Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and love all things tech, and I also love speculative fiction,
Speaker 1: and I really love science fiction. No big shock there,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I love stories that involve cool and futuristic
Speaker 1: technology and you know, technically, stories that they play out
Speaker 1: in such a way that, if done well, it says
Speaker 1: something interesting about what it is to be human when
Speaker 1: you get down to it. A lot of science fiction
Speaker 1: isn't so much about the pew pew lasers and the
Speaker 1: zoom zoom spaceships. It's really more about stuff like resilience
Speaker 1: and hope and hubrists and enmity and other very you know,
Speaker 1: human qualities. So when you strip it all away, a
Speaker 1: good science fiction story you should tell us more about,
Speaker 1: you know, humanity. Now, when you create a science fiction story,
Speaker 1: you have to set it somewhere and some win. And
Speaker 1: that's what brings us to today's topic. I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about some science fiction stories that were set in
Speaker 1: the years two thousand to two thousand twenty one, So
Speaker 1: over the last twenty one years, now, not necessarily written
Speaker 1: during that time, but set in that time, like this
Speaker 1: would be the futuristic setting, because sometimes it's fun to
Speaker 1: go back and talk about some of the wild things
Speaker 1: that writers imagined happening by now. And sometimes they predict
Speaker 1: stuff that comes true in some form or another. A
Speaker 1: lot of times they predict stuff that we just don't
Speaker 1: have yet. And I don't mean for this to be
Speaker 1: a Hey, isn't it fun that they thought we would
Speaker 1: be using holograms by now? Although there are a couple
Speaker 1: of instances of that in this episode, but it's not
Speaker 1: meant to poke fun at the futurists who were imagining
Speaker 1: the world. In some cases, the writer clearly was thinking,
Speaker 1: what is a year that's far enough out from today
Speaker 1: that this could seem plausible. In other cases, the writer
Speaker 1: might just have arbitrarily picked a year because the year
Speaker 1: itself isn't really what's important, Like you might say in
Speaker 1: the distant year of two thousand nine, but what you
Speaker 1: really just mean is at a time that's in the future, right,
Speaker 1: So in some cases, I think a lot of science
Speaker 1: fiction stories, when they have a year, you might as
Speaker 1: well just replace that year with, you know, in the future.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna ignore that, and we're gonna poke fun
Speaker 1: at some movies and some of their predictions, and not
Speaker 1: just movies, other stories too. So I'm gonna look at
Speaker 1: a lot of stories that were produced before the year
Speaker 1: the story is set in. So, in other words, these
Speaker 1: stories have to at least on some level make predictions
Speaker 1: about the future. A lot of science fiction films are
Speaker 1: set the same year they came out. A lot of
Speaker 1: science fiction stories are set the same year they come out,
Speaker 1: so those become more like alternate present rather than futuristic.
Speaker 1: So I'm ignoring all those, and I'm really focusing on
Speaker 1: ones that are more about projecting into the future. This
Speaker 1: also is not going to be an exhaustive list, either,
Speaker 1: because there have been a lot of stories that have
Speaker 1: been set between two thousand and two thousand twenty one,
Speaker 1: not as many as I thought there would be, or
Speaker 1: at least, based upon my research, not as many as
Speaker 1: I thought there would be. But there's still quite a few,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna try and stick with ones that are
Speaker 1: either really famous or just super fun examples. So I
Speaker 1: may very well skip over some of your favorites. For that,
Speaker 1: I apologize I cannot cover them. All, but let's get
Speaker 1: to it um And also before I get into the
Speaker 1: twenty first century, let's have a couple of honorable mentions
Speaker 1: in here. For example, George Orwell's Four is a phenomenal novel.
Speaker 1: It describes the world as being governed by giant, totalitarian
Speaker 1: authorities who essentially have divvied up the world. And it's
Speaker 1: a world that's constantly under surveillance, like the government is
Speaker 1: looking at everything that's going on, and the government tries
Speaker 1: to regulate not just what people are allowed to do,
Speaker 1: but even so much as how people are allowed to think.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty terrifying story, and it's one I think
Speaker 1: we can still recognize as being relevant today, whether it's
Speaker 1: in the form of authoritarian governments. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: look at some of China's initiatives and say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I see some similarities there. You can also arguably look
Speaker 1: at the U k. And the United States and say
Speaker 1: there's some elements there too. We also have seen the
Speaker 1: rise of mega powerful corporations, which in some ways have
Speaker 1: taken on some of the aspects that Orwell had attributed
Speaker 1: to governments, Like we're seeing companies take on that kind
Speaker 1: of of role and take on that kind of power.
Speaker 1: We're almost four decades decades out from the setting of
Speaker 1: that novel, and you know, we haven't quite reached the
Speaker 1: level of dystopia described in the book, but you can
Speaker 1: make a decent argument that a lot of the elements
Speaker 1: that were or well described have kind of crept into
Speaker 1: our actual world today. And granted, you know, some of
Speaker 1: those were things that he was observing at the time
Speaker 1: he wrote it, which was well before. Another honorable mention
Speaker 1: I have to add in here is the Star Trek
Speaker 1: original series episode Space Seed. The episode first aired in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven, and the year in which the episode
Speaker 1: happens is supposed to be twenty two sixty seven. Uh,
Speaker 1: but it references something that should have happened in our past.
Speaker 1: It would have happened between those two years. This is
Speaker 1: the episode that introduced the iconic character con Nunioning. So
Speaker 1: in Star Trek lore, the world plunged into a global
Speaker 1: conflict in the nineteen nineties called the Eugenics Wars, and
Speaker 1: Cohn was one of several people who are part of
Speaker 1: a long term experiment that was focused on selective breeding
Speaker 1: of humans, and the idea being that this is a
Speaker 1: process that would eventually produce exceptional human beings. Eugenics is
Speaker 1: a real horrifying thing. It's also an incredibly racist thing.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's bad, y'all. But anyway, this was sort
Speaker 1: of the thing that Star Trek was pitching it as.
Speaker 1: So con is supposed to be stronger and more intelligent
Speaker 1: than your average person. In later Star Trek properties, his
Speaker 1: backstory gets tweaked a little bit, so he's actually the
Speaker 1: result not just of selective breeding, but of genetic engineering,
Speaker 1: because people recognize that any sort of selective breeding process
Speaker 1: would not progress to a point that you would have,
Speaker 1: you know, people with obviously superior human qualities within a
Speaker 1: couple of generations. That would take a very long time
Speaker 1: to really do. And again, eugenics is horrifying lee awful. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Within Star Trek lore, Kahn and his genetically superior colleagues
Speaker 1: managed to conquer about a third of the Earth before
Speaker 1: they were defeated, and then Kahn's crew escaped Earth. Most
Speaker 1: of the genetically engineered humans were captured and sentenced to
Speaker 1: death in the nineties, but Cohn and his crew escape
Speaker 1: on a ship called the Botany Bay, and they go
Speaker 1: into suspended animation and just go on a trip out
Speaker 1: into space to escape their capture, and then a couple
Speaker 1: hundred years later, the enterprise happens across them. Now, obviously
Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff that was predicted back in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven never happened. There have been no eugenics wars. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: we don't have the ability to genetically modify humans to
Speaker 1: the point of guaranteeing that they are going to be
Speaker 1: stronger and more intelligent. But there are ongoing discussions and
Speaker 1: scientific circles about the ethics of genetic modification in general. Like,
Speaker 1: obviously we've been doing a lot of work in genetic modification.
Speaker 1: The development of crisper is a great example, but we're
Speaker 1: still very much at the early stages of science when
Speaker 1: it comes to genetically modifying things. And more than that, uh,
Speaker 1: we still have these big ethical debates on at what
Speaker 1: point do you say this is too far? Is it
Speaker 1: okay to do genetic modification if you are trying to
Speaker 1: make certain that someone is not born with a condition
Speaker 1: that would otherwise inhibit them or or negatively impact their
Speaker 1: quality of life? Is it okay if you go beyond that,
Speaker 1: if you say, well, let's make sure that they have
Speaker 1: certain qualities like blue eyes, or you go even further
Speaker 1: than that and say, let's make them stronger and more intelligent.
Speaker 1: This is an area that is thoroughly investigated by science
Speaker 1: fiction and it's one where we have real discussions going
Speaker 1: on today. Uh As for other science stuff that happens
Speaker 1: in that that story, obviously we don't have a way
Speaker 1: to put people in suspended animation, certainly not with any
Speaker 1: way of halting aging completely and yet still being able
Speaker 1: to revive the person with no adverse effects. We don't
Speaker 1: have that capability. Uh. This is also an area of
Speaker 1: intense interest. I mean, cryonics is a real thing in
Speaker 1: the sense that there are people who are working on it.
Speaker 1: Often the push for chronics comes from rich people who
Speaker 1: are terrified of dying. But yeah, we haven't cracked that
Speaker 1: one yet either. Beyond all that, we don't actually have
Speaker 1: a spacecraft that humans could crew that is meant to
Speaker 1: escape our solar system, let alone just wander the galaxy.
Speaker 1: So yes, space Seeds plot depends upon stuff that just
Speaker 1: didn't happen, and much of it couldn't have happened. Clearly
Speaker 1: the writer's didn't you know they needed to have CON's
Speaker 1: backstory happened sometime between the present day of nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven and the Star Trek date of twenty two sixty seven,
Speaker 1: plus it needed to be far enough back in the
Speaker 1: history of Star Trek's world so that the average person
Speaker 1: in Star Trek wouldn't immediately recognize the name of con
Speaker 1: and know who that is just on the face of it.
Speaker 1: So I get it. But it's a great example of
Speaker 1: predictions made in science fiction that just didn't happen. All right,
Speaker 1: let's talk about some of the stuff that was predicted
Speaker 1: to happen within the last twenty one years, And for
Speaker 1: the year two thousand, I would like to submit the
Speaker 1: film Death Race two thousand. This one was made back
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five. This was a Roger Corman production.
Speaker 1: And Corman is one of those folks in Hollywood who
Speaker 1: really was able to stretch a dollar as far as
Speaker 1: it could go. Typically his films are really low budget affairs,
Speaker 1: but he's been behind some pretty fun movies. Like Roger
Speaker 1: Corman film is probably gonna be super low budget, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that it's not going to be good
Speaker 1: or at least entertaining. I consider Death Race two thousand
Speaker 1: to be a pretty entertaining movie. There's a nasty satirical
Speaker 1: edge to the movie, a really nasty one, but I
Speaker 1: find it fascinating. So in the lore of the movie,
Speaker 1: the world went through a massive economic crash in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, remember this film came out in seventy That
Speaker 1: economic crash then made the United States unstable and at
Speaker 1: some point the military overthrew the government and replace the
Speaker 1: democratically elected representatives with a totalitarian military regime. The government
Speaker 1: also co opted religion, so the state and the church
Speaker 1: are united. This was an effort to consolidate power and
Speaker 1: to keep the huddled masses distracted. Uh. The government has
Speaker 1: this incredibly violent coast to coast race called the Annual
Speaker 1: Transcontinental Road Race. It's meant to entertain people and redirect
Speaker 1: their attention so they, you know, they don't realize how
Speaker 1: bad things are and they don't get smart ideas like
Speaker 1: demanding rights and stuff. So the race has this brutal
Speaker 1: scoring system. Not only do you get points for you know,
Speaker 1: being fast, you also get points for killing innocent people
Speaker 1: along the way, like if you run down a pedestrian,
Speaker 1: those are extra points. So this is a way for
Speaker 1: an authoritarian government to retain control of a population, and also,
Speaker 1: you know, is a message saying no one is safe.
Speaker 1: This is a really common theme in stories that feature
Speaker 1: dystopian futures. I'm sure you can think of some examples yourself,
Speaker 1: but you can find it in movies like Rollerball, Uh,
Speaker 1: The Hunger Games, Battle Royal, The Running Man, and many more. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the drivers in the Death Race two thousand
Speaker 1: movie is the government backed Frankenstein, who is said to
Speaker 1: at least be part machine due to having sustained numerous
Speaker 1: injuries and past competitions, and that he's while he's you
Speaker 1: at least partly machine, he's also practically unkillable. So we've
Speaker 1: got some cyborg stuff going on here. Except spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: if you've not watched Death Rays two thousand and you
Speaker 1: really want to, you probably want to skip this next bit.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that Frankenstein isn't just one man. Instead,
Speaker 1: the government finds someone to pose as Frankenstein for each race,
Speaker 1: and should one of them die, they just get another
Speaker 1: person to pose as Frankenstein for the next one. So
Speaker 1: Frankenstein's outfit is a disguise in other words, and it
Speaker 1: creates the illusion that the government has access to indestructible agents.
Speaker 1: It's another way of sending the message of we're more
Speaker 1: powerful than you are, so don't bother resisting. Now. I
Speaker 1: won't spoil how the film ends except to say there
Speaker 1: are a lot of kind of double and triple crosses
Speaker 1: going on and stuff. It's kind of bonkers. But the
Speaker 1: tech and death rays two thousand isn't particularly outlandish. It's
Speaker 1: more about how society has devolved into this bloodthirsty and
Speaker 1: yet suppressed mob. And I'm sure depending upon your own
Speaker 1: you know, ideology, you might see some parallels in the
Speaker 1: real world. Moving on to two thousand one, we have Hey, look,
Speaker 1: it's two thousand one, a space odyssey. The novel and
Speaker 1: the movie are both considered classics, but they also project
Speaker 1: the level of technological sophistication that we have not yet reached,
Speaker 1: not even in twenty twenty one. Uh. We could probably
Speaker 1: forgive some of that because the stories that influenced two
Speaker 1: thousand one came out of the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: The movie version premiered in nineteen sixty eight, so at
Speaker 1: that time we were still just on the verge of
Speaker 1: going to the moon for the first time, it probably
Speaker 1: seemed inevitable that we would continue to make incredible progress,
Speaker 1: right Like, we were already within the span of a
Speaker 1: decade making incredible strides towards the stars, so I guess
Speaker 1: like it seemed kind of natural that we would continue
Speaker 1: that momentum. So in the story of two thousand one,
Speaker 1: there's a lunar base, and that's something we obviously don't
Speaker 1: have yet. NASA's Artemis program, in which the agency plans
Speaker 1: to return and send cruise to the Moon for the
Speaker 1: first time since the early nineteen seventies, has hit some snags. Currently,
Speaker 1: the agency says that a lunar landing will now take
Speaker 1: place in twenty five at the earliest. The original plan
Speaker 1: was to get there by four, but delays in various
Speaker 1: aspects of the mission have made that impossible. So no
Speaker 1: lunar base for us just yet. And there are those
Speaker 1: who question whether a lunar base is even a logical
Speaker 1: stepping stone, but it exists in the film anyway. There's
Speaker 1: also a space station in the movie. This is obviously
Speaker 1: something that we have achieved, but the story also has
Speaker 1: astronauts traveling to Jupiter via spaceship with some passengers in
Speaker 1: suspended animation. And we've already covered the suspended animation thing,
Speaker 1: but we obviously also haven't made any missions to go
Speaker 1: further out than our own Moon, and we haven't done
Speaker 1: that since the nineteen seventies, at least not with humans
Speaker 1: on board. We have sent, you know, unmanned spacecraft much
Speaker 1: further out, but not with a human crew. In some
Speaker 1: sections of two thousand one, the Jupiter mission section. UH,
Speaker 1: spacecraft generate artificial gravity by spinning. So the spacecraft acts
Speaker 1: like a centrifuge, and when you've got a rotating mass,
Speaker 1: there's this pseudo force that we call centrifugal force, even
Speaker 1: though it's not a quote unquote real force. UH. This
Speaker 1: is directed radially outwards from the axis of rotation. So
Speaker 1: if you imagine a bicycle wheel that has a pole
Speaker 1: that goes right through the middle of the wheel and
Speaker 1: it spins around the pole, the centrifugal force pushes outward
Speaker 1: along the circumference of the wheel, as this is ninety
Speaker 1: degrees out from the axis of rotation. So if you
Speaker 1: had a spacecraft shaped like a wheel and it's rotating,
Speaker 1: people could walk along the uh the well inner part
Speaker 1: of the wheel, but on the outer edge of it
Speaker 1: if you If that makes sense, like if you were
Speaker 1: inside a bicycle wheel, your feet would be on the
Speaker 1: rubber that would be on the outside, and you could
Speaker 1: walk around that way like you would have artificial gravity
Speaker 1: that way. The amount of artificial gravity would be dependent
Speaker 1: upon the speed of rotation as well as how large
Speaker 1: the spacecraft was. Uh. There are some problems doing this, however,
Speaker 1: because the magnitude of centrifugal force depends partly upon the
Speaker 1: distance from that axis of rotation, and that would mean
Speaker 1: that our heads, which are clearly a little closer to
Speaker 1: the axis, would be experiencing a different amount of force
Speaker 1: than our feet would. So it would work from a
Speaker 1: physics standpoint, but you might not feel so great if
Speaker 1: you were to actually try it out in practice. The
Speaker 1: primary antagonist for two thousand one is an artificially intelligent
Speaker 1: computer system called How, which is everyone points out means
Speaker 1: that each letter is just off by one from IBM.
Speaker 1: Arthur C. Clarke, who wrote this, says that's a coincidence.
Speaker 1: The system develops its own motivation and experiences something akin
Speaker 1: to fear as it pleads with a character not to
Speaker 1: deactivate it. So How goes eighte and kills nearly all
Speaker 1: the crew before it is deactivated, But as it's being deactivated,
Speaker 1: it's it's essentially pleading for its own life. While the
Speaker 1: discipline of artificial intelligence has advanced dramatically since the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: you know, we are still as of yet not able
Speaker 1: to do anything close to what how could do, And
Speaker 1: there's an ongoing debate on whether things like consciousness and
Speaker 1: emotional motivation can even emerge out of technological systems, or
Speaker 1: if they can, what level of complexity we would first
Speaker 1: need to achieve in order for that to happen. There
Speaker 1: are other technologies in two thousand one that have come true.
Speaker 1: There's a sort of tablet computer device that you can
Speaker 1: see in a couple of scenes, and obviously that's a
Speaker 1: tech that we have today, though it would be a
Speaker 1: little bit after two thousand one before we got one
Speaker 1: that was really practical and you know, something that would
Speaker 1: work in the mainstream consumer market. Voice activation is in
Speaker 1: the movie. That's come a long way, and we've got
Speaker 1: numerous systems that work with that. Also, a lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff shown in two thousand one is pretty darn
Speaker 1: accurate from a technical perspective. For example, there's no sound
Speaker 1: in space, right because you don't have enough particles out
Speaker 1: there to allow vibrations to carry in space. So Kubrick
Speaker 1: made sure that shots that were in outer space, like
Speaker 1: in the exteriors, were silent. That was a good touch.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we'll continue our journey through futuristic
Speaker 1: stories that were off by us the hair. But first,
Speaker 1: let's listen to these messages, all right. Before the break,
Speaker 1: we talked about two thousand one, which is widely considered
Speaker 1: to be a cinematic masterpiece, and it's also a pretty
Speaker 1: divisive film. Some folks don't like it so much that
Speaker 1: I think it's a little boring, like watching paint dry.
Speaker 1: I might be in that camp. I appreciate the movie
Speaker 1: for what it is, but I do not find it
Speaker 1: very entertaining. I find it hard to stay awake watching it.
Speaker 1: That's on me, that's not on the movie anyway. Our
Speaker 1: next film is definitely not a classic. It's a movie
Speaker 1: that did not do well critically or commercially, and I
Speaker 1: am talking about Bicentennial Man. The film is about a
Speaker 1: household robot, one that is bipedal. It has a human
Speaker 1: like body, and over time, this robot develops emotions and
Speaker 1: motivations of its own. So it's kind of like How
Speaker 1: in that regard. Only while How became a homicidal maniac
Speaker 1: determined to complete a mission, the robot character of Andrew
Speaker 1: and Bicentennial Man becomes so sweet he'll end up giving
Speaker 1: you cavities. It's Robin Williams as schmaltziest. But if we
Speaker 1: distill the movie down to the basics, we could say
Speaker 1: that it's about a robot with artificial intelligence that gains sentience,
Speaker 1: self awareness, and consciousness. And then how would humanity perceive
Speaker 1: that kind of a machine. How would humans react? Would
Speaker 1: they extend the idea of personhood to encompass an artificial being,
Speaker 1: or would humans dismiss that as unthinkable and refuse to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that a robot's humanlike qualities make it a person.
Speaker 1: These are questions that folks are actually asking right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, in the EU, there are committees that are
Speaker 1: dedicated into looking into the idea of granting personhood for
Speaker 1: robots and artificial intelligence. Should they reach a level of
Speaker 1: sophistication that would necessitate such a thing. Bi Centennial Man
Speaker 1: starts off in two thousand five, and I'm sure I
Speaker 1: do not need to point out to you we did
Speaker 1: not get intelligent bipedal helper robots in two thousand five.
Speaker 1: We don't have them now, and there are lots of
Speaker 1: reasons for that will put the AI side apart because
Speaker 1: we already talked about that with how so there's no
Speaker 1: need to tread over that again. But let's talk about
Speaker 1: bipedal robots. So we don't have a ton of these because,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, it's very hard to engineer a
Speaker 1: bipedal robot. Getting the robot to move so that it's
Speaker 1: not you know, just falling all over the place is
Speaker 1: a non trivial problem. Balance is tough, maneuverability is tough.
Speaker 1: We do have some robots that are bipedal, and they
Speaker 1: are even some famous examples like Asimo, but um, you know,
Speaker 1: they they're still very limited. I mean, Asimo could actually run.
Speaker 1: It was a little hoppy run and made it look
Speaker 1: like Asimo really needed to get to the Little Robots
Speaker 1: Room pretty quickly, but it had its own limitations and restrictions.
Speaker 1: It was largely under you know, annual control or very
Speaker 1: very limited autonomous control. That's part of the reason we
Speaker 1: typically see robots that depend upon wheels or treads to
Speaker 1: move around because those components are far less complicated than
Speaker 1: legs from an engineering perspective, they work on a simpler principle,
Speaker 1: and they're easier to repair if things go wrong. If
Speaker 1: you're looking at ways to simplify your robot design, getting
Speaker 1: rid of legs is a no brainer. However, a lot
Speaker 1: of human environments work best if you have legs. By
Speaker 1: the way, this is a big problem, not just for robots.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about accessibility in general. It's why we have
Speaker 1: laws that are meant to guarantee accessibility, because otherwise people
Speaker 1: who depend upon tech like wheelchairs to get around would
Speaker 1: find themselves locked out of a lot of experiences. I mean,
Speaker 1: they already do, but it would be even worse. And
Speaker 1: while we've had some progress on making the world more accessible,
Speaker 1: the fact is that the default design choice tends to
Speaker 1: favor people who can walk around. The stairs are just
Speaker 1: a simple example of that. Well, that's a pretty tough
Speaker 1: challenge for robots to One of darpast robotics challenges was
Speaker 1: for groups to design a bipedal robot that could complete
Speaker 1: several tasks autonomously, including doing such things as operating a
Speaker 1: vehicle opening a door, walking through a doorway, picking up
Speaker 1: a power tool, using the power tool appropriately, and so on,
Speaker 1: and even things like opening a door, which would be
Speaker 1: a pretty trivial task for many people, became a big
Speaker 1: engineering challenge, and walking through the door was another big one.
Speaker 1: There are actually lots of videos of several robots just
Speaker 1: playing tipping right over at that point. This challenge happened
Speaker 1: a decade after two thousand five, after the the setting
Speaker 1: of the beginning of Bicentennial Man, so from a basic
Speaker 1: robotics standard, we're far off from having that become a reality.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to comment on the quality of the movie,
Speaker 1: but the argument on whether or not robots should be
Speaker 1: granted personhood is a really interesting one, and it's also
Speaker 1: an idea that pops up in the film AI And
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, it's kind of an ongoing discussion here
Speaker 1: in the real world today. Now we're going to jump
Speaker 1: ahead to twenty mostly because very few well known futuristic
Speaker 1: stories were set between two thousand five and twenty But
Speaker 1: that means now we have to talk about the year
Speaker 1: we make contact. This is actually the sequel to two
Speaker 1: thousand one Space Odyssey. The film twenty ten came out
Speaker 1: in the book came out two years earlier. And yes,
Speaker 1: I know this sounds confusing because I'm using lots of
Speaker 1: years here, but it was a nineteen eighties version of
Speaker 1: what twenty ten would look like. Anyway, nine years have
Speaker 1: gone by since the events of the first film, and
Speaker 1: there are a lot of questions that are left back
Speaker 1: on Earth, and the big ones are what the heck
Speaker 1: happened out there? All those astronauts died, what happened to them?
Speaker 1: And then one of them might not have died but
Speaker 1: definitely disappeared. What happened to that guy? So twenty ten
Speaker 1: obviously has some of the same issues when it comes
Speaker 1: to the predicted tech that we saw in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: so we're not going to go over all that again. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: it also assumes that in the Soviet Union is still
Speaker 1: a thing. In the film, the U S and the
Speaker 1: U s s are are entering into essentially another kind
Speaker 1: of Cold War space race, in this case a mission
Speaker 1: to find out what the heck happened in the events
Speaker 1: of two thousand one. Of course, the real Soviet Union
Speaker 1: dissolved in the early nineteen nineties. It did not exist
Speaker 1: by the movie answers the question about why How went
Speaker 1: bonkers in the first film, and it turns out that
Speaker 1: the crew were unknowingly on a secret miss mission, and
Speaker 1: that mission had not been laid out to them, so
Speaker 1: they didn't have any awareness of it. How however, was
Speaker 1: aware of the secret mission, but was supposed to keep
Speaker 1: that under wraps while appearing to facilitate the covers story mission,
Speaker 1: the one that the astronauts thought they were on. But
Speaker 1: that meant that there was a conflict with How's programming
Speaker 1: because it was supposed to be a transparent and honest system,
Speaker 1: and that brought How into an irreconcilable quandary. The computer
Speaker 1: system was obligated to follow its mission, but that mission
Speaker 1: included parameters that would violate the systems programming, so How snapped. Now,
Speaker 1: setting aside the AI issues that we've already discussed, this
Speaker 1: touches on another common element in speculative fiction, that of
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence encountering some sort of problem or scenario that
Speaker 1: subsequently causes it to harm people. Uh. One of the
Speaker 1: basic ideas in Western science fiction goes to the three
Speaker 1: major laws of robotics, as defined by Isaac Asimov. They
Speaker 1: state that, first, a robot cannot harm a human or
Speaker 1: allow a human to come to harm by failing to
Speaker 1: prevent it. Second, a robot must obey any order given
Speaker 1: to it by a human, provided that it doesn't violate
Speaker 1: the first law. And Third, the robot must protect itself
Speaker 1: as long as it doesn't conflict with the first two laws.
Speaker 1: But science fiction is full of scenarios in which AI
Speaker 1: causes harm or even leads to extinction level events. The classic,
Speaker 1: perhaps most cliche example of this is the idea that
Speaker 1: you create a supercomputer, and you your hope is that
Speaker 1: the supercomputer, which is far more intelligent than any human being,
Speaker 1: will be able to solve massive real world problems, so
Speaker 1: it will be able to do things that humans can't
Speaker 1: do the humans aren't smart enough to do. And then
Speaker 1: you tell it to bring about world peace, and then
Speaker 1: the supercomputer comes to the conclusion that the only way
Speaker 1: to guarantee world peace is to wipe out all of humanity.
Speaker 1: That way, there's no one left to declare war on
Speaker 1: anyone else. That classic sci fi cliche. The other stuff
Speaker 1: that happens in ten goes more into the realm of
Speaker 1: fantasy than science fiction, So I'm not going to get
Speaker 1: into the rest here yere. Uh. It's definitely a very
Speaker 1: different movie than two thousand one. It's less poetic, it's
Speaker 1: a little more narrative. I don't think it's a better
Speaker 1: film than two thousand one. I do think it's one
Speaker 1: I can watch more easily than two thousand one. All Right,
Speaker 1: but let's move up to I thought about including I
Speaker 1: Am Legend in this lineup that actually came out in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven but was set in twelve. However, there's
Speaker 1: not really any tech to speak of in I Am Legend,
Speaker 1: and we're currently living through a global pandemic, so I
Speaker 1: don't think we really need to talk about a fictional version.
Speaker 1: So instead we're gonna talk about and I can't believe
Speaker 1: I'm following up like with this, but John Carpenter's film
Speaker 1: Escape from l A. It hurts me to talk about
Speaker 1: this movie. I would have much preferred to talk about
Speaker 1: Escape from New York. I know that Carpenter thinks Escape
Speaker 1: from l A is a superior film to Escape from
Speaker 1: New York. I respectfully disagree. The film Escape from New
Speaker 1: York was set in the late nineties, so it's outside
Speaker 1: the window for this episode. But Escape from l A
Speaker 1: is a lot like Escape from New York, but not
Speaker 1: as entertaining in my opinion. It was made in which
Speaker 1: actually was the year before the setting of Escape from
Speaker 1: New York. The basic premises that over several years, Los
Speaker 1: Angeles descends into crime and chaos. It's a lost cause.
Speaker 1: Then there's an earthquake and that causes Los Angeles to
Speaker 1: effectively become an island separate from the California mainland. And
Speaker 1: then there is a dictator who declares himself President of
Speaker 1: the US for life, who then seizes control and he
Speaker 1: uh declares that Los Angeles is effectively a prison. He
Speaker 1: has walls built around the city, and if you break
Speaker 1: any laws in the United States, well you're gonna get
Speaker 1: sent to l a where you have to just kind
Speaker 1: of try and survive anyway. The main character is Snake Bliskin,
Speaker 1: who's a former military man. He's been come a nihilist.
Speaker 1: He doesn't really believe in anything. He detests the world
Speaker 1: as it has turned out to be. And he's also
Speaker 1: a criminal and he's going to be sentenced to Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: but he's offered a part pardon if he can retrieve
Speaker 1: a remote control that controls a satellite based weapons system,
Speaker 1: and this weapon can blast targeted regions with an electromagnetic
Speaker 1: pulse that's strong enough to disable you know, electrical systems.
Speaker 1: The dictator of the United States plans on using the
Speaker 1: weapon on his various enemies around the world, essentially kind
Speaker 1: of sending him on a path for world domination. And
Speaker 1: to make sure that Pliskin plays ball, the government injects
Speaker 1: what they say is a virus that will kill him
Speaker 1: within ten hours unless he gets an antidote. This blot,
Speaker 1: by the way, is almost identical to Escape from New York.
Speaker 1: The particulars are different, but the idea is is virtually
Speaker 1: the same. Some of the technologies shown in the film
Speaker 1: include that satellite based e MP or electromagnetic pulse weapon.
Speaker 1: E m p s are real. In fact, they really
Speaker 1: happen in nature, and a sufficiently powerful electromagnetic pulse can
Speaker 1: cause electronics to overload and fail. Uh. If it's powerful enough,
Speaker 1: it can damage electronics to the point where they won't
Speaker 1: work anymore. You'll have to repair them or replace them.
Speaker 1: So lightning is one type of an electromagnetic pulse. A
Speaker 1: coronal mass ejection or CMME from a star like the
Speaker 1: Sun can create a magnetic field strong enough to be
Speaker 1: an e m P. That's why you'll hear about times
Speaker 1: where there's a lot of solar activity potentially interfering with electronics.
Speaker 1: Here on Earth, nuclear explosions generate e m P s uh.
Speaker 1: A really powerful pulse could cause power lines to snap.
Speaker 1: You would have an excess of electrical current and voltage
Speaker 1: in the power lines. They wouldn't be able to handle it,
Speaker 1: and they can snap right then and there. Computer systems
Speaker 1: are particularly vulnerable to electromagnetic pulses. So an e MP
Speaker 1: weapon is not just possible, it's something that exists, and
Speaker 1: it's a lot of a lot of militaries around the
Speaker 1: world have worked on refining them over the years, because
Speaker 1: if you have a weapon that can destroy communication infrastructure
Speaker 1: without actually causing physical destruction to the region itself, that's
Speaker 1: a super high value weapon. That being said, I am
Speaker 1: not aware of any system that could produce a powerful
Speaker 1: e MP blast that you could base on a satellite platform.
Speaker 1: Um it essentially just becomes a laser gun weapon in
Speaker 1: the movie, And I can't think of a way where
Speaker 1: you would be able to do this unless you had
Speaker 1: like nuclear explosives in orbit. Even then you would have
Speaker 1: to really find a way to direct that pulse to
Speaker 1: have maximum effectiveness. The movie also features a personal holographic
Speaker 1: projector that's capable of producing a three dimensional hologram that's
Speaker 1: convincing enough to fool people who are standing in the
Speaker 1: same area. Right Like, if you were in a room
Speaker 1: and someone were using this, you would think that that
Speaker 1: was actually a person there, not a hologram. That's all
Speaker 1: effective it is within the movie. It even casts a
Speaker 1: shadow behind it in the scene where it plays a
Speaker 1: big part in the film. Obviously, we have not developed
Speaker 1: that kind of technology. There are some pretty nifty effects
Speaker 1: that we can create to simulate holograms under very specific conditions,
Speaker 1: but generally speaking, this is way beyond our capabilities. Oh also,
Speaker 1: one of the actors in the movie would later go
Speaker 1: on to become the Countess of Devon. True story, it
Speaker 1: really did happen. All right, We got a few more
Speaker 1: stories we want to talk about, but first let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break. Okay, we're up to two thousand and fifteen,
Speaker 1: and it's time to talk about flying cars. In fact,
Speaker 1: those pop up a couple of times, but this is
Speaker 1: the first one, and you knew we were going to
Speaker 1: have to get around to it, because is when about
Speaker 1: half of Back to the Future Part two takes place.
Speaker 1: If you've never seen the movie, well, first you got
Speaker 1: the first Back to the Future, which follows a character
Speaker 1: named Marty McFly as he accidentally travels back from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five to nineteen fifty five and then, through some misadventures,
Speaker 1: has to figure out a way to make his parents
Speaker 1: fall in love with each other or else he'll never
Speaker 1: have existed. So it's your classic temporal paradox scenario. But
Speaker 1: in the sequel, which came out in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Marty's friend and mentor, Doc brown Uh, convinces Marty five
Speaker 1: Marty that he has to travel to the far off
Speaker 1: future of in order to help Marty's kids. At least
Speaker 1: that's the first section of Back to the Future Part two,
Speaker 1: so we get to visit and things are a little
Speaker 1: different from our real world version of They are a
Speaker 1: lot more day glow for one thing, a lot of
Speaker 1: like fluorescent colors, and in the Back to the Future
Speaker 1: two version also homes come standard with fax machines. In
Speaker 1: that version of now maybe in the late eighties, that
Speaker 1: seem like it was a realistic outcome, but Obviously it's
Speaker 1: not what are would be in our most homes today.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no need for them because we have
Speaker 1: plenty of electronic systems that don't require paper or toner.
Speaker 1: But email was not something that people were really thinking
Speaker 1: about in Hollywood at levels. Restaurants in the movie have
Speaker 1: a robo wait staff, and there's a There are a
Speaker 1: few novelty places around the world, a lot of them
Speaker 1: in Japan, that use computers and robots in order to
Speaker 1: serve food, but they are really a novelty and an exception,
Speaker 1: not the rule. I will say, however, that wait staff
Speaker 1: is one of those roles that robots and automated systems
Speaker 1: could potentially thrive in. And I say that because we're
Speaker 1: talking about an environment that has a limited set of
Speaker 1: variable Like if you can only order from a menu,
Speaker 1: that means you can't just walk into the restaurant and
Speaker 1: order anything. Right, you couldn't walk into like a Mexican
Speaker 1: restaurant that didn't have pizza on the menu and say
Speaker 1: I want a pizza. You typically have to order off
Speaker 1: the menu. Now you might be able to order something
Speaker 1: off menu if the staff like you and the chefs
Speaker 1: in the back don't mind, but only if the restaurant
Speaker 1: actually has the necessary ingredients on hand. So robots work
Speaker 1: well in environments that have a limited number of varia variables,
Speaker 1: like if they have restrictions on variability, robots do better.
Speaker 1: It's when you start adding more variables then it becomes
Speaker 1: more complicated for a robot to operate. Whether folks would
Speaker 1: ever see robots as being useful or you know, pleasant
Speaker 1: to interact with on that level, or whether they would
Speaker 1: even make economic sense compared to say, hiring human weight staff,
Speaker 1: those are other matters like technologically it's probably not the
Speaker 1: most difficult thing in the world to do. The question
Speaker 1: is that makes sense financially and socially. Like Escape from
Speaker 1: l A, we see holograms and Back to the Future too.
Speaker 1: There's a film Marquee for Jaws film that has a
Speaker 1: holographic shark emerged from the screen to seemingly attack Marty,
Speaker 1: which startles him. It's a pretty cool effect, and it
Speaker 1: is possible to create a three D effect with a
Speaker 1: screen without the need for three D glasses. Lenticular displays
Speaker 1: can do this. However, this is a pretty limited effect
Speaker 1: and typically you need to be positioned in a sweet
Speaker 1: spot in order to experience it, if you move a
Speaker 1: little bit to the left or to the right, the
Speaker 1: effect changes. You don't get the proper images that are
Speaker 1: directed towards your eyes, and it will look all messy.
Speaker 1: From personal experience, I can tell you that looking at
Speaker 1: three D glasses, or rather three D displays that are
Speaker 1: glasses free, it's not fun. It can actually bring on
Speaker 1: some eye strain. It is just it's possible to do.
Speaker 1: It just wouldn't happen the way it does in the movie.
Speaker 1: There's also the hydrator oven in the movie that turns
Speaker 1: like a hockey puck sized pizza into a full sized
Speaker 1: cooked pizza in just a matter of moments. The movie
Speaker 1: doesn't bother to explain how this works. But I mean,
Speaker 1: the name hydrator suggests that you're adding water to something
Speaker 1: in order to make it expand to the appropriate size,
Speaker 1: and simultaneously it's somehow heating up the pizza at the
Speaker 1: same time. Not sure how that works. Heat transfer isn't
Speaker 1: magically instantaneous, so I don't know. But they don't bother
Speaker 1: to explain it because it's just it's just a fun
Speaker 1: little accent. It's not it's not meant to be analyzed
Speaker 1: the way I'm doing it. I'm the jerk here. Then
Speaker 1: there are all the flying machines like hoverboards and flying cars.
Speaker 1: There's again not a lot of explanation about how these
Speaker 1: things work. Presumably the hoverboards are generating some sort of
Speaker 1: electromagnetic field that counteracts gravity somehow, although I can't even
Speaker 1: begin to imagine how you can make that be a thing. Now,
Speaker 1: you could use something like super conductivity to magnetically lock
Speaker 1: something into a specific position over a magnetic track, but
Speaker 1: that would require cooling the the something down to levels
Speaker 1: of around absolute zero to get it super conductive. It's
Speaker 1: not really practical. It's really hard to do, and you
Speaker 1: would be limited to the magnetic surface itself. So in
Speaker 1: other words, like you could have a track and you
Speaker 1: could have a super conductive magnetic hoverboard over that track,
Speaker 1: and it would hover, and you could push it and
Speaker 1: it would just effortlessly slide all the way to the
Speaker 1: end of the track. But it couldn't go off track
Speaker 1: because it has to have that magnetic base to work,
Speaker 1: and it has to be locked into a magnetic field.
Speaker 1: If you go outside of that, you lose the effect.
Speaker 1: And obviously we don't have those magical flying cars today,
Speaker 1: let alone back in we do have some cars that
Speaker 1: can fly, though the word cars being a little bit generous.
Speaker 1: The most common variations I see are quad copter like designs.
Speaker 1: So think of like a quad copter drone that is
Speaker 1: a drone that has the four propellers that are you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like the four corners around the drone, only
Speaker 1: you know, supersize it, make it big enough so that
Speaker 1: you could have a compartment where a person could sit
Speaker 1: inside of it in the middle. Um. There are tons
Speaker 1: of companies working on making flying cars reality, mostly with
Speaker 1: the goal of creating a ride hailing service similar to
Speaker 1: like Uber or lift, in which customers pay to fly
Speaker 1: across town without having to deal with street traffic. But
Speaker 1: that technology is going to hinge not just on making
Speaker 1: the stuff safe and reliable, but also creating the regulations
Speaker 1: that will guide how the tech can interoperate with you know,
Speaker 1: the rest of the environment, like a city. You're gonna
Speaker 1: have to have rules for that otherwise the potential for
Speaker 1: disaster is just way too high. Uh. And to me,
Speaker 1: the biggest p of technology from Back to the Future too,
Speaker 1: and really the end of the first Back to the
Speaker 1: Future is Mr fusion. This device presumably uses fusion to
Speaker 1: generate electricity, and it's enough to provide the one point
Speaker 1: twenty one jiggawatts of power for the Delorean's time circuits.
Speaker 1: Fusion involves fusing atoms together. It's the process that the
Speaker 1: Sun goes through where it uh it fuses hydrogen atoms
Speaker 1: into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees. The
Speaker 1: process requires a lot of energy to get started. Like
Speaker 1: you know, with the Sun, you've got this intense gravitational pull.
Speaker 1: You've got really dense system there, uh and incredible temperatures.
Speaker 1: So it's got this amazing amount of energy that can
Speaker 1: sustain this process. But here on Earth, I mean, it
Speaker 1: requires a lot of of energy and pressure to get
Speaker 1: this thing started. And yeah, the output is potentially even
Speaker 1: more energy, but sustaining that reaction is very challenging to do.
Speaker 1: Scientists around the world are working on developing practical fusion reactors.
Speaker 1: So far, the amount of energy needed to start and
Speaker 1: sustain a fusion reaction is greater than what we get
Speaker 1: out of it, Like we can have a net positive
Speaker 1: outcome on an individual reaction, but sustaining it so that
Speaker 1: we can do something useful with it. That's a different matter.
Speaker 1: If we can get through that, that will be a
Speaker 1: transformational change for the world. I don't think, however, we're
Speaker 1: ever going to see fusion reactors that can be small
Speaker 1: enough to be incorporated into the electrical system of a vehicle,
Speaker 1: nor can I imagine a need to do that. And
Speaker 1: to be fair, the techa back to the Future too
Speaker 1: was always intended to be whimsical, and some of the
Speaker 1: stuff we've seen in the movie has kind of come
Speaker 1: to pass, just not necessarily in the way that it
Speaker 1: showed up on screen. Alright, let's close out this list
Speaker 1: with the movie Blade Runner. Blade Runner came out in
Speaker 1: nineteen eight two, but it's set in the year twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: It's a science fiction film noir kind of movie. Now,
Speaker 1: if you've never seen it, you should totally watch it.
Speaker 1: It is an amazing movie. I will warn you. There
Speaker 1: are some very slowly paced moments in that film, Like
Speaker 1: there might be some bits where you find yourself saying,
Speaker 1: get on with it as you watch people very slowly
Speaker 1: walk around a building for what feels like an eternity,
Speaker 1: But the premise is really neat. So in this version
Speaker 1: of two thousand nineteen, you are in a densely populated
Speaker 1: and dystopian Los Angeles, and there's this big social problem.
Speaker 1: So humanity has developed a way to bio engineer synthetic humans.
Speaker 1: So they're kind of like androids, but they're not robots.
Speaker 1: They're made out of gooey, fleshy stuff. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess you could call them robots in the sense that
Speaker 1: they are more like the robots of the original Roslum's
Speaker 1: Universal Robots, which was the Czechoslovakian play from the early
Speaker 1: twentieth century. They have a lot more in common with
Speaker 1: those than with the danger Will Robinson style robots that
Speaker 1: we think of today. But yeah, we call them replicants
Speaker 1: in the movie. Uh. And the reason that humans even
Speaker 1: made replicants is the same reason that we typically make robots.
Speaker 1: It's so that we have something to take care of
Speaker 1: the work that is one of the three ds that
Speaker 1: is dull, dirty, and dangerous. So these synthetics, these replicants
Speaker 1: are meant to take on jobs that traditionally humans would
Speaker 1: have to do. But it's not very fulfilling work, and
Speaker 1: it can be very dangerous and both physically and mentally,
Speaker 1: and have a negative impact on the people who do
Speaker 1: the work, so the ideas you offload that work to
Speaker 1: a machine. So in this case, the machine is a
Speaker 1: synthetic human, and they are not considered to be quote
Speaker 1: unquote real. The replicants are meant to be used off world,
Speaker 1: not on Earth, in other words, but four of them
Speaker 1: have escaped and made it to Earth in order to
Speaker 1: experience Earth, and a former police officer who specializes in
Speaker 1: identifying and tracking down replicants, which is a specific job
Speaker 1: called a blade runner, is essentially extorted into eliminating these
Speaker 1: four replicants. Now, I'm not gonna ruin the story. It
Speaker 1: is worth seeing and it has some of the most
Speaker 1: beautiful imagery in early nine science fiction. Also has one
Speaker 1: of the most famous speeches in science fiction films of
Speaker 1: all time. But let's talk about the tech. Clearly, we
Speaker 1: can't create synthetic human beings right now, there's been some
Speaker 1: amazing research and development in synthetic organs, or replicated and
Speaker 1: three D printed organs. That stuff is a slutely amazing.
Speaker 1: Scientists are creating bio friendly scaffolds, and on the scaffolds
Speaker 1: they can then print tissue structure, so that research could
Speaker 1: potentially lead to a future in which we use stuff
Speaker 1: like a patient's stem cells to create three D printed
Speaker 1: synthetic organs and use that for stuff like transplants. So
Speaker 1: if that panned out, it would revolutionize transplant surgery. You
Speaker 1: potentially you could cut way down on the risk of
Speaker 1: the recipient's body rejecting the new organ, because if the
Speaker 1: organ is created using essentially tissue from the donor like
Speaker 1: the actual patient, then the body is at least the
Speaker 1: thought goes more likely to accept the new organ. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not able to make a fully synthetic human being.
Speaker 1: The replicants on the run in the film are classified
Speaker 1: as Nexus six replicants. Google got a little cheeky when
Speaker 1: through its Motorola Mobility division it no longer has that ada.
Speaker 1: At the time, it developed an Android phone and it
Speaker 1: was codenamed Shamu, but when they released it they called
Speaker 1: it the Nexus six. Cute reference and Blade Runner also
Speaker 1: features flying cars just like Back to the Future too,
Speaker 1: and like Back to the Future Too, how they fly
Speaker 1: isn't important, so I can't really comment on the proposed
Speaker 1: methods except to say, obviously we don't have it in
Speaker 1: real life. The film feature stuff that would be out
Speaker 1: of place in the real Two thousand nineteen. For instance,
Speaker 1: the main character looks through tons of polaroid photographs, so
Speaker 1: today he would more likely be looking through a folder
Speaker 1: of digital images. He also uses a machine called an esper,
Speaker 1: which can analyze a two dimensional photograph and then produce
Speaker 1: views of stuff that are in that photograph that are
Speaker 1: from other angles. Like imagine you've taken a still photo
Speaker 1: of a table, So you're you're standing on one side
Speaker 1: of the table. You take a picture, you use this thing,
Speaker 1: you could theory theoretically look at the table from a
Speaker 1: one degree change in view, like you were standing on
Speaker 1: the opposite side. Now, computers can do some pretty cool stuff,
Speaker 1: but doing that in real time isn't something we can
Speaker 1: easily manage. And also, you know, we would really just
Speaker 1: be looking at a best guest scenario, like the computer
Speaker 1: would be guessing what the other side looked like. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't really be useful. All right. That is just a
Speaker 1: quick rundown of some science fiction movies, the main predictions
Speaker 1: that have not quite turned out the way people envisioned.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this rambling discussion of science fiction.
Speaker 1: I like doing episodes about sci fi occasionally. It's always
Speaker 1: fun if you have any movies specifically you would like
Speaker 1: me to really dive into and talk about from a
Speaker 1: technical level, like the tech that's either went into making
Speaker 1: the movie or the tech that's displayed within the movie itself,
Speaker 1: let me know, or any other topics. I'm eager to
Speaker 1: hear your thoughts. The best way to get in touch
Speaker 1: is with Twitter. The handle for the show is tech
Speaker 1: Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more
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