to show the truth about many people classified as anti-social, geeks or whatever: that they're usually intelligent and good humored people that simply do not have the interests of your typical HS kid instead of the assumption that they're all borderline psychos.
If this stuff is going to happen I would rather see people concerned with oversight and disclosure instead of the head in the sand attitude of 'you can't fight city hall.'
Re:Give credit where credit is due... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe that's what he's doing, but the message that you can't trust a pre-emptive police state is written pretty obviously throughout the movie, and it went into production before 9/11. So he's capitalizing on a wider social context than just the current hysteria/paranoia. And why shouldn't he? Don't artists get to criticize society? And does doing a kiddie movie like E.T. automatically and forever prevent him from having anything to say about the world?
It's an Orwellian rip-off (Score:4, Interesting)
The three slogans of the Party say it all:
War Is Peace
Slavery Is Freedom
Ignorance Is Strength
Not a large jump from those to Speilberg's "Safety Is Freedom".
(Check out http://www.newspeakdictionary.com for more, including the full text of 1984.)
Re:can't let that go QWZX (Score:2, Interesting)
Here in Boulder, CO, Roger Ebert shows up every year and shows a film. He takes a week to go all the way through it, at about 2 hours a day. Anytime someone sees something they would like to discuss they can yell out 'STOP!', and Ebert will pause the film, and the audience is free to discuss. It's a pretty good time, with an audience of 500 or so, and he usually picks very interesting movies.
Anywho, I saw him last year while he did Fight Club. He spent about half an hour on the first day discussing symbolism. His idea is that there are three types of symbolism:
1. That which the artist placed.
2. That which you placed.
3. That which got there on it's own, but is undeniable.
The goal for the critic is to not place his own symbolism. If every movie you see references some specific thing, chances are you are putting it there. Now here in the west, it is rare to find a work that doesn't reference Christianity in some way. It's a cultural response, too deep for most artists to remove. But if every concept you see goes right to the parting of the red sea, you are no longer objective. (I hope I am being clear so far)
As far as the "deepness" of AI, I would say that is symbolism that you are adding, without the help from the work itself.
I personally hated the movie because Spielberg has become condesending, and assumes that I cannot understand what his philosophical point is. He doesn't leave anything in the air anymore.
Anywho, just my thoughts, with the citation of Ebert.
is privacy freedom? (Score:2, Interesting)
I like turning my cell phone off when I am not working. Often worries friends and family because they can't reach me when I'm not home. What's up with that. 5 years ago one would travel around Europe and the only thing they would hear from you was a postcard. These days where you can bring your phone all over and people can reach you it destroys all the fun.
This brings me back to the part about monitoring. If something as simple as the ability of people to reach you everywhere via your phone has clearly changed the behavior and our culture. If we were to be monitored all over inside and outside our house, I am quite sure that it would change our behavior as well. Now I am no psychiatrist so I can't really give any conclusions about how we would change, but somehow I doubt that it would be for the better. I would say that it would generate far more problems than it solve. Well it help that I does not all happens at once. This is of course often the fear that people are not aware of all the little changes that ends up in total monitoring of your life and when it does happen, we would all have got used to it(?) and not worry about it at all because it would happen so slowly that the culture would be able to change and adapt.
Re:Think this would work? (Score:3, Interesting)
Obligatory quotes... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Now we must choose between safety and freedom, we must not flinch if freedom means anything." - Dennis Burke, USA Today
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."- Benjamin Franklin
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." - Somerset Maugham
"My greatest fear is that too many members of the public will embrace the government's call to give up some freedom in return for greater safety, only to find that they have lost freedom without gaining safety." - Nadine Strossen, President ACLU
"Liberty without learning is always in peril and learning without liberty is always in vain." - John F. Kennedy
"Better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Dolores Ibarruri
"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression." - Thomas Paine
"I know not what course others may take but as for me: give me liberty or give me death." - Patrick Henry
"When the rights of just one individual are denied, the rights of all are in jeopardy!" - Jo Ann Roach
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
Just another kind of publicity (Score:5, Interesting)
OpenSecrets link to Spielberg's soft money campaign contributors [opensecrets.org]
He's just another phony liberal in the great Hollywood phony liberal tradition. When he finds another set of buzzwords and social concerns that'll pull in his target demographic, he'll use them, i.e. don't be surprised if he sounds like Rush Limbaugh someday.
Right now, he's using the right buzzwords for people who pretend to themselves that they still have social concerns while providing the dollars that bought the politicians that enacted obscenities like DMCA passed and worse legislation to follow.
Basic Problems (Score:3, Interesting)
1. The legal system works on the principle that we have a choice in what we do. You choose to do bad things, you get punished.
2. MR shows Tom seeing things before they happen and subsequently arresting people for a "crime they are yet to commit."
3. This means that Fate no longer exists and that we live in a determinist world. Thus, someone who committed a crime had no say in the matter. It was going to happen no matter what the "criminal" did. To convict someone of murder, you have to prove intent.
So unless there is some explaining in the movie on why Tom arrests people for doing something they had no say in, I can't see how the movie can be plausible.