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Continuum
2012 · TV series · 45 min episodes · 4 seasons
Created by Simon Barry
Science FictionFantasyActionAdventureDrama
The series centers on the conflict between a group of rebels from the year 2077 who time-travel to Vancouver, BC, in 2012, and a police officer who accidentally accompanies them. In spite of being many years early, the rebel group decides to continue its violent campaign to stop corporations of the future from replacing governments, while the police officer endeavours to stop them without revealing to anyone that she and the rebels are from the future.
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30 comments on Hacker News
TV series Continuum has AR glasses interpreting human micro-signals.
Modern video conferencing streams may contain enough information for emotion inference.
I didn’t realize the Neuromancer was written in Vancouver!
There’s a less well know cyberpunk adjacent TV show, Continuum, that’s set in Vancouver, year 2077 and all that :) It’s surprisingly good!
Actually I've watched much more, be it movies, or TV-Series. It's just that the ones I've listed above left a more lasting impression on me, than some blockbusters I didn't mention, or that I'd consider them 'rewatchable' (Which I rarely (want to) do anyways).
Let's take Breaking Bad for instance, I did binge-watch that (while being stoned) and remember it as cringe-worthy. Nope, won't watch again. Then there was Continuum, which I know I've watched in full(sober, this time) and I can't even remember anything. Had to be too generic for me, I think?
What else, the Sarah Connor Chronicles. Mostly boring, except the scene where some hispanic Chica outstared her, and she learned that from her. That was funny for me :-)
Oh, one more, because I sometimes felt like that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Down
Expanding the logical progression of capitalism, we get the future presented in Continuum (imdb.com/title/tt1954347/) as well as other shows like Altered Carbon, etc.
Very, very nice, but to be more clear: it's not just Chrome.
The modern web is the surveillance web because the modern web is "an endpoint" for users (witch means a new mainframe dumb terminal, at a far higher price and complexity than the old ones) and someone else service, typically run on giants cloud datacenters.
To avoid that, and still have the modern level of life PLUS MANY MORE, we already have had a solution: the desktop computing. The first one on record the modern way AFAIK was the Xerox Star Office System, but even the older NLS (1968!!!) have networking, videoconferencing and screen sharing. YES, you read correctly. Dates are not wrong.
So what? So it's a real mess because since Xerox except for LispM and Plan 9 we do not have developed desktop computing anymore, so the old model might still be rediscovered, at least it still exists, but on actual iron, very badly designed even if far more powerful in mere horsepower terms, and with essentially no modern software. The last living vestige is Emacs, witch is VERY good but not enough evolved for actual end-users, so we need:
- public universities, paid enough by the government and government only, with a very effective separation from the private sector, to create a new old classic research not for short term business but for the society;
- enough years to write a modern desktop, which means around a decade because it's not just a matter of code, it's a matter to learn how classic systems works and design a new one, a thing most today devs do not know and have issue imaging, than time to develop it, to spread it etc.
The other option? Well... A small Canadian TV series (Continuum) recently gives a nice idea, perhaps mixed with a small French movie (Virtual Revolution) to see a more realistic one. Be prepared to a future where you will have to eat only if some IT giants gives food to you. Be prepared to live to work instead of working to live because yes, I'm not joking nor exaggerating, it's just a matter of observing the world today.
Not entirely about environment issues, but there's a TV show with something similar as a premise - Continuum. A crime solving drama/sci-fi, where the protagonist is a time traveler coming to our times from year 2070-ish, time when the world is ruled by a Corporate Congress, consisting of thinly veiled allusions to well-known corporations of today. In between all the action and emotional drama, it also delivers some good critique of tech businesses, corporate overreach, and surveillance state.
I watched Star Trek (TNG, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise), The Expanse, Orville, Continuum, Altered Carbon S1, Farscape, Firefly, Travelers, Dark, and even Stargate Universe.
What do you recommend watching next?
Entertainment still isn't a commodity, though. Just because there are hundreds of sci-fi movies and TV shows, doesn't mean I can pick up any of them and enjoy it as much as one that I wanted to that wasn't available.
If I really want to watch, say, Star Trek movies and Continuum TV show, then if CBS decides to pull the Star Trek movies from Netflix and spin off their own streaming service doesn't mean I'll just find something else on Netflix, or that I'll subscribe to CBS too; I'll keep watching Continuum on Netflix and head to TPB for the missing movies.
If movie studios want to stop piracy, they have to stop being so greedy. Streaming services shouldn't be allowed to get exclusive licensing deals on movies/shows. The market would sort itself out and people would be able to watch all they needed from one or two services whose UI they most like.
(And honestly, UI should be unbundled too. Streaming service's crappy four-button player can't beat VLC.)
Mh, actual status is not due to technical evolution but to commercial one. We have had, and there is no reason but commerce and ignorance, machines that work under the control of it user notably LispMachines, Alto Workstations &others.
They push knowledge, they help draw a personal evolution path, they solve problem. Today we have something similar with Free Software.
Those ideas are not much accepted by "the big and the powerful" because they mean a real free market in witch only knowledge and work have a value, not much marketing and certainly not commercial secret agreements.
So yes, digital revolution has turned from a free academical intelligent project and dream to a new way to subject whole populations and this start to happen years ago, and start to be so evident now that even totally ignorant in IT terms start to feel it.
Few subject succeed to displace public knowledge to private companies, to displace free market in a sort of Soviet Union planned economy draw instead of a dictatorial government by few equally dictatorial companies/founds. The next step is abolish entirely public (paper/coin) money substituted it only with digital payments, another step declare "politics" as a bad thing to be abolish substituting it with a corporate council like "Continuum" TV series foresee well, and George Orwell foresee even before with "1984".
Beware a thing in the past dictators need manpower so "force" is not all in few hands. In a not-so-far future manpower will not be needed anymore. So the chance to revolt and gain freedom is lower and lower.
Imaging a future with autonomous robotic army, cars, "smart" devices everywhere. Think how we can revolt, and against who. Also think how we can communicate, being tied to proprietary devices and platform, without pens, paper anymore, without the knowledge to write text with pen&paper, without the knowledge of "past" things like "postal system" and "newspapers" that well, we know but at the same knowledge of today's people know ancient mimeograph and polygraph...
IMO "digital" world is a good mirror of society: we lost diversity, freedom, experimentation abilities in our society and IT reflect, maybe anticipate, that really well.
So a nice analogy far more "dark & real" can be about an imaginary corporatocracy like Continuum TV series, only without "game changing heroes" that are not much realistic. The realistic part can be "many little heroes" that protect themselves using free software as much as they can and thanks to their knowledge and propaganda they may change something not as single individual but as a "specie" :-)
Oh yeah, so voting it will be no more anonymous and only the company holding the service know really who vote who...
Corporatocracy is coming, someone watched "Continuum" TV series and think it's a nice idea...
States partition the surface of the world and each person withing their borders is subject to their law (even foreign people passing by.) They have exclusive access to people.
Multinationals don't have borders and don't have exclusive access to people and they don't (currently) wish to because they sell different products and it would be pointless for them and for people to be able to buy from only one company.
So that endgame would work only if multinationals take over and rule the world together. That happened in Continuum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_(TV_series) a Canadian dystopian sci-fi TV series.
You are onto something. I think "the way things are developing", big tech and gov might fall into each others arms - what a beautiful couple. Imagine what a business _that_ would be! Also, I'm surprised this scenario is rarely if ever discussed, I mean that corporate government type of thing in the Continuum tv series.
And with this, the world edges ever so slightly closer towards the dystopia pictured in Continuum where corporate oligarchs control government and the world.
It's on Netflix if you are interested. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuum_(TV_series) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1954347/
Continuum (TV series) did that too, and I loved that. See some examples of protagonist's police suit:
https://vimeo.com/64120587
My favourite feature - changing colors.
I'm not a hardcore fan either I watched TNG, DS9 and Voyager as just another Scifi show back when MGM, Paramount and 20cent Fox still wanted to make television we had Stargate, Babylon 5, Star Trek, then Scifi was pretty much left to in the hands of syndicated TV productions and basic cable which resulted in well meh.
Shows like BSG are pretty much unicorn's these days no one seems to want to make serious scifi the best we can hope for is for the random Canadian show to be picked up by SyFy and not being shredded (Continuum was good, Dark Matter seems interesting but very goofy).
SyFy is also trying to get of their asses together I'm still hoping that they'll pick up Ascension it's backdoor pilot / mini-series was one of the most interesting Scifi concepts of late and if they don't screw up 'Childhoods End' (which from the trailer looks like an HBO show which is great) I might actually believe that they still can produce something besides fake reality shows and wrestlemania.
From the slant of your comment, I guess you're an Anarcho-Capitalist: a Right Wing Libertarian who think universal private property will solve most current problems.
If I'm right, you think the problem is the state, and the solution is getting rid of it. You are probably overlooking, ignoring, or downplaying the power of private corporations, or you think they would lose their power once we get rid of the state.
My guess is different.
I think that if we get rid of the state, we're more likely to get a corporate government than anarchy. Like what's described in the Continuum TV show. Whether that's a good thing… well at least, we would no longer kid ourselves about living in a democracy.
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Sorry if I put words in your mouth, but you forced my hand.
No, the corporations will simply adapt and learn to play the anti-corporate tune to turn a profit.
See Continuum, American Odyssey, Mr. Robot, The Lego Movie, and so on. You want an anti-corporate message and you are willing to pay for it? There are corporations ready to fulfill your need :-)
Continuum? (Not a movie but a TV series)
Every time this topic pops up, I'm reminded of the scene from Continuum (I checked it out recently, it's in the third episode of the first season). There, a time traveller from the future buys a bluetooth headset and reflects on the 'ridiculous amount of packaging for something so small'. "No wonder you had a trash problem [in 20th century]".
(I recommend the show strongly, btw. While often more "fi" than "sci", it has an extremely good discussion of the interaction between people, government and private interests. In the show's universe, corporations have bailed out the failing government and formed a Corporate Congress...).
Half a year ago I watched Continuum - a sci-fi TV series, which feature a dystopian Earth ruled by so called Corporate Congress - corporations bought out governments and created their own. It was an interesting concept to watch, but I haven't really expected to see it forming in front of me, in the real world...
So just to start, I hope you watch the SyFy series Continuum[1]. The basic synopsis is that in the future, governments and economies collapse and the "Corporations" bail everyone out. I mean, you trust your personal information to FB way faster than you do with the GVT.
Anyways...
So, my very limited understanding of civil/city/state governments is that they are already special forms of "Non-Profit Corporate Entities" in most states, "Municipal Corporations"[2]. All other "private law enforcement entities" derive from some variation/bastardization of these laws depending on the state. So yes, most private citizens/corporations, what ever definition of the term[3], can obtain any of the weapons described in the article, with limits/exceptions. For instance, the SWAT team of Dallas, TX is part of the Dallas Police Department (Dallas being a Municipal Corporation). I chose this as an example because, when you google Dallas SWAT, you either get a reality TV show or a Facebook Page. In most smaller counties, it is part of the county Sherifs Department. In most states, the only person that can arrest a Sherif is the Governor or Agent of The Federal Government. Stay with me. This is all an argument of semantics from the beginning.
US entities operating outside the US borders obtain literally what ever equipment they, or their clients, can afford. Further, they are either bound by US Military rules of conduct (rules of engagement), beholden to local law, or either/neither seemingly as the parties see fit [see current US military advisor rules in Iraq vs. Blackwater authorization in Op. Iraqi Freedom].
My reading of this article is the scenario last referenced on US soil. A claim that a local SWAT team is both and neither. The power of a government law enforcement agency with the "loosely defined rights" of a private corporation (individual.) It is "risk management" in the corporate sense. You structure yourself for greatest legal/financial protection/benefit.
Grey area -- rant. Expand this to the Federal Government... The FBI is the only organization that is authorized to investigate wrong doing within itself[4]. In addition, the federal government can chose whether or not you are aloud to sue them in federal court (all courts by proxy.)[5]
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1954347/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_corporation [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission [4] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/us/in-150-shootings-the-fbi-deemed-agents-faultless.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States
I love how he gets right to the core of the problem: Corruption in the US Govt due to 'Lobbying', which basically boils down to the largest corporations running the country.
Continuum anyone? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1954347/
> Most movies / tv shows are already currently available digitally or without DRM (Netflix, Hulu, Apple, Amazon, etc).
NO. NO. NO. Where did you get this information? It might be that the US of A is nearing such a state of affairs, but over here in Europe, these services are either not available or devoid of content.
For instance, I like to follow Continuum, Justified and Game of Thrones. The only one of these that is available online over here is Justified.
"Watchever", the service that carries it, however, is crippled by weird licensing deals where seasons of TV series appear and disappear seemingly at random, because they only get the rights for a limited amount of time. So if I get a Watchever subscription, I _might_ be able to watch Justified _some of the time_.
As for the other two, they are just not available online. The poor sods that can stand to watch it in the dubbed version with commercial breaks will get to see both series on free TV with a delay of more than a year.
There is no reason to assume that watching Game of Thrones with a one year delay is problematic in any way. After all, everybody (in Germany) watches it at the same time, one year later, right?
For GoT there is actually a third option. I can get a subscription with Sky for 35€ per month, where I'll get tons of sports television and one TV series of interest: Game of Thrones.
Oh, and that subscription? First time you can cancel it is after 24 months. So if I want to watch two seasons of GoT, it'll cost me a mere 840€.
Do you see the problem here? If HBO were to shut up and take my money, I'd gladly pay ten bucks per episode to stream it. But that would be soooooo 21st century, wouldn't it?
Excellent points. I think if we broaden our scope to television (which is arguably becoming looked upon just as highly as movies) there are better pickings. There are a lot of characters that are based on sex, but there are a few that could work either way. That's not to say that sex-specific situations don't come up. They do, but that's more because of the need for greater amounts of filler content on a TV show than because of a fundamental basis for that character. So, not as perfect as Ripley, but not bad.
(I don't watch a lot of TV, but Continuum and The Black List come to mind, though neither offers a true Ripley)
Not really. I found that shows like Person of Interest, Continuum or even bits of Fringe are best watched in a row. I would say American TV production schedules of 24 episodes a season is the bits that are killing TV watching.
I would definitely not mind 6 episodes per season of high quality entertainmen (aka British TV production schedule).
I wouldn't know about the water-cooler effect because I've never actually experienced discussing with other people last night's TV.
There is a cool TV show on Scyfy right now called Continuum that has "future" technology that records everything a police office sees and regularly backs it up to a remote storage for evidence. In addition, it provides a host of situational awareness aids.
From an enforcement and tactical perspective, such technology is invaluable and will undoubtedly save lives.
It also alleviates the he said/she said issues and makes improper behavior by officers plain as day in court.
As long as it doesn't have sensors that can "see through walls", this tech isn't particularly invasive. If it can breach the boundary of your private home, that's another issue all together.
In Continuum, the terrorists travel in time and underthe aauthor's logic both the heroine and the female terrorists are "along for the ride". Millineum, mentioned here is a terrible movie, but does seem to break the mold from what I remember of it anyway.
I consider it like the 1980's cell phone. Way too expensive, not nearly capable enough, and you look really silly using it. But then let it evolve for a decade or two, and you might get something inevitable. Eventually i'm expecting something like the augmented reality in the TV show continuum, and that is something people would really be into.
Have a look at the new ShowCase TV series Continuum for some ideas on how an implanted Glass chip may enhance police work in the future.