9 replies to this topic

[Arie]

Anyone seen this?

A belgian documentary about transhumanism called "Technocalyps"

Trailer:


I you want to see it and have access to a newsbinaries server:

http://www.binsearch...mp;adv_age=28#r

I think there are also torrents if you google for them

[Harvey Newstrom]

It was Ok for its coverage of the topic. And it was fun to see friends on video again.

But the music seemed deliberately spooky and dramatic. And they kept showing people literally cutting up brains with knives. I kept wondering if they were trying to be provocative or deliberately disturbing. I'm not sure if this video is a plus or a minus as a PR tool.

Edited by Harvey Newstrom, 10 August 2008 - 02:02 PM.

[forever freedom]

Nice, but i wanted to see the whole thing now =/

[Arie]

It was Ok for its coverage of the topic. And it was fun to see friends on video again.

But the music seemed deliberately spooky and dramatic. And they kept showing people literally cutting up brains with knives. I kept wondering if they were trying to be provocative or deliberately disturbing. I'm not sure if this video is a plus or a minus as a PR tool.

Actually i thought it was pretty balanced and insightful overall, i even learned a couple of new things. They interviewed some Critical/Luddite/Unabomber type of people but the majority were clearly pro-transhumanist, and they clearly had the better arguments.

But what annoyed me most was the focus on religious nutcases as a kind of attempt to synthesize the technological singularity with contemporary religious beliefs. Especially the endless shots with soapbox idiots were tiring.

Kurzweil looked very old and tired, constantly blinking with his eyes. My 73-year old dad looks younger than the man who thinks he's "biologically 40 years old".

I wondered how many archival footage they were using, i spotted a classic IBM PC and Macintosh, so these interviews must have been from the '80s already.

Edited by Arie, 11 August 2008 - 12:31 PM.

[Arie]

Nice, but i wanted to see the whole thing now =/

If you make some effort, you can download the movie to your PC. It's divided in 3 segments of an hour each, but you can probably skip the 3rd part called "Cybermessiah" or something, because it's for a large part pro-religious nonsense.

[b0gger]

I'll bump this topic. "Technocalypse" was uploaded to youtube almost a year ago. Sadly there are no playlists, so if you want to watch the whole thing, every next piece have to be started from the top of "related videos" manually.
1st part Transhuman
2dn part Preparing for the Singularity
3rd part The Digital Messiah
That is if you would not be able to watch those from below.


Transhuman

Preparing for the Singularity

The Digital Messiah

[drmz]

I liked the documentary. Saw it last year on a multimedia/music/technology party

Edited by drmz, 23 October 2009 - 11:57 AM.

[b0gger]

an update - playlist: watch all 22 videos

[b0gger]

the best link to watch it is this one (strangely i did not find it before)

[Reno]

These kept me glued to the monitor for their duration. I'm surprised I haven't seen these before now. Thank you for posting them.