Tag: Transcendence

❝ Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp), the world’s foremost authority on artificial intelligence, is conducting highly controversial experiments to create a sentient machine. When extremists try to kill the doctor, they inadvertently become the catalyst for him to succeed. Will’s wife, Evelyn (Rebecca Hall), and best friend, Max (Paul Bettany), can only watch as his thirst for knowledge evolves to an omnipresent quest for power, and his loved ones soon realize that it may be impossible to stop him. [Google]

” Transcendence is a 2014 American science fiction thriller film directed by cinematographer Wally Pfister in his directorial debut, and written by Jack Paglen. The film stars Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany, Kate Mara, Cillian Murphy, Cole Hauser, and Morgan Freeman. Pfister’s usual collaborator, Christopher Nolan, served as executive producer on the project.

Paglen’s screenplay was listed on the 2012 edition of The Black List, a list of popular unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. Transcendence was a disappointment at the box office, grossing only slightly more than its $100 million budget. The film received mainly negative reviews; it was criticized for its plot structure, characters and dialogue. ❞ [Wikipedia]

written by Jack Paglen
directed by Wally Pfister

❝ The great inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil is one of the best-known and most controversial advocates for the role of machines in the future of humanity. In his latest book, he envisions an event—the “”singularity””—in which technological change becomes so rapid and so profound that our bodies and brains will merge with our machines.

The Singularity Is Near portrays what life will be like after this event— a human- machine civilization where our experiences shift from real reality to virtual reality and where our intelligence becomes nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful. In practical terms, this means that human aging and pollution will be reversed; world hunger will be solved; our bodies and environment transformed by nanotechnology to overcome the limitations of biology, including death; and virtually any physical product can be created from information alone. The Singularity Is Near also considers the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes, and is certain to be one of the most widely discussed and provocative books of 2005. ❞