Does a film narrative that lasts over two hours
really need to jump to a whole new level every twenty minutes lest the
audience otherwise drift away in unsatisfied boredom? The embellishments can easily detract from the
credibility of the film’s main subject-matter—in this case, what it would be like for a human being's life-span to be extended past the duration of the corporeal body
(including the brain) by means of consciousness in neuro-artificial intelligence.
Rather than pitting “hybrid” people against the good guys
with some loud explosions for good measure, the film could have slowed down to
explore the matter of “consciousness or just intelligence” in a neuro-based computer
infrastructure and whether the one or both are the person who has died or an
artificial product thereof. From these questions stemming from the human
brain’s circuitry and electro-chemical “content” as “uploaded” into a computer,
the film could have pivoted to the realm of nano-technology, such as synthetic
cells, and genetic engineering. If a person’s consciousness can indeed be
transferred to a computer, could the artificial confines be but temporary until
medical science has advanced to the point at which the person’s consciousness
could be transplanted into a recently deceased human brain/body, or a body
grown from the person’s own genes. A person could be young again, at least in
organic terms.
One of many interesting pathways to explore still further
would be whether advances in medical science, including the use of cellular
technology, stem-cells, and anti-aging and anti-disease research, enable
amortality (i.e., death as no longer inevitable, though still possible) to make
“uploading” one’s neuro-content (i.e., consciousness) obsolete even before it
has a chance to get underway.
As early as 2013,
medical researchers were beginning to speak publically on the possibility that
after 2050 the science and related technology may be able to stave off the
aging process, disease, and death itself. From the standpoint of evolutionary
biology, such a dramatic change in
the species qualifies as a homogenic (i.e., human-produced) accelerated leap in
natural selection, essentially giving rise to a new species of hominoid.
Surely people would favor the corporeal extension of one’s
current life to being a “mind in a vat” of computer circuitry. Although if
medical science is not quite up to the feat as death is knocking on someone’s
door in 2050, having one’s brain “uploaded” to a sort of way-station existence for
a time would seem to be a no-brainer, at least as compared with the alternative
of non-existence. Of course, if a person believes heaven or hell to constitute
an after-life, his or her calculus would be altered appreciably. Indeed, a few
years of thinking in a computer may seem like hell to a lot of people, even if
it is worthwhile until a return to a corporeal body is practicable. Then might
this evince transcending resurrection? Not if the latter is a distinctly theological rather than
metaphysical or biological construct. That is to say, the ancient concept of
resurrection is not resuscitation or regeneration.
The film’s narrative hints of resurrection-like
resuscitation, essentially conflating the two, as “hybrids” literally rise off
the ground after being riveted with bullets only to be instantaneously repaired
through the ground by the computer. Uplifting music suggests the miracle-like
feats that the powerful computer being run by the dead scientist’s conscious
intelligence is capable of when human life hangs in the balance. Another film, The Matrix, has a similar religious
theme related to computer power, or power over an entire computer-world.
Perhaps even as the narrative form aids theological understanding for the “rank
and file” in a religion, that form can easily get carried away with itself in a
way that strips even the theological message of credibility.
As it is, the narrative’s dramatics in Transcendence are enough to sidetrack or eschew the curiously
realistic trajectories I have suggested here. Put another way, the screenwriter
seems to have gotten sidetracked from questions that may become practical in
mere decades in favor of titillating special effects that eviscerate
credibility. The irony is that had the storyline been properly contained, the credulity
demanded would not have been unjustified given the current state and
trajectories of medical science and computer technology.
