User Reviews

Unreasonably fearful stance. A question like "When I am cybernetically enhanced, how will I know where my self begins and ends?" rings contrived and empty to me. A statement like "In the coming age, there will be winners and losers" is so painfully obvious that it should not be uttered by anyone ever. The scruples about getting tested for genetic predispositions to disease, on the grounds that "What if it shows something bad? I'd have to make some adjustments, and talk to my family about it (the horror!)" border on the ludicrous. It's hard to discern how much of this Michio sincerely thinks/feels, as opposed to purposely dumbing the material down for the audience, but what matters is the result: a documentary with an extremely simplistic and conservative viewpoint. To compound the issue, Michio gets a lot of commentators with narrow, paranoid views of the occurring progress. It's not illuminating or even pleasant to listen to these people who are hopelessly behind the times.

A note to Biotech Revolution: Joel Garreau, who has written a book called "Radical Evolution", says: that "Humans will be the first species to take control of their own evolution." The problem with that statement is the lack of a sense of continuity. Bacteria have been able to directly incorporate new DNA segments into their genomes for billions of years. Modifying and improving DNA is what life DOES. Or, more precisely, DNA has always modified and improved itself. It's just that now it has created humans to streamline the process.

6/10.

(www.plasticpals.com) Visions of the Future is a three part mini-series hosted by Dr. Michio Kaku, produced by the BBC in 2007. The first part is titled The Intelligence Revolution, with Kaku making a broad range of predictions fueled by the exponential growth in information technology, particularly the power of ubiquitous computing. He's joined by his buddy Ray Kurzweil (inventor and futurist). Unfortunately, the majority of the first twenty minutes are bogged down by the concept of "virtual reality". Online games are used as stand-ins, and they simply aren't as groundbreaking as the show would have you believe. Watching Kaku's avatar fly around the cheesy virtual worlds as he espouses their grandiose possibilities is rather embarrassing.

At the midway point Kaku gets to the robots, and a little more down to earth. He begins with a short demonstration of modular robots before delving into object recognition by computer vision. He then visits Honda's headquarters in Japan, where ASIMO serves him a drink. He points to Shintoism (the belief that even inanimate objects can possess a soul) to explain the general acceptance of robots in Japan, which is unique among the documentaries I've reviewed. The real problem of how to develop strong artificial intelligence is largely glossed over.

At this point, Kaku touches on the special qualities of intelligent machines and how we relate to them. People will project a personality onto a robot as unintelligent and unnatural as the Roomba vacuum cleaner, so it's only natural that more lifelike robots have a profound psychological effect on us. Here the SONY AIBO and QRIO are used as examples of robots that have been designed to win our hearts, and are surprisingly effective at doing so. But, Kaku says, robots that take advantage of our tendency to anthropomorphize objects will need emotions of their own if they are to make intelligent decisions, particularly when it comes to social interactions.

The episode ends with an examination of what may happen if artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence, and how we are beginning to merge with technology. Rather than trotting out the oft-used example of retinal implants, here deep brain stimulation demonstrates how technology may improve or mend biological deficiencies. Like Future Fantastic, this is a mini-series that attempts to draw the viewer in with big promises about the future, but ultimately regurgitates the same overly-optimistic predictions we've heard countless times before. For that reason I can't recommend it.