Hacker Cinema
Humans
2015 · TV series · 46 min episodes · 3 seasons
Created by Jonathan Brackley, Sam Vincent
Science FictionFantasyDramaMystery
In a parallel present where the latest must-have gadget for any busy family is a 'Synth' - a highly-developed robotic servant that's so similar to a real human it's transforming the way we live.
4 positive1 negative8 neutralfrom 13 commenters
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13 comments on Hacker News
Edit: Movies, unsorted, from the top of my mind:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_of_Control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Origins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_East_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter%27s_Bone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contagion_(2011_film) , seen before Covid, deemed to be realistic, and therefore better than stuff like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warning_Sign_(film) somewhere in between. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_IV_(1974_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizards_(film) The remakes of the Planet of the Apes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Weeks_Later a little less so, though it had some great scenes of flying into London City Airport and the modern parts around that. Bladerunner in the original versions, the remake not so much. 2001: A Space Odyssey, the intro and first parts, spaceflight to the moon and such, the rest not. Too boring. I liked the sequel 2010: Odyssey Two better, actually. Avatar. Part one only. All of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(franchise) with the exception of the crossover stuff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film) for the almost cyberpunkish fuckedupness of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula_Untold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beach_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_(2005_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan%27s_Run_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropia_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(1975_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Dealer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southland_Tales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendence_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Puppet_Masters_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Survivalist_(2015_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova_(2000_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunshine_(2007_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_(1987_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Zero_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangar_18_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_(2001_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timecop Ron Silverman Badass! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_(2014_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Blonde https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Are_the_Night_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(1997_American_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truman_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowing_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Zone_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere_(1998_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adjustment_Bureau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrival_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeforce_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fourth_Protocol_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_(2013_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(2009_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Countdown_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypher_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_Conspiracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anderson_Tapes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Seduction
TV-Series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors_(1975_TV_series) and the remake linked from there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Train_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_(2006_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strain_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayward_Pines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silo_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_All_Mankind_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_(American_TV_series) and its prequel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1883_(TV_series)
WESTWORLD!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100_(TV_series) Praimfaya! Yeehaa! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterpart_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_Carbon_(TV_series) All of Black Mirror! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Experiments_Lain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelers_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Skies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devs_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peripheral_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helix_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raised_by_Wolves_(American_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_the_Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutschland_83 and sequels. ÄXZÄLLÄNNT! JAWOLLJA! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Night_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2019_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_Nova_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gods_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozark_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_in_the_High_Castle_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_One https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrection_(American_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvation_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Dome_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_(2009_TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caprica
This all began about 2006 with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlestar_Galactica_(2004_TV_series) after having abstained from possessing a TV, or watching that by other means (with some exceptions for news and documentaries) since 1996, and mostly no cinema either.
That stuff rehooked me in a binge-watching session. Shit happens :-)
Do yoo vanna häff fries wiff thät?
/nerdsnipe off
The TV show Humans is what, 2 years old now, and one of the main characters was worried they were not needed by the future because robots would take all the jobs.
Now IRL, there already is a steady stream of anxiety & angst, regular questions of "why would I bother becoming a coder anymore, since all the jobs will be wiped out by AI?"
To me it's an indicator we overly mythologize these things we cannot know. We not just believe the hype, but we amplify it enormously.
After Zuboff's Age of Survelliance Capitalism, Cory Doctorow's put out a response position that while the book is great, it 100% accepts every capability these folks say they have to completely reprogram human behavior, and it takes it further.
This tendency to assume technologies have high oracular powers, to- even when we are critiquing (Zuboff)- assume the system is at least if not vastly impactful & powerful than the claims... it's a savage problem for society, a nature of people & how we view the unobservable unexplained world as mystical & overaweing. How we dampen the hysteria is beyond my guessing, atm.
I think it’s both too early and never too early to talk about this. It’s too early in the sense that people asking this question are looking at GPT3 or extrapolating from “look what we’ve achieved in comparatively little time”. It’s very clear AGI is very very far away. It’s not too early in the sense that it’s useful to start thinking about the ethics of this to have some kind of body of knowledge to draw upon and reference when it does become possible. The truisim of the digital realm is that it deals in exponentials. So by the time you realize that you’re close to AGI, it’s too late to start thinking about the ethics.
On the other hand, thinking about the ethics of a hypothetical technology can also be fruitless. For example, the trolley problem is often trotted out as a “how on earth could a self driving car resolve this”. In practice it turns out this isn’t really a problem. Firstly, the self driving car will do a better job than any human at avoiding coming into such a situation several moves in advance (think chess where the computer will counter you attack before you even started thinking about it). Secondly, even if you force it into such situations in a simulated environment, there are defensively objective ways to make decisions that result in an outcome a human could not predict / could not make happen.
So TLDR: I think it probably does amount to some level of slavery, humans will only recognize sentience when either it’s advantageous for us to do so or when it becomes impossible to deny (maybe a few generations after they become real), and any attempt to hypothesize a moral framework for such a situation is too soon and it’s better to leave it to the realm of science fiction for now. Humans is a fantastic TV show that deals with this dilemma although it’ll be interesting to see whether AGI will need a body to be recognized as an individual.
What happens when you have a 'being', made of silicon and algorithms, but takes the form of a human? Or, for a better case, what happens when our own brains are 'part algorithm'? In that case I think this sort of case wouldn't be so cut and dry. I'm thinking of some recent films and TV shows that really explored these issues; Humans, Ex Machina, Westworld, and Altered Carbon.
I'm excited to see what this does to the food chain. Will it collapse? Will it kill billions? Find out on the next episode of humans trying to manipulate everything.
I tried watching season 1 of Humans but was jaded by first watching Akta Manniskor (Real Humans), the Swedish series it is based upon.
It seems that sometimes a lower production budget yields a better story. Forced to rely instead on the viewer's imagination and subject interest. Especially if it's done with aplomb and intelligence.
I found the dialogue in Humans to be too "explanatory." Haven't seen a full episode of Westworld yet, but imagine the same is true. Big budgets tend to to that.
Fine - let's go for a walk together, build a fire, cook and chat and see what we have in common - It would be interesting. This is why TV and film like Humans and Bladerunner and I, Robot and Arrival and books like Ancillary Justice are fun - how much would we understand each other? how would it be different from interacting with a human?
Although the trend now is for streaming services to offer a subscription to that one good show, though at a pretty steep price. Mr. Robot was something like $25-30 on amazon for season 2.
edit: But some are included at no extra cost. Amazon Prime customers got AMC's Humans the day after it aired for free.
That said, I think Humans is the better new show right now.
I did really enjoy this last week's episode, but something seems a little obvious about the plotline at parts.
I'm hoping the twist I'm expecting actually surprises me (like the ending of the last episode, which the author just gives away without much warning)
Kind of want reply both to you and @pjc50:
I think moving images with sound as part of hypertext/hypermedia is a given -- and has been since (at least) the 60s. That's not just "TV". And "TV" isn't just video.
We've only recently entered the era where users can reasonably make live and recorded video, and use that as a form of expression (from video chat, to youtube/vimeo to snapchat etc). And just like you could take a tv camera and use that for video conferencing in the 60s[1] -- video-the-medium is much more than "TV".
"TV" is indeed very pacifying. For myself, I can on days off, do two very different things that are very immersive: watch tv series, or play Star Wars: Online Galaxies. Now, I mostly play SWTOR solo, so for the purpose of this discussion, lets just use "play a single-player computer game". I enjoy both, but if I read a book or play a computer game -- I'm mentally invigorated. If I watch a TV series, even something interesting like "Humans"[h], "Mr. Robot"[r] -- or more interesting drama like "True Detective"[t] -- I always end up more passive. Even watching documentaries, or news -- TV ends up a very passive medium.
And that's (IMNHO) just the good "TV". I find that a good movie is usually between "book" and "TV" -- something with the format/runtime that drives a different expression both in writing and directing.
> We've been trending away from the 'web as a collection of books' to 'the web as a series of TV channels' for many years now.
I don't think the web has ever been much like a "collection of books". It might have been "a collection of essays" -- and I don't think we're really trending towards "a series of TV channels". I think we'll still see video expression and communication evolve, and I think user generated communiques ("content" is more something that oozes from a (corporate) organization) will continue to dominate.
It is my impression that young people (~3-20) are much more inclined to use video than I am -- I don't much like it. But I expect rich media images/sound/video will continue to increase, as bandwidth/storage gets cheaper.
I think that trend in media is different from the trend in centralization, commercialization though. There's nothing wrong with videologs (other than that I prefer a well-written text...) -- as long as we can host them in a more distributed manner than we do today.
I think we'll see interesting times ahead, as the people that are now 5 years old grow up to master both rich media and various forms of programming/automation as a natural part of their life. We've seen nothing yet. Nothing.
A post-script on quality: I think many of us want quality. And I think we'll continue to make it, and find it. Be that small Internet radio-stations that do curated music (as opposed to things like soundcloud that I also like, but unfortunately is just as hopelessly centralized as youtube) -- or "real" blogs -- or whatever.
It remains to be seen how/if this will all be funded. Maybe we won't have as much paid-for content/art -- maybe we'll all have more free time -- assuming we don't kill each others as jobs are automated away, and those who own the robots keep all the riches.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY
[h] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humans_(TV_series)
[r] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Robot_(TV_series)
[t] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Detective_(TV_series)
Here's another angle on Ethereum: I think it's going to put Walmart, Amazon, Uber and Airbnb out of business.
Consider Amazon. They buy goods from manufacturers, then sell those goods to consumers for higher prices and pocket (or spend) the profits. Pretty simple. They provide a great service that makes it easier for people to buy and sell stuff, and they get paid well to do it.
But what if all of Amazon's customers wanted to band together and cut out the middleman? They could use their collective buying power to get the same prices from manufacturers, but eliminate the profit and just pay lower prices. It's possible, but it'd be hard to achieve. Who would run the system? How would they make decisions? It's so hard that the customers would give up, finish buying their disposable consumer goods, watch an episode of Humans and go to sleep.
Or one of them could come up with a solution. "Hey y'all, I wrote the software for a marketplace system to connect us all directly to manufacturers, but I know you can't trust me to never take a cut if I run the system myself. So instead, I'll run it on a global computer that no one controls. Programs on the global computer can never change, and no one can fake their data. That means the system will be out of my control and the rules are set in stone. It's everyone's system."
That global computer is called Ethereum, and it lets us build new kinds of software that can coordinate human interactions so powerfully that this guy's solution just might work. You could build other kinds of apps on Ethereum too, like voluntary social safety nets, apps that let your future smart appliances talk to each other long after their manufacturer shuts down, or pretty much the entire financial industry—all without any middlemen to charge you or restrict your access.
If you know how to program, you should learn how to build apps on Ethereum. And not just the code that runs directly on the global computer, but web apps and mobile apps that you already know how to build, just with the global computer as the backend instead of a private computer. I will help you get started. (niran@niran.org)
Maybe I'm overly optimistic. That's a risk I'm willing to take. You should too.
I think the problem may be that people will have more and more binge watching alternatives in other platforms too. For example, right now in HBO and AMC I could watch The Brink, True Detective, Vice, Halt and Cath Fire and Humans, a few weeks ago I could add Silicon Valley and Games of Thrones, so I'm definitely consuming less Netflix right now, actually I'm considering joining only when House of Cards or Lillyhammer have a new season.
It's a pitty the (excellent, must watch) swedish 'Äkta människor' aka Real Humans [1] isn't mentioned here: I haven't seen Humans [2] but the whole idea seems to be very close to the first one. Well, even the title is remarkably similar :P
See for yourself here:
[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2180271/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4122068/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
That being said: well done Channel 4, there are enough mediocre to just annyoing adverts out there already.