Week 10 - Topic 10 - Blade Runner

Lecture –

The lecture this week we watched Blade Runner, a movie starring Harrison Ford. The movie raises the issue of how human machines may become in the future. It asks whether or not they can learn to have emotions. It starts with 6 replicas escaping and killing humans. This brings in Harrison Ford as a Blade Runner to catch and kill them before they kill anyone else. He finds a replica that doesn’t realise that she is one and has been modelled to feel emotions and remember a past that never even existed. The movie continues with him killing off the replicas one by one. The movie was interesting as it raised questions about how far technology may take us in the future and whether or not it will ever be possible to invent machines that will feel and think like human beings do. Although a good movie, it wasn’t as effective as eXistenZ in its message. eXistenZ was frightening as there are currently virtual reality games and each day there is a new, improved virtual reality games that one day may become as realistic as the games in the movie.

Tutorial –

The tutorial for this week was to discuss and complete our essay outline. To catch up on any of the activities we missed over the past few weeks.

Reading –

The reading was on the themes in Blade Runner the book. It gives quotes from the book that is relevant to the issues being discussed within the book. It’s just an overview. The title for the piece ‘An exploration of what it is to be human’ sounded more interesting than the reading itself. I’d prefer to have an in-depth piece of writing on the real discussion of what it is to be human rather than a review of a book which just touches on the subject. I think the topic would be extremely interesting if presented in a different way, rather than discussing a fiction book and movie.