The need for more quality sci-fi movies

If you recently went to the movie and watched Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio you might find yourself a little bit dazed by what just happened. It's the result of your brain working to understand a good plot. Yes, it was a good story and even though not entirely original, it's surely worth your bucks.

When was the last time you sat with your popcorn basket and a cold soda to watch a movie that squeezed your brain? Maybe when you went watching The Matrix in 1999? I guess yes. Science fiction is good material and especially if it comes out of directly from the director.

When the The Matrix came out I watched it three times the same weekend it opened. After that Hollywood rediscovered Phillip K. Dick and his works translating into major flicks some of his novels and short stories like Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, Paycheck and upcoming The Adjustment Bureau; and in the recent past two major titles like Blade Runner (1982) and Total Recall (1990). Another example of a successful book-to-screen is Dune. The 1984 adaptation from the Frank Herbert's book was praised for it's accuracy, acting and special effects in a period where no CGI was available. It worked and the result was striking.

I believe that more can be done and I'm talking about quality. But Hollywood I don't think that Hollywood will have the monopoly on the good sci-fi chapter. Movies like 28 Days Later, District 9 and Cube were huge success from outside production who pointed on making stories where people would talk about for years. 

On the other side there I felt cheated when I watched I-Robot, especially after reading the book by Asimov. 

Do I expect too much? Yes, if we are talking about novels that are milestones and helped shape science fiction throughout the years. 

There is the need to oversee a better quality in sci-fi movies because there is a huge crowd out there of passionate people who are avid reader of books, comic books and meticulousness attend conventions dressed as their favorite character in movies and TV shows. Those are men and women who treasure details and want their experience to go beyond the silver screen because they can appreciate a good work of art, rather than buying a ticket to waste their weekends watching poor films like Doomsday or Outlander.

But at the same time we have to be careful when dealing with remakes such as The Day Earth Stood Still because there's a risk to ruin the original, or forcing to extend the saga making Terminator 5, 6, 7, etc.

Those who saw changes

Transitions allow you to better understand how the world changes and how things happen. We live in comfort times where people struggle way less than the generation before. But what does that mean? There was a time where people did not have the luxury that surround us today: cellphones, emails, social websites, etc.

There was a time where people actually interacted face to face to know you, to understand you, to debate you and to oppose you. Now it seems it's all gone. Yes, all gone...

I remember when I took my bike and visited my friend's house so we would gather and pedal around our neighbor blocks. We would stop to buy sodas to drink, chips or chocolate bars for our rogue snacks away from out parent's watch. Then we grew up to ride cars and start exploring the night life meeting at 9 pm and coming home at one in the morning.

We took those weekend nights riding our cars or stopping at our meeting place to talk about anything we felt without taboos. That was ten years ago, that was the year 2000 and not some post World War 2 scenario.

Some of us had cellphones that would only place calls and nothing else. That was an advantage to look cool among us and not hide behind anything else. If we had to meet t our usual spot we were there without any lame text-message excuse not to show up.

My generation who grew up i the 80s saw the transition into an age of comfort and laziness at the same time. We understood that the technological achievements were something short of a miracle and never took it from granted, unlike too many people do today. 

There is a huge gap between us and the kids of today who couldn't see life change, especially in a post 9/11 world. Lots of things did change and if you missed them you also missed history in the making. If you did not pay serious attention what happened from 2001 and on you missed an page-turning in life.

When you base the majority of your social activity through a website that might be Facebook or Myspace you just decided to avoid reality and what's really going around you.

I've witnessed the birth of MMOs, the dawn of chats and virtual social spaces, the way Google shaped the web and how it shaped your life. I saw changes that many other didn't. I was there to see when the web went from 1.0 to 2.0 and the advent of how Youtube changed things.

Once you saw those things you start appreciating every single application on your phone because back then you had to take the Yellow Pages to find anything that wasn't yet on the internet.

My parents saw eve more things changing than I did: TV, VHS, CD, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the political turmoils in '68, the birth of the PC, and the list goes on and on.

What will the generation after me witness? Not so many changes as they will grow up and live in an environment where socializing will be more difficult and where interacting will only happen only through the HTTP and their dreams will be prepackaged by PR agencies in their next campaign ad..

Real ID over the internet is for suicidals

There is a reason why you do not have a tag with our name on your chest when you walk around. There is a reason why you hate telemarketers for having your name and last name. There's also a reason why you don't give your home or cellphone number to everyone. It's called privacy and it shouldn't be questionable at all. Unfortunately there are some who think otherwise and sometimes they sound like they spent too much time in the Sun. 

Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked on August 4th at Lake Tahoe Techonomy conference about the current status of the internet and its future. At one point he stated:

"The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it."

The need for a verified ID over the internet is just a bad idea and everyone knows why. Having your name and face available to the whole world is something that will have more side effects than positive ones. Here's a small list why it's a bad ides:

1. business will collect all your infos sending you more unwanted advertisement that most likely will be tailor-made for you through email, cellphone, snail mail, telephone, fax, gaming console, etc.
2. telemarketers will have a field trip knowing where you live and when to call you according to your work schedule;
3. door-to-door salesmen will return in grand style knocking at your door as soon as you get back from work.
4. divorcing parents are do not end their relationship in nice way. Crazy mom or dad might want to kidnap Junior;
5. religious solicitors doing the same job as telemarketers and door-to-door salesmen;
6. unwanted and not-well-intentioned people.

The list can go on and on, but I think you understood where it's headed. But there is a great example of personal information that went online that happened not too long ago. In the World Of Warcraft forum a post by an administrator stated that the company planned to implement Real ID for players, as part of the Blizzard's Battlenet strategy. What followed is that the real information of this administrator popped in the forum and soon enough his whole life was available to anyone: name, last name, girlfriend name, Facebook profile and a blog about his upcoming wedding with further details o family and friends.

The forum drama went on for hundreds of pages having people disgusted and shocked by this decision and eventually Blizzard dropped the project. This shows us how some corporate strategies are bad from the start because they do not reflect what costumers want.

Transparency is one thing, but not when we are talking about the real life of people who can have their life in jeopardy by silly strategies that will only work on paper. There are already ways to be identified on the internet, for example when you do online purchasing your credit card and address informations are already stored and I think it's enough. We don't want to give more than that to people who we don't know or we barely trust.

Giving up privacy over the internet is like having no walls in your bathroom. There is a limit to when and what your name should be available, the rest is none of your business.

Be careful how you handle neutrality

Net neutrality isn't about who owns the internet or who decides to turn it off. It's about fairness in it's quality and distribution, I say. Important political and financial figures are start to becoming afraid of the internet. How? People now are informed on things that matter the most that before were kept local or secret.

The information age is defined so by having people sharing and creating contents on a world-wide scale, but consequences are hurting lawmakers and corporations.

Since internet is a domain of the United State, politicians in Washington are feeling the heat and their personal agendas is crumbling. What happens is that laws are being created to limit the content of the net along with the freedom to information.

It is scary how influential are providers such AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, for example. Their work at lobbying senators is somehow successful into turning the web into a filtered content media apparatus. Remember what happened in Australia? Government wanted to apply a huge censorship system cut and edit information on the ground of protecting people using the terrorism/child pornography scapegoat. Those two items are easy to pressure through all the news channels making citizens believe they are being protected when in fact there is more to it.

Another clear example is the latest case for Wikileaks and the publishing of the 92,000 documents coming from military intelligence. It came out that big governments did wrong and are afraid this will translate into a domino effect where the truth can be exposed. Allegation of a wrong war in Iraq are the tip of the iceberg where many high profile politicians can loose more than their job, and all this because information is being made public.

Restricting contents is a move where only few will benefit and where many won't. But there are aspects of the net neutrality that many people do not know because they are being kept away from it. According to an article from the New York Times there are talks between Google and phone carrier Verizon to charge costumer for the search engine's traffic and it's associated website like Youtube. Also the Business Journal reports something similar.

This issue was born upon the problematic that some ISP are having with the increasing demand for a faster internet. Youtube streams million of videos on a daily basis around the world and ISP are having hard times keeping up with the bandwidth request. We don't live anymore in a web system made of just text pages and HTML documents. It's the web 2.0 and we have been for quite sometime. Servie providers are in a state of denial over the expansion of the internet and do not want to invest in better infrastructures not for a lack of money, but because they are stingy.

Some providers in north America set caps over data stream to your house and if you want more internet speed you must pay and get a new contract and pay more to increase the capacity.

However Google officially denied that any talk is taking place and wants accessibility for everyone, but there is a fear that a tier-system will take place eventually in a near future.

What is a tear-system? It would work like TV cable where you pay for packages according to what content you want to access. For example you will pay a basic package for websites like Yahoo, Hotmail, Reddit or Gmail. Then, if you want to use Facebook, Flickr or Ebay on top of the basic you will be charged more. Finally, if you want to add Youtube, Vimeo, Skype and online gaming your bill will be way heavier than what you're paying now on a monthly basis. 

Is net neutrality important? Yes, because ISP are just providers and not content-filters tools that can ask you money whenever they feel like. Europe and north America are behind updating their broadband access and coverage compared to countries like Japan and South Korea where DSL speed is 5-10 times faster and optic fiber is somewhat 30 times faster.

US senator Al Franken stated in a CNN interview that net neutrality is essential like free speech and it should be considered to in order to grant a free flow of the information. It's also essential that we do not fall for dirty tricks from politicians. Many of them are too old and stubborn to adapt to new technologies and are afraid that change will dethrone them. Imagine the post office charging you money when you subscribe to one or more newspaper-magazine at your address. How silly would that be? Would an international currier stop working because they are delivering too much? Most likely no and they would probably expand their fleet to keep up with the demand. So why can't ISP build more or better infrastructures? Many of them pocketed money from the US government promising a wider and faster network, but that never happened.

It's important to keep both eyes on matter that are very close to us before someone else makes important decision where we should have a say.

Religion matter less here

I have been watching news, blogs, reports and documentaries about how religious is north America. It was a surprise to me how much people were fundamentalist compared to other countries. 

In my opinion I always thought that north America was a religious country, but moderated enough not to suffocate their intellectual and secular side. I was wrong. Wrong like nothing I could ever imagine. 

There is a wild side of the US (especially) that is concentrated to religion in a matter how Soviets were about their secrecy and power. Something is quite shocking and we are in the year 2010. We suppose to be less and less superstitious about old tales that stigmatized in the wrong way innocent people. Time as gone by, but people did not understand their spiritual mistakes.

Writing from the country where the Pope and the Vatican live, I feel like I'm in the one of the most atheist country in the world.

Yes, right here in Italy we have so many people who are allegedly Christians, but do everything everyday to disprove it. Beside not following the bible nor the commandments, the Italian people can openly declare their atheism without any persecution from the church or other institutions.

In this country people are aware that the Catholic church has a bed in Rome and also how powerful it is, but there is no witch-hunt for those who do not believe in god or Jesus. Actually, it seems like people like more the way Jesus acted towards poor people rather than the whole bible story.

Atheists for Jesus? Maybe.

It's all about realizing how much Italy has been living with the Vatican manipulating the way Italy lives. Yes, I'm afraid to say so, but there is a deep belief in me that the progression of this country has been deeply halted by the Pope and his agenda.

Do I get expelled or burnt to death in a public square for my thought? Simply no! But why?

The answer can be given showing how much attention the Pope has been given to other countries while spreading the word, but Italy.

What has the Pope been doing to make Italy a better place? Nothing at all!

Faith based families are growing and developing other priorities that are not spiritual mostly because the financial crisis is striking with great vengeance upon the middle class. So, there is little or no time to turn for religious help because people are realizing it's not working! There is nothing about a church and an idol that can feed those families and help them pay their bills.

There is no outcasting for your different religious or no religious believes. Nobody cares actually. People lost that intellect for the spiritual side in order to improve their actual social condition.

On social site's pages there are no "Thank you Jesus" or "I love god" or "Prayers for the white brothers". Nothing like that. So far we have been considering the spiritual side as something very personal that does not belong to the public eye. Not even for the internet age and it's surrogates.