Outsourced Brains

I’ve said before that we are all cyborgs. Our evolution from Homo sapiens to Homo machina is already underway.

One way this evolution could develop is that people start to get brain chips. Brain chips would help make people better and smarter.

You’re in an interview and you get asked a question. Your brain chip instantly connects to the web and searches for the best way to answer the question. Initially, there might be some lag in getting the info but over time this would become less and less noticeable.

You could argue that this is already happening. We rely on our own memory less as we can Google it. We don’t need to know how to do things anymore. We just need to know how we can find out how to do something. Don’t know the appropriate HTML code to use in your project? There’s no need to work it out. Just look it up!

This is of course nothing new. People have always been outsourcing their brain function. We’ve used books and libraries to store information so we don’t have to forget it.

Outsourcing brain function is not confined to technology. We also outsource to other people. You see this most evidently with couples. Over time one in the partnership takes on certain roles. It might be that one always looks after the passports on holidays. It might be that the one always looks after the finances.

Society is simply an expansion of this. None of us need to know how to do everything. We can rely on others to know how to do things we don’t. They rely on us for other things. We humans outsource so many things so that we don’t have to take up brain space with them. It allows us as a species to do so many more things than any individual.

Outsourcing to Google is a natural extension.

 

by Colin Brosnan

2016 Oscar Predictions

Following on from yesterday’s post here are my predictions for this year’s Oscars…

Best Cinematography

The Revenant Emmanuel Lubezki

I’d prefer if Roger Deakins won for Sicario

Best Costume Design

Mad Max: Fury Road 
Jenny Beavan

Best Director

Alejandro G. Iñárritu The Revenant

Best Editing

Mad Max: Fury Road 
Margaret Sixel

Best Foreign Language Film

Son of Saul Hungary

Best Makeup

Mad Max: Fury Road 
Lesley Vanderwalt, Elka Wardega and Damian Martin

Best Production Design

Mad Max: Fury Road 
Production Design: Colin Gibson; Set Decoration: Lisa Thompson

Best Sound Editing

Mad Max: Fury Road 
Mark Mangini and David White

Best Sound Mixing

Mad Max: Fury Road 
Chris Jenkins, Gregg Rudloff and Ben Osmo

Best Visual Effects

Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Roger Guyett, Patrick Tubach, Neal Scanlan and Chris Corbould

Best Original Score

The Hateful Eight
Ennio Morricone

Best Original Screenplay

Spotlight
Written by Josh Singer & Tom McCarthy

Best Documentary Short

Body Team 12
David Darg and Bryn Mooser

I have no idea about documentary shorts as there just isn’t enough buzz about them. So I’ve just gone with the betting odds.

Best Documentary Feature

Amy
Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees

Best Animated Short

Sanjay’s Super Team
Sanjay Patel and Nicole Grindle

Best Live Action Short

Shok
Jamie Donoughue

Again this is a category that I’ve no real idea about.

Best Original Song

“Til It Happens To You” from The Hunting Ground; Music and Lyric by Diane Warren and Lady Gaga

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Big Short
Screenplay by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay

Best Supporting Actress

Alicia Vikander The Danish Girl

I’m going with Vikander as she could also have been nominated for Ex Machina.

Best Supporting Actor

Sylvester Stallone Creed

Best Actor

Leonardo DiCaprio The Revenant

Mostly I think he’ll win because he has missed out before and people think he’s ‘due’ the win. Also because The Revenant shoot was really tough according to all those involved. Not that that should impact who will win but it will.

If Leo gets overlooked I’d guess Eddie Redmayne to win his two in a row.

Best Actress

Brie Larson Room

Best Animated Film

Inside Out

Best Picture

The Revenant
Arnon Milchan, Steve Golin, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Mary Parent and Keith Redmon, Producers

I don’t want it to win but think it will.

by Colin Brosnan

This Year’s Oscars

This Sunday is Oscar night. A night my wife wishes was a national holiday.

Every year during the show we try to guess who will win. We make our pick as the nominees are being called out and keep a running total of how many each of us got right. All that’s at stake is bragging rights.

Over the past few years we’ve found that we haven’t watched many of the nominees before Oscar night. Which means we don’t end up rooting for anyone in particular. This year we’re trying to watch as many of the best picture nominees as we can before Oscar night. So far we’ve watched five of the eight nominees and hope to bring it to at least seven before the awards.

Who do you think will win?

by Colin Brosnan

The Forest

You wake up in a clearing in the middle of a forest. You’ve never been there before and have no idea how you got there. The forest appears vast and impenetrable on all sides. How do you get out? As far as you can tell the land is flat in every direction. No direction looks more promising than any other.

Picking a direction at random you set off into the trees. A short while later you stop. Is this the direction you should be going? Will this direction get you out? You look ahead into the trees hoping to see something that will tell you you’re going the right way. Seeing nothing you head back to the clearing.

The next day you go again. Picking a different direction at random. Again you stop, see nothing ahead that tells you that you’re on the right path. Again you turn around.

You do the same the following day. And the day after. And the day after.

If you keep trying new directions but don’t stick with one you’ll never get out of the forest. Commit to a direction and eventually you’ll emerge on the other side of the forest.

We can learn how to do anything. Writing, web design, film making, photography, basketball, football, guitar, drums, science. Anything. We try things and discard them. Sometimes because we don’t like them once we’ve tried them. Sometimes because we get lazy or it gets too hard. Sometimes picking a different direction is the right thing to do. But eventually you have to choose, pick something, tackle the difficult bits and work through them. Otherwise you’re stuck in the clearing.

Escape the clearing.

by Colin Brosnan

New Jobs for Connected Speakers

My wife and I work from home and listen to music while working most days. Recently we bought two Sonos speakers to do that. One for upstairs and one for downstairs. We went with Sonos because the speakers can connect to each other to play the same music on one speaker or all. They do that job pretty well but there’s more jobs they could do.

There are apps (such as Voxer) that allow you to use your phone as a walkie talkie. Why not something that would connect to your wireless speakers to use them as a PA system. Could be very handy to let someone know that there was a cup of tea waiting for them and to hurry up before it goes cold. This could be integrated into the Sonos app itself. As it turns out an app already exists, Sonos Voice, that does the job. It’s not made by Sonos and has some issues with delays but it works fine.

Much of the other jobs I can think of are variations of automation. Chiming at the top of the hour. Pause a playlist and switch to news radio at a particular time everyday and switch back again five minutes later. If someone is out of the house to announce the person is on the way home once they pass a certain distance from the GPS coordinates of the house.

No doubt there are plenty more possibilities and no doubt they will happen in time.

by Colin Brosnan

To the Audience, It’s Always Paid For

Have you seen Deadpool yet? There’s a scene in the movie that includes Ikea products, both on screen and in the dialogue. Ikea ends up being the butt of a joke. Even so, guaranteed plenty people who’ve seen the movie think Ikea paid to be included. They didn’t get paid, but they didn’t block the joke either.

Just because there’ a brand in the movie doesn’t mean it is product placement. It has to be paid to be product placement. The audience doesn’t know that. They can’t tell which placement was paid for and which wasn’t. Which means that to the audience every placement is a paid placement.

by Colin Brosnan

Product Placement and Artistic Integrity

I’ve got no problem with brands appearing in movies. So long as it’s done right. If it diminishes the artistic integrity of the film, causing it to become a commercial, it’s not done right.

Sometimes the integrity of a movie is upheld by making sure a brand is visible in a scene. Whatever is being filmed might mean that a brand should be included as it would naturally occur there in the wild (so to speak). For example a shot of a car driving along a road towards us. As we see the front of the car in the shot it would be normal to see the logo. The audience would probably find it stranger and more distracting not to have the brand in the scene. In this case if the logo was removed or taped off. Including an invented logo on the car would likely have a similar effect.

Product placements that evolve naturally from the script are usually more credible. Had the script not pointed towards a need for a particular placement then it is likely to stick out and compromise the integrity of the movie. For example, having a character drive a Volvo can help to underline or establish that character’s desire for safety. A Porsche would give a different impression. Matching a movie with the right brands is essential for credibility. Filmmakers do this in pre-production through brand line-ups called ‘show and tells’ to determine which brands best suit a film and its characters.

Picking the right brand isn’t enough. It has to appear naturally. If the appearance of the brand seems contrived or awkward it lessens the artistic integrity of the film. Giving a brand undue attention usually indicates a movie’s creative integrity has been violated. But not always, sometimes the circumstances of a movie demand a slow pan across a logo.

How often a brand shows up in a movie is another issue. As indeed is the total number of products placed. Again context is everything.

It doesn’t matter what the filmmaker does. Follow the rules. Break the rules. Just as long as it works for the movie.

by Colin Brosnan

We Are Already Cyborgs

I’m a cyborg. You’re a cyborg. We are all become cyborgs.

It’s our mobiles. We can’t do without them. Lose your phone or break it and you’ll feel like you’re missing an arm. We rely on our phones as extra limbs. Our phones augment our abilities and make us more capable than a normal human. Instead of needing to recall every piece of information we can outsource our memory to Google and others. Without effort we can search for information we never had.

To be a cyborg in the strictest sense the technology would need to be embedded in our bodies. We are not yet at that stage but for many our phones may as well be surgically attached.

This is the first step to humankind’s evolution to cyborg. The next is wearable technology. Then we will implant the technology we already use.

Our transformation from Homo sapiens to Homo machina is well underway.

by Colin Brosnan