Most disturbing image in The Second Renaissance

I very impressed with the level of thought demonstrated by many of the contributors to this thread. All too often it seems that most threads on the IMDB boards are dull, disturbing, witless, abusive or any combination of the four…

The thoughts that occurred to me when reading the thread were that :-

1. Actual Self Awareness, independence of thought or however you classify intelligent life is very difficult to measure or prove. A sufficiently advanced program can ensure that a machine gives the correct impressions of independence of will or self awareness – but then again, could we be classified as sufficiently advanced programmed organic machines? Nature and evolution have conspired in our programming rather than an office full of spectacled software engineers but how far can you push the comparison? How do we know any other human being we encounter is self-aware? Because they say so? Because we believe so? Will that only ever apply to organic constructs and not mechanical ones because that’s always historically the case?
2. Sure – robots and autonomous machines are science fiction at present but that doesn’t preclude their development. Automated machinery is becoming more and more advanced today because the less it needs human management and supervision the more useful and efficient it is. The more possible situations a device can cope with the more reliable it is. Of course the classic role for such machinery and the most research and cash rich environment for this is warfare. Robotic weaponry already exists in the case of anti-missile machine guns on warships and the like.
3. Isn’t the human relationship with violence bizarre? Of all the things we’ve mastered and developed it’s the one thing we decry. Agriculture and Pottery, Textiles and Transportation we have be developing for at least as long and are proud of our achievements but it’s not these subjects we compose ballards about, write novels and watch films about. No – it’s the thing we all claim to dislike – violence. The images described in this thread are grim and reflective of what we as a species do. Yet not only do we continue to do them we make cartoons about them and watch them as ‘entertainment’! Don’t get me wrong I’m not condemning this, and though I find violence as offensive as the next I also watch these films and read books featuring war and violence. Do we actually enjoy it at some primitive level and our abhorrence of it is based on some higher rationality that if we spend our time being violent we are likely to suffer violence in response – something our sense of self survival wishes us to avoid – hence the stomach turning empathy for the mech pilot pulled from his machine in the film? It seems so odd that at least half the world at this time is being traumatised by violence – and the other half is creating fictitious violence as entertainment…

[deleted]

[deleted]

One of the more disturbing scenes:

That guy's emotions being experimented with near the end of the second part. Also, if you look to the right of him there's another person with their face pretty much ripped off and replaced with mechanical attachments. Also pretty disturbing, and in the same scene mind you.

finally someone posted something interesting!
-------------------------------
Firstly I find it shockingly worrying that war and murder are the only thing that bring us all together as a species; the fact that only the threat of violence makes us cooperate is incredibly disheartening
-------------------------------
you have reason, they were all united 'cuz mankind has found someone else to hate :(


-------------------------
It scares me somewhat that when all else fails, we turn to God to be our 'spiritual armour' (as the president calls it in the film)
-------------------------

ahem... it was not the president, it was a priest.



-----

NOW:

lots of people have suggested to do a full-lenght film with this, but i doubt that most (including me) people would not tolerate to see that carnage during 2hours!!!


<º)))><