Limits

Of all the recent developments in my life, probably one of the most consuming is the recent addition of "Science Club" into my life.  Science Club, which is essentially a small group of talkative friends who like to talk about science, is still on its first legs but it's spawned a diversity of weird projects in my life, which currently include a dream notebook (in which I am trying to record my dreams) and an obsession with the New York Times Science section.

That said, one of the most thought provoking quotes I read recently was from BOING BOING (www.boingboing.net), in an article about Karl Schroeder.  Schroeder is a graduate of OCAD's
Strategic Foresight and Innovation graduate program (and, first of all, holy shit that that EXISTS), and he's a writer of science-fiction.

And here's a few choice quotes of what he had to say in his blog entry (references on BOING BOING) about his degree and writing about the future:

If you're afraid of being a poor predictor of the near future, you'll avoid writing about it. But what if you were never out to predict in the first place? What if you don't care if a story you set in 2012 gets immediately overtaken by events? What if you set the action there not to predict some event or outcome, but to encourage some action on the part of your readers?

And:

The fact is that if I've learned one thing in two years of studying how we think about the future, it's that the one thing that's sorely lacking in the public imagination is positive ideas about where we should be going.  

I thought of this recently when I was watching the most ridiculous movie ever, LIMITLESS.

The idea behind this movie is that, through a pill, it is possible to gain access to the entirity of your brain.  That is, all 100% as opposed to 20% (or so, depending on what you were up to last night).  By accessing all of your brain you would have access to, hypothetically, all the information you'd ever come accross.  You could store information and so, if you wanted to, learn things at an impossible pace (languages, how to work the stock exchange, etc).  You could finish your novel.  Learn to play the piano. ANd so on.

And this, essentially, is the main character, Eddie Morra's focus.  Plus he can SEE things, see the big picture, see his way out of scrapes and into panties.

So.

So what does this guy do with is big brain?  His giant, awesome brain?

After he finishes his book?

He makes vast amounts of money really fast.

THAT, my friends, is what a person does with superior brain power.

NO, not cure cancer, solve the world's eco problems, build a better car or any of that. 

NO, he works the STOCK EXCHANGE.

Unbelievable. 

Really and truly, such an epic failure of imagination I couldn't stand to watch the grand finale.  I figured the mainstay would be this guy becoming stupid again but getting the girl.  Something like that.

Really?  Like, wow, here you have this great premise, an a title, LIMITLESS, and the big pay off for this character, this movie, is MONEY.

How insanely mundane.

That said, I've got kind of high hopes for Another Earth, which is out now, which is supposed to be a dramatic/creative take on a movie about something scientific.

I guess that's it for now.

xo

mariko