Selling Tomorrows

Prometheus: Six Storytelling Techniques That Make its Ridiculous Premise Believable

I saw Prometheus over the weekend and was delighted by its aggressive use of mythology.  Narrative consultant Adrian Bott does a great job dissecting the symbolism of each scene, so I'm just going to highlight the storytelling techniques that make this film work. 

How do you make the incredible feel credible?

1. Appeal to the archetype.  Referring to the story of Prometheus in The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell said that every culture in the world has a story for the discovery of fire, and that every one of those stories involves theft.  It's as if people believed they didn't deserve this power and that those who try to harness it suffer the sin of pride.  Given fire's inherent danger, that belief was no doubt proved justified many times.  Today, this myth is a stand-in for technology.  Whether it's Tower of Babel, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or the atomic apocalypse stories of the 20th century, we have deep doubts about our ability to control technology.  In Prometheus, we see this on a few levels.  The humans have the android David who hates his human creators, tells lies, invades their dreams and experiments on them. The Engineers, who are supposed to be more advanced than humans, also suffer from hubris and are killed by their own bioweapons.

2. Take an event that people agree happened and reveal a new cause to change its meaning.  It's widely believed that DNA came together in Earth's primordial sea and evolved into people on land.  In Prometheus, the cause isn't an accident of chemicals coming together, but aliens purposefully placing it there.  (This idea is a close cousin of Star Trek: Next Generation episode 146, The Chase.)  In this way, the credibility that has built up around an idea for years is channeled in a new direction. 

3. Reveal the hidden truth that's in plain sight.  The story of Prometheus has survived for millennia.  For most people, it's a sad tale that ancient people took seriously.  But the story told in Prometheus makes you feel like there was a strand of truth to that story all along, and we just missed it.  This also kindles hope that other romantic fantasies (golden ages, dragons, heroes) might also be true.  

4. Extrapolate recent technology trends to the Nth degree.  Humanity is currently in a state of awe over touch screens.  Ridley Scott takes us all the way forward by creating 3D holographic interfaces.  The humans' version takes up a room, and the aliens', who are farther ahead, takes up a city-block.  

5. Include something very old that will never change. It's coldly comforting that in a world so technologically advanced, human nature hasn't changed.  Peter Weyland, the man who rejects nature by trying to buy his way out of dying, gets killed by his maker.  On the surface, this feels like justice served.  Below that though is the feeling of a restoration of balance, a regression to the mean. 

6. Create a sense of purpose and hope of redemption.  Our hero Elizabeth and the captain of the Prometheus sacrifice themselves to save others. This echoes the sacrifice of the Engineers themselves, who gave their lives so that humans could be born.  At the end of the movie, Elizabeth continues her search for her makers, keeping hope alive that we may still learn why we exist, why we're both good and evil, and most importantly, why we'll pay to see the sequel. 

"It's Beating" - Morley Safer Sees a Regrown Heart Valve and Points to BOTH Frankenstein and Pixies

Last night 60 Minutes aired a segment on how researchers are growing human body parts -- ears, kidneys, lungs -- to be used as replacements for veterans and people who have diseases that require amputation.  It was a great example of how certain thousands-of-years-old themes are still with us.  

At one point, Morley Safer asks, "Are you suggesting a remarkable future of when organs fail we simply replace them and live to 120, 150?" [Translation: are we talking the holy grail of immortality?] To which the researcher responds, "The hope for the future is that if you do have a patient who has organ failure, you don't want the patient to die because you're waiting for an organ. People are dying every day on the transplant wait lists." [Translation: Of course, but you won't catch me talking about that. Let's focus on how we're saving lives right now.] Later, Safer says "It's enough to make doctor Frankenstein jealous," and compares the science to "pastry making," "pixie dust" and "magical," all of which reveal our intense desire and fear of scientific advancement.

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Could Any Marketing Convince You to Eat Cloned Human Meat?

I'm a big believer in the power of rational and emotional messages' ability to change people's minds about innovations, but eating cloned human meat?  

In this feature on LiveScience.com, Mark Post, a biomedical engineer from the Netherlands, says, "In principle, we could harvest the meat progenitor cells from fresh human cadavers and grow meat from them," Post said. "Once taken out of its disease and animalistic, cannibalistic context — you are not killing fellow citizens for it, they are already dead — there is no reason why not...Still, Post suggests that marketing could overcome such hurdles.  "If every package of naturally grown meat by law should have the text, 'Beware, animals have been killed for this product,' I can imagine a gradual cultural shift," Post said. "Of course, we still have a long way to go to make a product that is even remotely competitive with current products.'"

The article brings up a lot of good points about how cloned meat -- chicken, beef, etc. -- would reduce CO2 levels and feed the hungry.  It's worth reading, if not totally...consuming.

How would YOU market cloned beef?  Would any argument convince you to eat cloned human meat?

Newsweek Traces Germany's Fears of Nuclear, Biotech, Nanotech to 80s Green Movement

Germany's biotech and nuclear power industries have already been stunted by technological fears unique to Germany, Newsweek reports, and its nanotechnology sector may be next.  The magazine traces these fears to the country's 1980s green movement, where it:

"defined nature-or what is mythified as such, for there is no wild nature left in densely settled Germany-as 'good,' and viewed technological intrusions with suspicion.  These modern Greens harked back to powerful back-to-nature movements that defined science and scientists as 'cold,' corrupted by capitalist masters, and blind to catastrophic risk.  You, idealistic Germans in search of their post-World War II identity embraced these themes as a way to prove to themselves that they were 'good' again.  That movement's victory in the German culture wars produced powerful taboos, which seem especially strong concerning any tampering with nature on an invisible level-whether it's the climate, the atom, the cell, or (potentially) machines that operate on a nano level."  

The article offers a fascinating perspective. 

Top 10 "tomorrows" for sale in Sleep Dealer

Saw the movie last night and have to say the comparisons to Blade Runner were right on.  Truth is, it's not fair to this film to write a review after just one viewing, but darn it, the flick is too good to hold back on.  Here's my top 10 list of "Tomorrows" that Sleep Dealer serves up.  Mucho spoilers follow.

1. Subjugation. The opening scene shows workers plugged into the network, moving like marionettes, dancing to the tune of global demand for crop pickers and construction workers.  It's a shame-flavored milkshake and the swirl of " cool idea" that makes you feel even guiltier after swallowing it.

2. Dystopia Now. The first part of the movie takes place in a small town in Mexico, far from the tech wonderland.  Water supplies are under lock and key.  Life is hard. There's heartbreaking poverty.  It looks like many third world towns today, and that's the message.  The dystopia is here now.  It's one thing to know academically that visions of tomorrow are often used to point out the flaws of today, but in this director's hands, it's a sucker punch.

3. Social networks as "Big Brother."  There's a "Memory Market" where people can sell their experiences.  We saw this idea in Strange Days, but Sleep Dealer brings a whole new level of creepiness to the issue.  In an era of social media, Sleep Dealer shows how easily "Big Brother" can switch from meaning the government to, well, everyone.   

4. Plugging in means losing yourself. The process of inserting the node plugs into the body (which look a lot like what we saw in the Matrix) is violent, invasive and dehumanizing.  Metaphorically, it speaks to the degradation that people will suffer to support their families or be a part of something larger.  Paraphrasing here a bit, Memo (the main character) says after his surgery, "at last, I'm plugged into the global economy."  At the beginning of the movie, each plug is a symbol for a lost piece of humanity.  By the end, we're reminded that it's now what you're made of, but what you do that makes you human. 

5. “It’s people!  Soylent Green is made of people!”  A white pipeline is shown snaking through the wilderness in several scenes.  At first I thought it was an oil or water pipeline.  Then I realized it’s holding fiber optic cables.  So it’s not so much data coursing through the wire, but the physical work of the sleep dealers as their actions are transmitted to robots across the border. Often times today, human labor is categorized as a natural resource.  Here that metaphor materializes.  Labor is broken down into bits and bytes, normalized, commoditized and extruded into whatever form the market requires.  I'd call it beautiful and ghastly.  Luz (Memo’s girlfriend) would just say I’m “old fashioned.”  

6. Fear that we won't know what we've lost.  On the "old fashioned" thing for a second, this film, like many dystopias, generates a feeling of dread because as bad as things are, it's somehow worse because the future generation on the screen doesn't KNOW how bad it is. They've grown inured.  And that ranks up there with the “unknown” for things so scary we usually don’t think about them consciously.  (See earlier post on why we WANT to call this the Great Depression.)

7. Redefining "Writer" & "Reader." In this vision of the future, the woman sells her memories online, complete with narration.  She calls herself a "writer."  And when she makes contact with the man who purchased her memory, she refers to him as a "reader." It’s an interesting prediction on the future of these terms.  Remember when we referred to phones as "cellular telephones?"

8. The Campfire: The happiest points in the movie come when Memo sits around a fire with a couple old codgers in a shantytown.  They talk of ageless issues—relationships—and it’s the only point at which life in this world feels real, legitimate, worth it.  This image’s ancient roots are no accident. 

9. Superior technology doesn't equal moral superiority: Recalling that Germany was technologically ahead of most countries in the 1930s, the movie reminds us that as much as technology can instantly connect us to other people or reduce the physical pain of work, it can't make us more moral.  This is a critical point.  Most techno utopias are built on the premise that "if only we could talk with each other" or "if only we didn't have to labor so hard" then crime and wars would go away.  Hundreds of years ago when canals and hot air balloons promised to connect Europe, the intellectuals of the day believed that connection and communication would eliminate the causes of war.  Sleep Dealer reminds us that this STILL won't be true in the future.  

10. "A future with a past if I connect and fight:" At the end of the movie, Memo utters this phrase.  It captures Tom Friedman's argument that only by holding onto our olive trees will we be satisfied with our Lexus.  That being engaged is critical for peace.  And finally, fights for the moral good must be undertaken. 

News roundup: Robotic prosthetics & extending biological clocks

It has been a dizzying 24 hours for the human condition.  On 60 Minutes last night, a robotic prosthetic arm with a fully functioning hand was taken through its paces.  And in today's Washington Post, surprising news that women's biological clocks may be extended indefinitely thanks to new genetic research. 

Mr. President, is scientific consensus enough to tell us what we can and cannot do?

From tonight's press conference with President Obama:

Question: I meant to ask -- just to follow up -- do you think that scientific consensus is enough to tell us what we can and cannot do?

Obama: No. I think there's always an ethical and a moral element that has to be a part of this. And so, as I said, I don't take decisions like this lightly. They're ones that I take seriously, and I respect people who have different opinions on this issue.

Full transcript here on CNN.com. 

Calming Music, Glowing Fish

I love the gentle, calming music that plays in this video while the genetically modified fish swim around, happy and GLOWING.  Definitely a better choice than, say, REM's "End of the World as We Know It."  Man, as soon as my wife lets me get an 80-gallon tank, I'm buying 10 of these wonders. Here's a link to GloFish's ethics page (well done, guys), and a shortcut to buy some of your own. 

Because Grandpa was a Roomba

The second reason "selling tomorrows" has become a critical skill is the number and nature of disruptive technologies coming to market in the next decade. Most often seen today in patent applications, start-ups, and university and corporate labs, they’re the inventions that will challenge our cultural, legal, ethical, and economic norms. Some of the more exotic examples include genetic modification, nanotechnology, 3D fabrication, artificial intelligence, and the commercial space industry. The degree of their disruption is surpassed only by the rate at which their adoption can be slowed by regulation, lack of investor confidence, and consumer/voter fears. Given these barriers, disruptive technologies require an even more compelling set of arguments to secure their acceptance.