Destruction by Advancement of Technology
“The soldier to come is both natural and unnatural. I waited to be called up. You stay fit; stay focused, and stay ready. I wore the blacks and grays. I blended in. But the call never came. It never came.” — Fringe, Bad Dreams
We see patterns, connections. That’s what human brains are good for. I’m extremely fond of the point in serialised media when you feel like you’ve been rewarded for sticking around. When all the pieces coalesce, like reversed slow motion video of a dropped egg.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles didn’t really find its egg-shape until mid-way through its second season, where it shifted from good to very good (and then better). Lost seems to have sustained its later, post-egg, seasons by suggesting that the real revelation is in the dropping itself. We hang on the promise we won’t be presented with the parson’s nose.
(Well… that was tortured.)
Fringe may well have shown its egg with “Bad Dreams” (which aired last weekend in the UK) which to pulled together its disparate internet-lunacy-of-the-week story-lines into something approaching coherence. This Mad Science now has a purpose – to create the post-human soldiers of a future war we are, as yet, unable to comprehend.
At the same time the second issue of Wired UK was also promising some sort of bio-enhancement future. It included a fold-out map featuring an innovative projection map, Here & There by Jack Schultze.
Schultze cites Extremis (Warren Ellis’s 2006 Iron Man reboot) as an influence – the concept that a map projection could be like a superpower. That you can both be in the city and above it within the same field of vision.
Although Extremis, from 2006, was the pre-crunch Iron Man. Maybe it’s harder these days to root for the billionaire playboy industrialists. Superheroes can’t intervene in real-world atrocities; Stark’s engineering-genius can’t save a real-world Detroit.
(And, maybe it’s just the writers I gravitate towards, but do comics seem more zeitgeisty these days. Like JMS having Doctor Doom look stuff up on Wikipedia, or seeing Peter Parker’s email inbox full of spam. Weird that – in a world with the likes of Richards, Stark, and Pym – spam is still an unsolved problem. Although, to be fair, it’s probably way down on the list of existential threats.)
So now Matt Fraction has disassembled Iron Man again. Extremis is gone. Stark Industries is gone. His equipment; his social status. He’s shifted from establishment to fugitive. And, in a move even Unclutterer would consider hardcore, has even dispensed with sections of his own mind.
He’s gone from a Bond to a Bourne. Or to a Banner.
Oh, he’s still a guy stomping around in a form-fitting jet-fighter, just, y’know – less Iron, more Man. That sort of back to basics, Tyler Durden, philosophy. “I’m breaking my attachment to physical power and possessions, because only through destroying myself can I discover the greater power of my spirit.”
Reminds me of when they got rid of the Sonic screwdriver, Doctor Who’s magic-wand, in the 80s. At the time it was felt that always having this tool available was limiting to the script. Of course, since reading that I seem to have developed false-memories of entire half-hour episodes consisting of Colin Baker locked alone in room. Weeping.
The current Who, of course, not only has a multi-function sonic screwdriver but still retains the ability to get out of any situation by McGyvering some other, entirely contrived, nonsense-fueled device. (“Well. I would never have thought of that!”)
I’ve recently come into possession of a new Xbox 360 (by dint of being a massive nerd) although sans any games or currently any means to connect it to t’nternet. All I’ve done so far is played trough the demo for Tom Clancy’s HAWX.
HAWX is a future jet-fighter game that’s only slightly more sim-y than an After Burner. It’s features that odd arcade perspective where you have a fixed-camera third person view of your jet, but with a first-person HUD imposed over it. And, what with it being the future, your on-board computer assistant actually takes care of most of the work. It can do things like project a calculated flight path for either evading enemy missiles, or the optimum approach vectors for missile strikes. Tanks in cities, hidden behind buildings, may need to be approached by a vertical decent, firing missiles, and then quickly pulling out. Possibly through the flames of an explosion. Awesome.
But the game builds weakness into its own technology. The on-board system has safety thresholds it won’t exceed. They still need a human on-board, with a pilot’s instinct, to deal with situations the programming hasn’t anticipated. So, when necessary, you need to “switch off your targeting computer” Skywalker-style, and use the Force. At which point both the HUD and rear-of-jet view are replaced by a completely third person, almost movie-like, view of the dog-fighting. You’re a sort of floating head in space – the action in view is more distant but still manipulatable.
Strange that, in order the simulate the experience of moving without the guidance of a machine, we are granted the perspective of a god.
“It’s so quiet this high up, the feeling you get is that you’re one of those space monkeys. You do the little job you’re trained to do. Pull a lever. Push a button. You don’t understand any of it, and then you just die.” — Fight Club
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