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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
As a futurist, do you see the world as you think it will be or as you personally want it to be?
Underkoffler: The more time you spend thinking about that sort of thing, the more you have to acknowledge how things rarely turn out the way you intend. Very often it's the case that new technology -- even with beneficial ends in mind -- turns out to have effects you didn't expect at all. I think more and more I feel wary about technology just in the sense that we're rushing headlong into any number of different of technologically advanced fields without a full understanding of what's necessarily going on. Bioengineering is an obvious example -- just hanging around waiting for the mini bio-apocalypse.
The sci-fi genre often has a tendency to cannibalize itself -- almost to the point of parody. This film, however, boasts a look that is a lot fresher and more original than most. If you could put your finger on it, how did you manage to accomplish that?
Belker: For once, they tried to show a very positive future environment. I mean, we all lived through the bible of all sci-fi movies, "Blade Runner," which painted a very dark view of the future. And many, many sci-fi films after that kind of reflected what "Blade Runner" had started. So, there was a conscious effort to go the other way, to make it a positive, bright future where we solve a lot of problems and make life more pleasant.
But there is a lot of negative as well. Of all the fantastical inventions featured in the film, which do you fear the most?
Belker: Those little spiders. You have to surrender. Watching the "First Look" special on HBO, I think one of the guys said, "You don't have 15 minutes of fame, you have 15 minutes of privacy." If that is all taken away, that's a pretty scary thing.
Underkoffler: I think the clearest warning comes in relation to the kind of Orwellian or Huxley-esque scenario, where your eyes are constantly being scanned, your identity is being assessed at every moment and your location known at all times. In the movie, of course, that's motivated by principally market concerns, commercial concerns. The idea is that if we can identify you at this place and time, then we can advertise very specific to you. "It's time for a Guinness, John Anderton." [Laughs]
How much input did you have in the whole advertising scenario?
Underkoffler: That idea was integral from the very beginning in Steven and Alex's conception. The idea that your privacy was really a thing of the past, that the pure market forces had long since eroded everyone's intimate civil liberties to the point where only the wealthy could afford to not be bothered all the time. That was one of the benefits of extreme wealth, that you could afford to silence some states where stuff wouldn't be yammering at you constantly trying to sell you watches and beer.
Is this film more of a cautionary idea or does it present more of an inevitable future?
Underkoffler: I think it's something that is in danger of happening right now. I mean, given the awful events of last fall where we're starting to see a lot of this stuff on the immediate horizon. We have video surveillance systems being installed in Boston's Logan Airport and Providence Airport that are being tied on the back end to template matching -- facial recognition systems. They may not be accurate enough, but we're at that moment where if we, as an ostensibly democratic society, don't make some choices, the choice will just happen automatically.
I think we are in danger of approaching the world shot in the film from the opposite standpoint. In the film, we see a society with this universal surveillance because advertisers benefit from that, and they sort of pass off the information to peacekeeping forces and law-enforcement agencies like "Pre-crime." I think we're in danger of doing that the opposite way around, where people's knee-jerk reaction concerns for national and personal security allow that kind of surveillance to take hold. And then, of course, there's nothing to stop stuff from migrating into the commercial sector. If everyone's being scanned and identified all the time anyway, maybe the government would like to make a few extra bucks selling it to Timex or whoever wants the demographic information.
Do you see this type of future as unavoidable or can society do something to prevent this so-called progress?
Underkoffler: Well, the most important thing is for people to remain really aware of what's going on and, having made a decision about it, to speak that decision clearly. Which isn't necessarily something always in practice.
Belker: How many phone calls do you get everyday of people advertising? Isn't that annoying already? I wish I could turn that off. I mean, with the Internet today and your personal information available everywhere, we hope that doesn't go out of control.
In your opinion, what is the most unlikely thing to happen in the future that we see in "Minority Report"?
Underkoffler: Clearly the farthest out element of the story are the pre-cogs themselves, the essentially psychic adolescents who float in the tank. That was our largest leap. The whole movie is predicated on the accidental creation or discovery of these psychic kids.
Belker: The hover packs.
Which scares you more: The world depicted in "Minority Report" or the one we live in now?
Belker: Really neither. I just see technology exploding in the future. If you look at the last industrial revolution, what humankind has done in the last 50 years -- there has to come some good from that.
Underkoffler: Well, because the one depicted in "Minority Report" is fictional, we always have the option of correcting it through rewriting. The one we live in now is ultimately more frightening because there's no promise that we can divert the course, even if we were vigilant enough to watch the course and see where we're going and try to change it. There's much more uncertainty in the real world.
