Do you have to buy new surrogates for your kids everytime they grow??
or do you go ahead and put them in an adult surrogate body??
Well its like buying clothes, shoes, booster seats, bikes and other things for your kids, the more they grow the more you have to upgrade.
A man can change his stars
since they were growing up all the time they could perhaps settle for a generic droid in the meantime then just save the real life-like avatar for when they turn 18 or something.
That or they wait for the teen years at least since that's when they would likely want it anyway (in highly superficial highschool years).
They have got to be unbelievably expensive. How many people could afford one for each of their kids, let alone an upgrade each time they grow? Come on!!!
To each their own...opinion
Well, it's a different world so, surrogates are really no different than owning anything else that say, 98% of our own population NOW owns...like clothes. Not sure if 98% of the world owns a car but, with that high percentage of people owning a surrogate, they're obviously affordable.
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For many fantasy movies they require suspension of disbelief. I don't have trouble with the technology side of things. However, I do have a problem with seeing how they could make that compleX a piece of machinery affordable for 98% of the population. They never bothered to mention how they solved world poverty in the meantime... Just a small detail, and it didn't spoil the movie for me. Just because certain things don't make sense or are too much of a stretch to the imagination doesn't mean that the film wasn't worth watching for my taste.
Oh, and btw, I think clothes and a several thousand dollar piece of machinery is a poor comparison to compare what the general population is likely to have access to, or be able to afford. Even a basic computer these days is at least a couple of hundred dollars, much more when you add a screen and software. These surries could not be used second hand and had to be bought new for each person.
To each their own...opinion
Personally, I wouldn't consider them so different, but my real comparison was related to 98% of people owning a surrogate and 98% of people in OUR world NOW, owning SOMETHING, anything, a single common item...how about a cell phone?
Who says you have to solve world poverty for almost everyone to own a surrogate? Going off the idea of 98% of the world owning a cell phone, take a look at the homeless population...even the majority of homeless have a cell phone. You can buy cheap ones OR you can buy expensive ones, OR you can steal them. As for the cost, lets say they cost $20,000...in this timeline, that could be an average monthly income, who knows what the cost of living and minimum wage are in this time? 15+ years ago, cell phones might have been a luxury but they're a common item no one thinks twice about now. That's what surrogates are in this movie timeline.
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I'm still going to say that it would be a stretch for many people to own one, let alone upgrades for their kids as they grow. Remember when Tom went into the shop to try them on and the sales guy told him that was only a base model. For more money they will add your face and upgrade the sound and vision eXperience, etc. (don't quote me verbatim here, it's been a month or two since I last watched this). All the upgrades for a customized surie cost $$$. Otherwise you walk around in the basic model fresh off "the rack". I might give you that in this time they get a basic model down in price so that many people can get into one. I'm not buying that the majority of the population (even in the US) is now wealthy, so can now afford to buy a new surie every time their kid(s) outgrow theirs. With what we saw in the Dread Reservation, poverty is alive and well in 2017.
To each their own...opinion
The Dread Reservation is like that because they're not even officially part of the community around them. They're completely separate and using their own resources (i.e. a junk yard) to build any kind of structure to live in, grow their food, etc... They're generally not out and about with the advanced surrogate world.
That's true about the base model and better features being offered for more money... But again, I'm going to refer to cell phones... You can get the absolute newest phone available right now, for very cheap, or, sometimes even for FREE...with a 2-year contract. This kind of business model could easily be how high end surrogates became so common. It's not explained in the movie I don't think but obviously the main company controls all the surrogates in some way, so there is likely some kind of on-going service that users must pay for, whether it's for the simple use of the surrogate, or for updates and maintenance, etc...
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I think at this point we're just going to have to agree to disagree. Even though the dread res is not part of the same "world" that the suri's occupy, they have both developed in the same world and up until 14 years ago (which is really not a very long time) shared all the same access to technology, finance, government, commodities, research and advancement etc. We have not been told that they found a way to remove poverty from the world or from the US, for that matter. I'm just not going to agree that it would be cost effective for every family to buy suris for all their kids and upgrade them each time they grow. This would be something for the wealthiest Americans only (and other wealthy people in the world). A compleX robot is different than a cell phone, and just like furniture, the smaller it is, the more eXpensive it is to make.
Like I said already, feel free to continue to disagree with me. This is my last comment on this. It's been nice having a discussion on this.
To each their own...opinion
My theory is that they've become a common requirement for most employment (I could see employers requiring surrogacy as a way to prevent work-injury liability and also perhaps to increase productivity)--and so perhaps surrogates are partly subsidized by the government, and/or partly an employment "benefit" (at least upkeep and whatnot). Or even if not, that people will get them even if they're scraping by to do so (probably on some payment plan, like a car), simply because, like a car today in most areas, it is a de-facto necessity (in this case, to secure most employment, if my theory is correct).
And the poverty of the Dread enclaves may largely be the result of inability to obtain decent employment due to the choice not to use surrogates. And/or their deep cultural distrust of that larger outside world of "abominations", inhibiting most business with it (and the larger "surrogate world" probably sees them as an outcast minority to be marginalized as well--some things will probably never change).
quote: "Even though the dread res is not part of the same "world" that the suri's occupy, they have both developed in the same world and up until 14 years ago (which is really not a very long time) shared all the same access to technology, finance, government, commodities, research and advancement etc."
But the Dread res came about after the development of surrogacy, and the subsequent divide between those who embraced it and those who wanted nothing to do with it--often seeing it as "abomination". I.e. the reason for the Dread enclaves didn't exist before then. If we presume that most employment started requiring surrogacy when it became widespread enough, and also that this divide was a fairly hostile one due to the strong emotions and beliefs over the issue, the development of a significant wealth gap, with the minority becoming the have-nots, would seem inevitable. But the world (or the US) before that might have been a bit more equitable. Remember, we didn't always have as deep a wealth divide as we do today (look at the 1950s and 60s for example, when just one working-class breadwinner could provide well for a family and afford a house)--these patterns seem to ebb and flow as part of a cycle that we are probably at the "bad" peak of (as we also were in the 1920s). So who knows, maybe the US was in a more equitable part of the cycle when surrogacy emerged, and most working-class people could at least marginally afford them (making payments, etc.). But some for reasons of personal belief or whatever still didn't want to use them, and mostly ended up in the Dread enclaves (with a few exceptions like that fat techie guy, who supposedly was skilled enough that they gave him leeway on the surrie requirement--or might have even preferred a real human at the server switch for security reasons, who knows).
You guys all seem to miss one important thing:
98% of the population owns a Surrogates because those who don't didn't survive.
Hand-me-downs, dude.
shareThat is an obvious plot hole, the directors can always argue that only adults have surrogates, and besides this movie is aimed at adults and not children, but the scarcity of children they could argue is as a direct result of everybody living their lives as surrogates, and no need to have any childrenSource:Movie Review For Surrogateshttp://moviereviews.noskram.com/2009/11/movie-review-for-surrogates
shareOnce again, I'll make the point that I see no sign that in 14 years (or a few more), that the US found a way to solve it's own problem of domestic poverty. We are given no indication (that I could see) that all jobs in the current US economy (in this movie) would require people to use suries. I got the impression that people with jobs where they had contact with the public, and people who could afford them, got them. People who had less money got base models and people who had more money got upgraded models. Since this society seemed high tech, and many people never actually leave their homes, I wouldn't be surprised if they have developed many lower wage jobs that people can do from home, like telemarketing. That way, those people wouldn't even need a suri at all. They could either go out by themselves, or they could have one person in their household with one who goes out and does everything. I have no proof for any of this, it's just a guess from the information we were provided in the story.
Right now, about 15% of Americans and almost 25% of US children live in poverty. To think that this somehow got wiped out, or to eXpect that all of the poor people happened to live as the anti-suri's, I don't think is realistic, nor do I think we saw any sign of that being the case, although they did show us a wider middle class. A wider middle class does not mean no poverty.
Also, I did not see any indication that the dreads had no employment. They actually seemed to have quite a functional society, although not necessarily one built around wealth.
To each their own...opinion
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Surrogates will be made affordable to everyone. Because its beneficial to the manufacturers of surrogates that its adopted by everyone. What best way for someone to get attached to something than getting them hooked on at an early age?
Someone who hasn't used surrogate for first 20-25 years of his life won't start using it later. Just like pre PC era generation still aren't that found of using computers.
Sometimes the manufacturers will sell their stuff at a loss to get them clients who will later make up for a net profit. Like the manufactures of gaming consoles do. They sell consoles cheaper than it costs them to build it in hope to create a consumer market for their games that will earn them profits later on.
Surrogates will basically function in same way.
When I first saw your post, I thought this was an oversight, but not really.
You're saying that kids can't have surrogates since they're always growing, but why is that a problem?
The surrogate doesn't ever need to change size for any reason. If you got the money, buy the kid a surrogate that looks like a child when they're young and an adult model later. If you can only afford one model, buy your kid an adult model that they'll "grow into".
The film shows that many people's surrogates are in no way visually similar to their organic counterparts, so it's not like children would have to have surrogates that looked like kids.