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| How much do you trust Amazon? |
(Bible-thumping right-wing Republican Senate candidate and former Alabama judge Roy Moore being accused of having molested a 14-year-old girl when he was 32 notwithstanding...)
Amazon Key started on November 8th and utilizes technology to allow Amazon delivery people to gain access to your home to leave packages inside.
For now the service is limited to certain cities and regions (including Philadelphia) but basically for about $250, Prime members will get a small CCTV camera that needs to be mounted inside on a wall or ceiling within 25 feet of the front door, and a lock with a keypad that needs to be installed on the front door.
When an Amazon package is about to be delivered, Amazon authorizes the delivery, then sends a signal to the "Cloud Cam" inside which begins recording - then the door is unlocked remotely so that the Amazon delivery person can place the package inside.
Assuming everything works properly, the Prime member will get a text message indicating that a delivery is about to take place, and he or she can then watch the delivery live through the Cloud Cam - or watch the clip of the door being opened later and they also get a confirmation that the package was delivered.
Amazon has made headlines with its ongoing research into technology that will allow its packages to be delivered remotely to the door by small pilotless drones, but with a host of legal and liability issues still to be sorted out with that option, it's possible Amazon Key is some kind of "workable fix" that can temporarily fulfill CEO Jeff Bezos' desire to get packages to (or in...) the front door quicker and more safely.
Besides the fact that Buster the cat would be looking to make a break for it at the sound of the latch clicking.
Obviously Amazon already has access to my credit card information, online search data, financial history, address and date of birth etc., but I just don't have the kind of trust factor with Amazon that I'm willing to authorize strangers access to my apartment.
Personally speaking I'm just not that comfortable with that level of integration of rudimentary Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) into my personal life.
Hell, I'm still getting comfortable with my iPhone reading out directions to me in the car when I'm going someplace unfamiliar - I switched the accent to the female British-accent which sounds sexy and smart and is now eerily comforting.
Now as fate would have it, about an hour after hearing that NPR segment about Amazon Key, I went to my mailbox and found the 2017 film Ghost in the Shell in the mail from Netflix waiting for me.
After watching the very well done and entertaining, but somewhat somber and introspective, 2011 independent film Higher Ground the other day (the directorial debut of the talented actress Vera Farmiga who also stars alongside the excellent Norbert Leo Butz), I was in the mood for some fast-paced action-packed sci-fi so I upped Ghost in the Shell to number one on my Netflix DVD delivery list.
And I'm glad I did, it's a fascinating fictional look at what the rapid integration of technology and humans might look like in the future - as well as something of a cautionary tale about the dangers of A.I. as well.
It's no wonder that producer / director Steven Spielberg, who directed the brilliant and highly-underrated 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence, bought the rights to make a live-action version of Ghost in the Shell back in 2008 - his DreamWorks and Paramount co-produced the 2017 film.
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| The illustrated cover of the 1995 Manga series |
While there've been other animated films and television versions made since 1995, the live-action film version released back in March of 2017 is the one I watched - and my first introduction to the story.
The story revolves around a character named Major, a woman who was seriously injured as a young girl who had her brain enhanced by cybernetic technology and placed into an artificial body - making her into a human-cyborg with exceptional physical strength as well as the ability to insert her consciousness into the digital world.
She's the principal character in a rogue anti-terrorist government organization called Sector 9 made up of highly-skilled ex-soldier and cop-types for whom violence is second nature and loyalty a creed.
The story takes place in the future fictional Japanese city of Niihama - which is basically presented as a dense urban landscape that looks like a futuristic Tokyo or Hong Kong.
In my blog post last month about Blade Runner 2049 I gushed about the lush visual effects of the futuristic Los Angeles landscape - Ghost in the Shell's production design is definitely on that level and its $110 million budget is reflected on the screen.
In fact, the various sweeping sequences in the city in Ghost in the Shell are filled with all sorts of cool moving holographic projections of ads moving on and around the buildings including carp, snakes, dogs and people - it was released back in March, months before Blade Runner 2049, and I'd be willing to bet that Ghost in the Shell inspired some of the special effects work done in post-production on Ridley Scott and director Dennis Villeneuve's sequel.
(Given that Scott's original Blade Runner basically inspired cyberpunk, Scott has a right to do so.)
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| A deadly Geisha "companion" robot in Ghost in the Shell |
The danger is that cyber-criminals and terrorists can "hack" people, hijacking their consciousness via computer networks for a variety of nefarious purposes - it's the job of Major and Sector 9 to track them down.
Appropriately, Ghost in the Shell premiered in Japan a couple weeks before its opening in U.S. theaters, and as an article in The Hollywood Reporter from April, 2017 demonstrates, it received much better reviews and response from Japanese audiences than it did from American audiences.
Obviously a lot of that can be chalked up to the fact that the franchise and story were far more familiar to Japanese audiences, and embedded in their popular culture.
As the THR article reveals, Japanese audiences praised the special effects and acting, in fact one of the most fascinating aspects of the criticism of the film is that Japanese audiences had much less of an issue with actress Scarlett Johansson being cast as Major than some American audiences and critics did.
In my blog back in July about Hollywood receiving criticism for "whitewashing" Asian characters, I looked at some of the Asian characters who were portrayed by white actors in major films.
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| Scarlett Johansson as Major |
Korean actor Daniel Dae Kim, who recently quit CBS' Hawaii Five-O over a contract dispute, agreed to step into the roll.
So I was definitely curious about that when I decided to rent Ghost in the Shell.
As Scarlett Johansson had received some flack from critics and fans for playing Major.
But I think she was excellent in the role, not just in terms of acting but in her demeanor, her ability to effectively pull off the action scenes.
Even though the film was clearly set in a futuristic Asian city and had a distinct manga style - her overall look was just "right" for the film.
If you look closely at the cover image of the original Ghost in the Shell manga comic as illustrated by the creator Masamune Shirow, in typical Japanese manga style, the character Major has an almost American or European look to her eyes and facial features.
That's true of many manga and anime characters even though they are created by Japanese artists for Japanese audiences.
There's no question that Scarlett Johansson is an excellent actress who always delivers 110% in any film she's in, and she's one of the few actors or actresses in the film industry today whose presence can elevate the quality of a film - that was true for Ghost in the Shell too.
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| Major as seen in the Ghost in the Shell Japanese anime film (left) versus Johansson in the live-action film |
As a Japanese fan named Yuki told Hollywood Reporter last April, he felt Johansson was the "best choice" to play Major.
He made this interesting observation:
"I heard people in the U.S. wanted an Asian actress to play her. Would that be okay if she was Asian or Asian-American? Honestly, that would be worse, someone from another Asian country pretending to be Japanese. Better to just make the character white."
It's a reflection of the ethnocentrism of many Americans who forget that Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Cambodians, Laotians and Vietnamese are all distinctly different cultures even though they're all from Asia.
Interestingly, the only criticism some Japanese fans expressed of the 2017 live-action American version of the film is that the story didn't probe an area that was more central to the original manga version - the question of what happens to the soul when a human brain is merged with a cybernetic body.
Which, in the context of the subject of A.I. in general, is a fascinating subject - maybe they (DreamWorks and Paramount) can explore that question if they decide to do a sequel.
So bottom line: Even though Ghost in the Shell got mixed reviews here in America when it was released last March and (by Hollywood standards underperformed at the box office, earning an estimated $169 million on a budget of $110 million and that's not counting marketing) I think it's kick-ass sci-fi.
I think this film will also eek out a modest profit as it migrates to online video and DVD, and it may even grow on American audiences who give it a chance.
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| Michael Pitt as Kuze |
One with really good special effects, excellent production design, a kickass soundtrack, an interesting story and fascinating multi-dimensional characters.
The cast is really solid and includes Juliette Binoche as Dr. Ouelet, the scientist who "created" Major, the brooding Michael Pitt as the villain (or is he...?) Kuze, Pitt was excellent in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire, and Takeshi Gitano as the Chief of Sector 9 Daisuke Aramaki - Pilou Asbaek is solid as Major's loyal cybernetic team member Batou as well.
As the introduction of Amazon's new Amazon Key service allowing remote access to your home for delivery with a camera system connected to the cloud and remote door lock technology clearly demonstrates, A.I. is becoming more and more a part of who we are - it's already a part of our daily lives to some degree.
Whether we as a society are ready or not, it's here.
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| Dir. James Cameron with his fictional A.I. creation |
(According to him, like the new Star Wars trilogy, they'll hand the torch to younger actors).
When asked about the impact of the merger of A.I. into human society, he offered some interesting insight - Cameron opines that A.I. "will reflect our best and worst nature" as humans create and program "them".
"But it's going to take a lot of money. So who's got the money to do it and the will to do it? It could be business, so the Googles and the other big tech companies. And it you're doing it for business, you're doing it to improve your market share or whatever your business goals are. So you're essentially taking a machine smarter than a human and teaching it greed. Or it's for defense, in which case you're taking a machine smarter than a human and teaching it to kill. Neither one of those has a good outcome in my mind."
The well-known scientist, thinker, writer, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who currently serves as Google's director of engineering, has made over 147 predictions about science and technology - 86 percent of them have come true.
He's the author of the 2005 book 'The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology', one of the many books he's written about the merger of technology and humans.
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| Scientist Ray Kurzweil |
At a talk at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas in October, Kurzweil said:
"2029 is the consistent date I have predicted for when an A.I. will pass a valid (Alan) Turing test and therefore achieve human levels of intelligence. I have set the date 2045 for 'the Singularity' which is when we will multiply our effective intelligence a billion fold by merging with the intelligence we have created."
Are the advancements in cell phone technology and power and things like Amazon Key signs of that eventuality? Is the fictional reality of Ghost in the Shell that far off?
Kurzweil says 30 years from now. How will we notice it when it happens?
My guess is that point will take place quietly in some lab owned by Google or Apple, or maybe in a classified military drone - or maybe in the halls of DARPA.
James Cameron says, "It probably won't be that dramatic and will probably happen off-camera to us, and we'll suddenly be living in a world where that has happened."
'Suddenly' really doesn't seem that far off does it?
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