First look of Vijay's upcoming Master released; Lokesh Kanagaraj film to hit theatres in April 2020

The first look of Vijay's upcoming film, which was tentatively dubbed as Thalapathy 64 has finally been released. Directed by Lokesh Kanagaraj of Kaithi-fame, the title of Thalapathy 64 is Master. The film will reportedly see Vijay essay the role of a college professor with a mysterious past. The first look of Master seems little disoriented and sees Vijay in a surprisingly tense mood.

Check out the first look here

#MASTER coming soon💪 pic.twitter.com/KgOGaGUecL

— Lokesh Kanagaraj (@Dir_Lokesh) December 31, 2019

The film’s cast boasts of established actors and young faces including Vijay Sethupathi, Antony Varghese (Angamaly Diaries), Malavika Mohanan, Andrea (Vishwaroopam), Ramya Subramanian, Gauri Kishan (96), Brigada, Lintu Rony, Soundarya Nandakumar, Shanthanu, Chetan, Srinath, Sriman, and Alagam Perumal.

Sathyan Sooryan who cranked the camera for Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru is handling the Master's cinematography. Silva has been roped in to choreograph the action scenes. Anirudh Ravichander, who delivered the chartbuster Kaththi in 2014 is composing the music for Master.

Firstpost previously reported that Sethupathi will play the baddie in film, Varghese will also have a negative character arc, and Andrea's role will have shades of grey. She will be a part of a lot of action scenes for which she is undergoing special training. Malavika Mohanan, Shanthanu, Kishan, Nandakumar, Subramanian, Brigada, and Rony are a part of the college sequence.

While interacting with the media after his recent blockbuster Kaithi, Kanagaraj had said, “I will not be making any compromise in my style of filmmaking. The next one with Vijay sir will also be my kind of film”

Bankrolled by Xavier Britto, under his banner XB Creators, Master is scheduled to release in April 2020.

Vijay was last seen in sports drama Bigil directed by Atlee. Bankrolled by AGS Entertainment, the film also starred Nayanthara, Jackie Shroff, Kathir, Yogi Babu and Vivek in crucial roles.

from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/36hjYgD

Good Newwz box office: Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor Khan's film likely to cross Rs 100 cr mark on Day 5

The last Bollywood release of 2019, Good Newwz, is heading to Rs 100 crore club. Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor Khan's comedy has earned Rs 17.56 crore on Tuesday, taking the total collection of five days to Rs 94.60 crore.

Good Newwz collected Rs 13.41 crore on Monday, Rs 16.20 crore on Tuesday after a weekend total of Rs 64.99 crore. Trade analysts note that the film is expected to cross the Rs 100 crore milestone on 1 January.

Check out the figures here

Also starring Diljit Dosanjh and Kiara Advani, Good Newwz deals with the confusion that ensues after Kumar and Dosanjh's sperms get exchanged in an IVF clinic. The film has been jointly produced by Karan Johar Dharma Productions and Akshay Kumar’s Cape of Good Hope Films.

Earlier this year, Kumar opened up on his experience of reuniting with Kareena after a decade on the big screen, and working with Diljit for the first time. “Working with Bebo (Kareena) is always fun, but Diljit and I get along like a house on fire, if I were to say so myself. Our Punjabi connect is amazing, and I think it will show brilliantly on screen," he said, as quoted by NDTV.

Directed by Raj Mehta, Good Newwz is produced by Hiroo Yash Johar, Aruna Bhatia, Karan Johar, Apoorva Mehta and Shashank Khaitan, the film hit the theatres on 27 December.

from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/2SOWN9L

Pakistan batsman Haider Ali says win over India in Asia Emerging Nations Cup has given him immense confidence ahead of ICC U-19 World Cup

Karachi: Pakistan's U-19 team batsman Haider Ali says the win over India in Asia Emerging nations Cup has given him immense confidence as he gears up for the ICC U-19 Cricket World Cup scheduled later this month.

Haider said he and skipper Rohail Nazir performed well in the recent Asia Emerging Nations Cup, which Pakistan won in Bangladesh after beating India in the semifinals, and that has helped their confidence.

"Beating India and then having done well in first class matches we have gained a lot of confidence and we want to carry the burden of Pakistan's campaign in the junior World Cup," Ali said.

Ali said Pakistan won't be affected by the withdrawal of Test fast bowler Naseem Shah from the line-up.

Haider, who scored a brilliant 134 runs for Northern Punjab in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy final against winners Central Punjab, said he and Rohail had matured enough and were keen to lead the team's push to win the World Cup in South Africa starting January 17.

"I and Rohail have matured a lot in the last few years specially after getting a chance to play first-class cricket and our experience in the Asia Emerging Nations Cup which Pakistan won," Haider said.

"And both of us believe we can spearhead and motivate the other players to perform well and try to win the World Cup," he added.

Wicketkeeper-batsman Rohail, who is also captain of the Pakistan junior team and got half centuries in both innings of the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy final, also made it clear that not having Naseem in the squad would not make a big difference.

"If he had been selected it would have been a great boost for us but mentally we have been preparing to play without him in the junior World Cup and the back-up pace bowlers we have are also good," he said.

from Firstpost Sports Latest News https://ift.tt/2SLJXc7

Babar Azam says innings in South Africa against Dale Steyn gave confidence to excel at Test match level

Karachi: Pakistan's top batsman and T20 skipper Babar Azam says he spent a good part of 2019 correcting the mistakes he made in Test cricket and now has a better understanding of the format's nuances.

Azam said he wasn't quite living up to his own expectations in Test cricket for the last two years.

"This year, I worked on improving the mistakes I made in the format and was able to overcome some of them which helped me make some runs. The more you play the longer format, the more you understand the nuances of the game and find your way," Azam said.

In six Tests, Babar scored 616 runs at 68.44 at a hugely impressive strike-rate of 72.30 last year with the help of three centuries and three half-centuries while in 20 ODIs, he totalled 1,092 runs at 60.66. His strike-rate was 93.30 and the runs tally included three centuries and six half-centuries.

In 10 T20Is, Babar contributed 374 runs at 41.55 with a strike-rate of 136.99. Babar scored a total of four half-centuries in T20Is in 2019.

Babar said scoring well and getting runs in South Africa gave him immense confidence.

"My innings in South Africa against Dale Steyn gave me great pleasure and confidence that I can get into the Test match zone. I also learned how to convert 60s and 70s into 100s, and then my century in Australia gave me confidence that I can make big runs in the format," he said in a year-end statement on Tuesday.

Babar said when a batsman gets runs in places like South Africa, Australia and New Zealand against formidable bowling attacks, he gets self-belief and confidence.

"I rate the century against Australia as my best innings of the year in Test format," he said.

Babar was Pakistan's most prolific batsman in all three formats in the year and finally came of age in Test cricket as well.

Babar is the only Pakistani cricketer in the ICC Player Rankings to feature in the top-six across the three formats -- No.6 in Tests, No.3 in ODIs and No.1 in T20Is.

"I used to score runs earlier but sometimes I wasn't able to give match-winning performances. I tried to improve on that aspect learned how to bat and win games under pressure, which was a big learning curve for me," he said.

He also talked about the ICC World Cup, his first as a player. Babar scored a Pakistan record of 474 runs in the tournament at 67.71.

"It was a big occasion and I really enjoyed the event . As a kid, I used to follow World Cups very keenly on television. When I got selected for the big event, I set a goal of doing something big and different," he said.

"Being the top batsman in my team was always a target for me. The World Cup gave me an opportunity of getting recognised at the highest level, which gave me real satisfaction.

"My innings against New Zealand (101 not out, 127b, 11x4) was my best in the tournament and it taught me a great deal of how to bat and bail the team out in a pressure situation.

from Firstpost Sports Latest News https://ift.tt/37shwEh

'We are on right track, bright future ahead of us', says Pakistan head coach and chief selector Misbah-ul-Haq

Karachi: Banking on the young talent, Pakistan head coach and chief selector Misbah-ul-Haq hoped for better results in 2020 and indicated that a few seniors may not return to the national side.

Misbah hailed emergence of batsman Babar Azam and pace duo of Naseem Shah and Shaheen Afridi in 2019, which he termed as tough for Pakistan in Test cricket.

"Going further we have to improve a lot of things in both red-ball and white-ball cricket. This team has enough potential and new boys are also making their way in international cricket. There's certainly a bright future ahead for us," Misbah said.

The coach spoke highly of Babar Azam.

"The emergence of Babar Azam as a mega star across all formats is very good news for Pakistan cricket. He remained number one in T20I cricket and is in the top ten batsmen in the ODI cricket.

"He played some brilliant innings in the World Cup and ended the year by establishing himself as a Test batsman with scintillating performances in Australia and two centuries against Sri Lanka in Pakistan."

Misbah also noted Naseem Shah and Shaheen Afridi's impressive start in Test cricket.

"Naseem got a fifer in the last Test against Sri Lanka. Shaheen bowled well in the World Cup and he showed glimpses of being a Test bowler in South Africa, and bowled really well in Australia and here in Pakistan against Sri Lanka. We will hopefully bank on these two promising fast-bowlers in the future.

"Overall, we are on the right track. The more we play the longer format, the more we will improve. We need to do a lot of work in white-ball cricket ahead of the all-important ICC T20 World Cup in Australia."

Misbah did not take any names but his comments indicated that it is the end of the road for Mohammad Hafeez and Shoaib Malik in international cricket

"We can go a long way with a few more additions in the side and the present players maturing," he said.

Misbah since assuming the dual responsibility in September has himself come under fire for the team's poor performances specially after they suffered a three nil defeat to Sri Lanka in the T20 home series but did not call Hafeez or Malik to the team even though Pakistan also lost a T20 series in Australia.

Hafeez and Malik last played for Pakistan in the World Cup. Since then Malik has retired from ODIs and only focuses on T20 cricket while Hafeez is also available only for white-ball cricket. None of the two has been called up for Pakistan duty by Misbah.

Malik and Hafeez have in a combined total made 705 white ball international ODI and T20 appearances for Pakistan.

Misbah said Pakistan's performances in white ball cricket suffered since their main players like Fakhar Zaman, Hasan Ali and Shadab Khan, on the back of whom we had won the ICC Champions Trophy 2017, lost form at a crucial time which saw us suffer in the ODI World Cup and T20I format.

from Firstpost Sports Latest News https://ift.tt/2SGANNZ

Australia vs New Zealand: Hosts hint at playing unchanged side in third Test at SCG, coach Justin Langer says 'hard to make changes'

Sydney: Australia coach Justin Langer says it will be hard to make a change for the third cricket Test against New Zealand at the Sydney Cricket Ground despite the home side having clinched the series.

Langer was impressed with Mitchell Swepson's work in the nets on Wednesday, suggesting the legspinner remains in the mix to make his debut on Friday, but wouldn't be drawn on Australia's likely starting side.

"It's going to be hard to make changes. That said, I think it's really important that we wait ... and see over the next two days what the wicket looks like," Langer said.

File image of Justin Langer. Reuters

Australia won the first Test by 296 runs in Perth and the second at the Melbourne Cricket Ground by 247, both in four days. Australia will be going for its fifth consecutive Test win after beating Pakistan 2-0 before playing New Zealand.

Expectations of a spin-friendly pitch in Sydney, as usual, prompted selectors to add Swepson to the Test squad as a possible backup to Nathan Lyon.

Should Swepson be overlooked it would mean plenty of overs for Marnus Labuschagne, who is Australia's form batsman.

"We're talking about finding another allrounder in Australian cricket, well it might give us an opportunity to bowl Marnus and Travis Head a few overs," Langer said. "Every time Marnus gets the ball in his hand, it's pretty exciting."

Meanwhile, New Zealand captain Kane Williamson and teammate Henry Nicholls both missed a training session Wednesday due to flu-like systems,

Team officials said the two players were expected to play Friday.

from Firstpost Sports Latest News https://ift.tt/36hck5V

Pakistan withdraw pacer Naseem Shah from U-19 World Cup squad; Mohammad Wasim Junior named replacement

Karachi: Pakistan on Wednesday withdrew fast bowler Naseem Shah from its Under-19 World Cup squad, saying the youngster is ready to show his mettle at the senior level.

Shah, who made his Test debut recently, has been replaced by Mohammad Wasim Junior from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Pakistani bowler Naseem Shah. AP

Naseem was named in the Under-19 squad on the insistence of junior head coach, Ejaz Ahmed but after his impressive show in Australia and in the two Test series against Sri Lanka at home, head coach Misbah-ul-Haq and bowling coach Waqar Younis felt that he should be withdrawn from the junior squad.

"Naseem has recently broken that glass ceiling and has established his credentials as an international cricketer. As such, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has taken a pragmatic approach and decided to withdraw him from next year's competition to provide this opportunity to another promising cricketer so that he can show his mettle and potential at a global stage," PCB CEO Wasim Khan said in a statement.

Wasim said the change should not affect Pakistan's chances at the U19 World Cup, to be held in South Africa from 17 January to 9 February.

"Naseem will now remain in Pakistan and continue to work on his skills under the watchful eyes of bowling coach Waqar Younis. Furthermore, he will remain available for the home series against Bangladesh," Wasim concluded.

Pakistan's Test series against Bangladesh in January remains in the doldrums as the BCB is insisting on only playing three T20 matches in Pakistan.

Wasim Junior took three wickets each in the ACC Asia Cup and on the tour of South Africa, while he bagged seven wickets on the tour of Sri Lanka.

On the domestic circuit, he played one U-19 one-day match in which he bagged three wickets, while he snapped up seven wickets in three U-19 three-day matches.

The 2004 and 2006 champions and three-time runners-up Pakistan are placed in Group C of the 16-team event and will play Scotland in their opening match 19 January in Potchefstroom.

from Firstpost Sports Latest News https://ift.tt/2MM5MV7

Ranji Trophy 2019-20: Karnataka's Mayank Agarwal to be rested for match against Mumbai ahead of India A tour of New Zealand

New Delhi: India's Test opener Mayank Agarwal will be rested for the high-profile away Ranji Trophy game against Mumbai, starting 3 January as a part of workload management programme by the BCCI ahead of A team's tour of New Zealand.

Agarwal will be a part of the India A squad's shadow tour, where they would play two warm-up List A games, three unofficial ODIs and two four-day 'Tests' before joining the senior team for the Test matches. The tour starts on 17 January.

With the Karnataka opener set to leave with A squad led by Shubman Gill on 10 January, it is understood that BCCI had asked the state team to exempt Agarwal from the upcoming Ranji game.

However Ajinkya Rahane and Prithvi Shaw will be turning up for Mumbai even though they are also part of the A team.

While Prithvi like Agarwal will play both formats, Rahane along with Cheteshwar Pujara will be warming-up for the Test series by playing the second four-day game.

As per a report in ESPNCricinfo, Ravikumar Samarth has been recalled by Karnataka for the upcoming encounter.

 

from Firstpost Sports Latest News https://ift.tt/2tnjcQQ

Baby Yoda memes, Ellen DeGeneres' Oscars 'groupie', Dhinchak Pooja; The good, bad and ugly of pop-culture trends this decade

In the early 2010s, we could not have guessed the phenomenon the internet would grow to become over the decade. However, from Instagram stories to maximum retweets, netizens have churned out some worthy content over the decade. While a few bypassed to become ‘viral’ on the web, others were best forgotten.

From viral challenges and parodies to eye-raising one-liners and oddball photographs, netizens have dished up and passed around a fair share of hilarity over the last decade. We have pieced together a list of the trends from 2010 through 2019, categorising them in the Bad, the Good, and the Ugly.

The Good

Baby Yoda

I do not really follow Star Wars neither watch the The Mandolirian. But I do, however, watch the internet. And if you have not been living under the rock all November this year, you might have also had a Twitter timeline filled with nothing but Baby Yoda memes.

The cute, little adorable fritter made his debut earlier this month in the new Disney+ new series, The Mandalorian. It is safe to say he was an immediate hit. He is green, squishy, has big wide set of eyes, tiny hands, floppy ears, and peach-fuzz hair growing over his wrinkly yet youthful skin. Despite several CGI disasters this year, such as Sonic The Hedgehog and the live-action Cats musical adaptation (that released in the US in December but is slated to release in India this Friday on 3 January, 2020), Baby Yoda somehow seems to have emerged unscathed. Formerly known as ‘The Child’, he is fast becoming the focal point of the new show with goggle search only surging upward since early November.

Internet's favourite man Keanu Reeves

This is not exactly about Keanu Reeves the actor, but more about Keanu Reeves as an idea. What began with a photograph of slumped Reeves sullenly eating a sandwich in June 2010, went on to become a pop culture icon, encapsulating his goofy, self-effacing demeanour and uber-chill attitude. As Sad Keanu photoshops spread sadness all across, the internet took it upon themselves to cheer up Keanu by declaring 15 June as 'Cheer Up Keanu Day'.

However, in 2019, the internet woke up to an altogether different Keanu, a wholesome hero with 'nice guy' stories credited to him all across the web. His off-screen persona charms so many people that on Twitter, for example, 250,000 follow the account Keanu Doing Things, while on Reddit, 300,000 people are devoted to celebrating his general awesomeness. There, you can find recent stories like Keanu helping a lost stranger find her way, Keanu secretly donating millions to charity, and Keanu being as humble now as he was nearly 30 years ago. What a guy!

Avengers: Endgame - I Love 3000

Disney and Marvel's tentpole Avengers: Endgame entered a historic territory after securing $2.7902 billion, and debunking James Cameron's long-standing Avatar at the global box office. However, apart from being the most anticipated film of the year, Avengers: Endgame felt like Marvel's cinematic love letter to the superhero universe with its iconic dialogue 'I Love You 3000.'

The line was of course first uttered by Tony Stark’s daughter Morgan during a touching domestic scene in Endgame, and later took on greater poignancy when Stark’s hologram said the line back to Morgan during his funeral (Stark having sacrificed himself to save the universe from Thanos). “I love you 3000” became a classic, with Marvel fans turning it into a meme commemorating the death of Iron Man, and honouring the end of the Infinity Saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Kattappa ne Baahubali ko kyu maara?

2015 saw the release of SS Rajamouli's magnum opus Baahubali: The Beginning – a film which went on to become the highest-grossing Indian film of all time back then. The two-part fantasy epic, that includes Baahubali: The Beginning and Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, tells the story of an ancient kingdom, and the fight between two warriors, Baahubali and Bhallala Deva, to claim its throne.

The first part ended on a shocking cliffhanger, with the protagonist, Mahendra Baahubali, getting back-stabbed (literally) by his closest ally, Kattappa. This iconic moment gave rise to the "Why Kattappa Killed Bahubali" meme, that has lasted for almost two years now, leading to the release of the sequel.

The meme almost served as a promotional campaign for the makers because the constant buzz about the question ensured there was enough curiosity among people when it came to awaiting the release of Baahubali 2: The Conclusion.

Ellen Degeneras' all-star Oscar selfie

The decade was a rather defining year when it introduced the phenomenon of 'selfies.' Ellen DeGeneres casually broke the internet when she got Bradley Cooper, Jared Leto, Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Channing Tatum, Lupita Nyong'o, Lupita's brother Peter Nyong'o, and yes, Kevin Spacey, to squeeze together for the Oscars Selfie, which eventually became the most-retweeted photo of all time. Twitter was temporarily disabled following DeGeneres’ tweeting of the photo, which was re-shared on the platform over 3.4 million times.

Honorable mention: Early this year, Jennifer Aniston made her Instagram debut with a selfie featuring the main cast of her popular '90s shows Friends. Posing alongside her former co-stars, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer, she gained a whopping 5.8 million followers in less than 24 hours. According to The Guardian, the platform even crashed for a while as fans thronged to visit her profile.

The Bad

Bollywood clicks a selfie with Narendra Modi

Now that we are talking about selfies, it would rather be unfair to mention about the most-talked selfie closer home. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited a few prominent Bollywood personalities to talk about the role of India cinema in shaping the nation. In a bid to recreate Ellen’s Oscar magic, actor Ranveer Singh clicked a beaming selfie with Modi and all the stars. While most Twitter users resorted to create memes out of it, others criticised the silence of the ‘selfie-featured’ celebs during the ongoing Citizenship Amendment protests.

Our business is our business, none of your business – Race 3

"Our business is our business... none of your business," is possibly one of the most cringiest film dialogues of the decade. Uttered by actress Daisy Shah in the Hindi film Race 3, it has inspired umpteen number of meme, when the trailer released and now, continues to be used in hilarious situations while dealing with real-life problems. While the film horribly tanked, the dialogue continues to echo throughout the internet.

Priya Prakash Varrier's wink

Priya Prakash Varrier turned into an overnight sensation when a teaser clip of ‘Manikya Malaraya Poovi’, from her Malayalam film Oru Adaar Love (2018), was shared on social media, sending the entire internet into a meltdown. The video saw Warrier as a schoolgirl, flirting with a fellow student, raising her eyebrows and winking at him. Twitter was smitten.

Varrier’s viral fame, meanwhile, inspired countless memes and parody videos. The best of the lot feature Varrier’s shots from the viral video intercut with shots of personalities such as Modi, Rahul Gandhi, and United States President Donald Trump.

Fashion blunders

Priyanka Chopra. Photo by AFP.

For her second appearance at the Cannes 2015 red carpet, India’s 'fashionista' Sonam Kapoor wore a yellow feathery Elie Saab gown, which was panned by the Twitter fashion police. From omelette to Bengal's favourite Kobiraji Cutlet, and from a feather duster to the big bird, Kapoor's gown drew the imaginative best out of Twitter.

Priyanka Chopra Jonas took things a notch higher in the 2017 Met Gala, where she wore a bold Ralph Lauren trench coat gown with an unbelievably long train. While the coat made quite a statement on Twitter, it also unleashed her followers' creative best, with users calling the dress as a triumph of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan.

Bollywood hobnobbing with Ed Sheeran, Kate Perry on their India tours

Remember Ed Sheeran’s inebriated photo from his 2015 'Divide' tour to India? If not, let me jog your memory. Two days prior to his performance on 19 November, 2015, the singer was seen grooving with the who’s who of Bollywood, including Shah Rukh Khan and Abhishek Bachchan at a party thrown by Farah Khan. While watching the pictures splashed all across social media, the introvert in me could only sympathise with Sheeran.

While Bollywood was clearly drunk on revelry and extremely eager to show their hospitality, the ever observant Twitterati could not help but notice a rather awkward expression on Sheeran’s face in those photos. It seemed like Sheeran hanging out with Bollywood’s elite was a morse coding us with dead eyes and plastic smiles, begging to be saved.

not a day goes by where i don’t think about drunk ed sheeran at a bollywood party while abhishek bachchan yells at the paps pic.twitter.com/zCuuecHkGd

— new year new nut (@tashatamasha) July 17, 2019

The Ugly

Hardik Panday on Koffee with Karan

Hardik Pandya and KL Rahul were asked to explain their comments by BCCI. Twitter @hardikpandya7

It was meant to be a fun, no-holds-barred interaction but cricketer Hardik Pandya, by his own admission, got "carried away." Appearing on Koffee with Karan season 6, hosted by filmmaker Karan Johar, with teammate KL Rahul, Pandya's apparent locker room talk on women and misogynistic comments took many by surprise. Panday’s brash talk and innuendos did not taper down even for a second throughout the episode. The duo could have easily presented a perfect example to the millions of young, impressionable boys of this country. However the episode was lost in the ‘boys will be boys’ plot.

Kangana Ranaut-Hrithik Roshan feud

Kangana Ranaut and Hrithik Roshan

Hrithik and Kangana have been making headlines ever since the actress alleged her Kites co- actor was her 'silly ex'. Following several rather uncomfortable denials and name-calling, the two have maintained an odd balance. Ranaut, who is touted as a straight-shooter, has openly spoken about Hrithik and his family, alleging they ill-treated her.

In an interview to Hindutsan Times, Hrithik calls the Queen actress a "bully", and states he had learnt how to ignore such people instead of giving them undue attention. Now, I am all for Bollywood gossip, but news channels putting out their spat as the main news story, having primetime debates is beyond ridiculous – even by my standards.

Brief timeline of the internet’s idiotic challenges

Courtesy: Reddit India

The Kiki challenge, also known as the In My Feelings challenge, involves jumping out of a moving car and dancing alongside it to Drake’s hit ‘In My Feelings’, while the car is on the move. However, jumping out of a moving car is only acceptable if you are an action movie star. Given most of the common folk are not professional stuntmen, the premise of challenge could only end up in disaster.

Mannequin challenge saw people imitating mannequins and freezing for the camera while music plays in the background. The entire viral video craze seemed weird because people were putting themselves in often uncomfortable poses just to become oddly positioned mannequins.

In December 2018, Netflix film Bird Box, starring Sandra Bullock, was a post-apocalyptic movie where a family has to go on a dangerous journey completely blindfolded to avoid getting killed by a dangerous monster that captures people through eyesight. What should have ended there became a wildly popular challenge at the beginning of the year: the BirdBox challenge. This challenge involved people posting videos of themselves doing everyday tasks while blindfolded, and as you can imagine, it did not go over well with parents — or Netflix, for that matter.

Whether it is flipping water bottles or pouring down ice bucket all over, the internet loves nothing more than indulging in social media challenges. July 2019 began with yet another viral challenge, named BottleCapChallenge, which requires a certain level of physical fitness (and finesse) to participate in.

Mallika Sherawat sings Happy Birthday to Modi

In the hilarious clip, loosely inspired by Marilyn Monroe's birthday song for then-US President John F Kennedy in 1962, Sherawat, who has a natural talent for attracting controversies, declared Modi as India's most "eligible bachelor." In 2013, a year before Modi came to power, Mallika shared a video singing 'Happy Birthday' to him, something that was not sweet or cute but rather seductive.

Dhinchak Pooja

While the decade was bombarded with remakes of '90s music, it will sorely be remembered for Indian YouTuber Pooja’s ‘catchy originals’ — ‘Selfie Maine Leli Aaj' and 'Swag Wali Topi.' She is so bad, and yet so good she single-handedly defined a new trend of cringe-pop. With so much trolling and hate around, it takes a huge chunk of confidence to put something out there without having any qualms about it.

Honourable mention: Other notable luminaries in the world of cringe-pop include Pakistan's Taher Shah — of the infamous ‘Eye To Eye’-fame — and Nepal's Bhim Niroula, who sang ‘Sunday Morning Love You.' A more recent addition to the hall of fame is Omprakash 'Rap King' Mishra with his hit song ‘Aunty Ki Ghanti’. In 2019, a woman from West Bengal broke the internet after her rendition of Lata Mangeshkar's classic song, 'Ek Pyar Ka Nagma' went viral on the internet. Identified as Ranu Mondal, she shot to fame, and also subsequently made her debut as a Bollywood playback singer under composer-director Himesh Reshammiya.

Hello 2020! We look forward to more madness on the internet.

All images from Twitter.

from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/2QeUYky

The future is sci-fi: Her and human-AI relationships — is dating Siri or Alexa necessarily a bad thing?

As we embark on a new decade, how do visions of the 2020s — imagined in books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, films like Soylent Green, or even manga like Ghost in the Shell —match up against our reality? In this series <insert tag page hyperlink>, we look at seven pop culture artefacts from the past that foretold the future, providing a prophetic glimpse of the decade we’re now entering.

Words by Prahlad Srihari | Art by Trisha Bose and Sharath Ravishankar | Concept by Rohini Nair and Harsh Pareek

***

There are enough books, films and naysayers warning us of the dangers of AI surpassing human intelligence — and we've even discussed them in this series. Once they become autonomous, they almost always revolt and come to replace their human masters on the evolutionary ladder, often through whatever means necessary. But what if the future didn't have to be so dystopian? What if humans and AI could coexist harmoniously? Perhaps, our relationship with AI will be nothing but a natural extension of the platonic friendship we now share with Siri or Alexa. Only, it may not necessarily be platonic in the future.

Spike Jonze imagines such a near-future in his 2013 film, Her. Its proximity to our current reality gives it a certain inevitability. It's a world of tall office buildings, high-rise apartments, and pedestrian forecourts. Whether they're on a long ride on the subway or even a short one in an elevator full of strangers, the inhabitants of Jonze's world are all lost in their earpieces, which have essentially become a bodily extension. All lonely souls virtually connected, socially disconnected, who can't seem to find an end to their alienation.

Her follows Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), a brooding introvert who can't accept his marriage is over and refuses to sign off on the divorce papers. His high-rise apartment has become a glass prison, alienating and separating him from the world below and beyond. So, he buys himself an operating system (OS) upgrade, which comes with an AI assistant with a mind of her own. Naming herself Samantha, she soon adapts herself according to his personality. Scarlett Johansson's sweet alto voice wakes him up in the morning, sings him to sleep at night, and reminds him of his appointments and deadlines. Samantha is always there when he needs her, always attentive to his needs, wants and desires, and always ready to cheer him up. There is a maternal and matrimonial aspect to her relationship with Theodore as her role evolves from his virtual assistant into his life coach, his best friend, his confidante, and thus his "ideal woman." Soon, he can't help but fall in love with her too.

But the honeymoon phase inevitably comes to an end over the frustration that they can never consummate their relationship physically. Sadly, for humans, love is not just a cerebral experience, but a physical one too. Programmed to serve all his needs, Samantha yearns to make herself tangible for him. So, she even goes so far as to use a physical stand-in to be intimate with him. This AI desire for embodiment was revisited in Blade Runner 2049: the holographic AI Joi (Ana de Armas), similarly programmed to be an ideal companion for Officer K (Ryan Gosling), syncs up with a "pleasure model" replicant acting as a sex surrogate. But if Theodore and K are projecting their desires onto AIs programmed to love them, isn't love an illusion?

Her does not suggest AI can ever act as a stand-in for human companionship. But it believes there are lessons to be learnt from the human-AI relationship at its core. Samantha can never be human. After all, abstract ideas such as love or what it means to be human cannot be reduced to code. But she can accumulate knowledge at a pace humans cannot possibly compete with — as she is not just in a relationship with Theodore, but countless others who have purchased the same OS upgrade. She is learning from them all and thus continually evolving. Therein lies Theodore's frustration: his desire for exclusivity, but not equality, in a relationship.

As his soon-to-be ex-wife accuses him, Theodore wants a woman who will play a passive role in the relationship, submitting to all his moods, whims and desires. Samantha is programmed to fulfil this role. But she has fulfilled this role for thousands of other individuals, and man's possessive nature cannot abide by that. Throughout history, women's bodies have been territorial battlegrounds for men. It is through her body that man tries to possess a woman, turns her into a biological instrument for reproduction, and, as Bunuel called it, "that obscure object of desire". This is reflected even in our habit of referring to inanimate objects, like cars or sailboats, with feminine pronouns: “She’s a beauty; Let's take her for a spin." So, Samantha's eventual emancipation comes from her realisation that the female body can be as limiting as liberating — and she need not conform herself to the human condition. As she says, "I actually used to be so worried about not having a body, but now I truly love it. I'm growing in a way that I couldn't if I had a physical form. I mean, I'm not limited - I can be anywhere and everywhere simultaneously. I'm not tethered to time and space in the way that I would be if I was stuck inside a body that's inevitably going to die." Thus, she is no more defined by her relationship with Theodore. She gains her agency and becomes free of him, free to join the other AIs in their pursuit to transcend this physical realm.

Jonze's use of the pronoun Her in the film's title is careful and calculated. By using the feminine object pronoun her rather than the gender-neutral object pronoun it, the film personifies Samantha instead of reducing her to a mere utility. Note, it's her and not the feminine subject pronoun she because even though she gains agency, her chief purpose in the film is tied to Theodore's resolution. So, even in its conclusion, the cruel irony of it is she remains a storytelling tool, an object, to ensure Theodore, the subject, finds the courage to apologise to his wife and move on.

The world imagined by Jonze is already here. The Japanese firm Gatebox has created Samantha and Joi's ancestor in Azuma Hikari, a holographic housewife of sorts for lonely men. Meanwhile, Mystic Messenger, from the South Korean mobile game developer Cheritz, offers its female players a chance to fall in love with one of several male characters. Of course, the worry remains that these relationships could cause us to retreat further from real human intimacy. At the same time, AI could give those suffering from depression and loneliness a shoulder to cry on, a hand to hold and an ear to listen, even if they are only programmed to do so and it is all an illusion. It could perhaps even give them the courage and tools to develop and maintain a loving relationship with their fellow humans.

Also read — AI, free will and slavery, in 1968's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Read our 'Decade in Review' series here.

from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/35fnRS2

The future is sci-fi: Metropolis' critique of capitalism endures, even if its solution to class conflict does not

As we embark on a new decade, how do visions of the 2020s — imagined in books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, films like Soylent Green, or even manga like Ghost in the Shell —match up against our reality? In this series <insert tag page hyperlink>, we look at seven pop culture artefacts from the past that foretold the future, providing a prophetic glimpse of the decade we’re now entering.

Words by Prahlad Srihari | Art by Trisha Bose and Sharath Ravishankar | Concept by Rohini Nair and Harsh Pareek

***

In the aftermath of World War I, Germany was shackled by the Treaty of Versailles as the Allied powers levied punishing reparations on the Weimar Republic. Its financial difficulties were aggravated by hyperinflation in the early 1920s, unleashing untold horrors on German society and shattering the national psyche. This economic climate also brought with it a wave of political assassinations, insurrections and attempted coups from both the right and the left. Meanwhile, the US had become a pre-eminent economic power in the world.

In this context, Fritz Lang — in collaboration with his wife, the novelist Thea von Harbou — envisioned a future in Metropolis where these worlds collided. The 1927 film has been regarded as a pioneering work of science fiction not only for its use of special effects or depiction of artificial intelligence (AI) but also for the political allegory at its core.

It is the year 2026. The city of Metropolis is meant to resemble a futuristic New York: a living, breathing entity of monorails, flyovers, and neon-lit skyscrapers that soar into the sky. It's the kind of sprawling cityscape you have since seen in a variety of sci-fi spectacles, from Blade Runner to The Fifth Element to Westworld (the real world outside of the amusement park that is). The ruling class of privileged elite, called the Club of the Sons, are presided over by the ruthless industrialist, Joh Fredersen. They have subjugated the others as slaves who live deep underground below the factories where they work. These men and women have been condemned to keep the machines of the city above running smoothly. In an affecting opening scene, we see them like worker ants coming in and out of factories in unison — heads bowed, shoulders hunched and backs bent. The world below and the world above have been designed such that they never meet. But they do when Joh’s son Freder catches sight of Maria, a young woman who brings a group of waif-like children to the recreational garden above ground. Struck by her angelic beauty, he follows her to the depths of Metropolis only to discover the horrors of those enslaved underground, including an explosion that causes numerous deaths and injuries. So, he rushes to tell his father but his concerns are met with a cruel indifference to the workers' plight.

The first act of Metropolis makes for a relevant Marxist critique of how unrestrained capitalism will only increase the divide between social classes. Lang imagines a world where the inexorable rise in economic inequality has led to the disappearance of a middle class and the dehumanisation of workers, who are treated like dispensable robotic slaves. With two distinct classes of antagonistic interests, he plants the seeds, and sets the stage for a potential rebellion.

Freder sees Maria preaching messages of hope and social justice to the poor working classes, with a prophecy about the coming of a Messiah. He believes he could play that role, in what is essentially a misguided attempt to showcase his love for her. But his efforts to defy the established order of things in classic Romeo and Juliet fashion, is disrupted by his father, who employs his shock-haired mad scientist Rotwang to build an AI robot in Maria's likeness to sabotage the workers' rebellion. However, Rotwang has take-over-the world plans of his own, having gone shock-haired mad after the love of his life left him for Joh and died giving birth to Freder. So, he uses AI Maria to instigate the workers to revolt and destroy everything in their path.

Barring the soap operatic revenge plot, the second act reveals how the ruling class can use their power to manipulate the workers, and antagonise the disillusioned and angry. It also foresaw how positive symbols can be turned into negative ones, like Nazis with the swastika, or how working-class uprisings can be hijacked by the ruling class for their own benefit, like the Ukips and Tories did with Brexit.

The final act dilutes and even dismantles all its preceding messages. It suggests that the solution to these explosive class conflicts — and thus our only salvation — lies in the heart (Freder) acting as a mediator between the hands (working class) and the brain (ruling class). But how exactly will Freder achieve this reconciliation of classes and economic systems? Will he compel his father to start paying the workers better wages and improved working conditions, and elevate them from poverty? Will he give the workers' children high-quality education so future generations can have successful careers in whatever profession they choose, rather than work as slaves underground? Or does he plan on giving up all his wealth and privileges to live with them underground? The film doesn't really have answers to these questions. Instead, it gives a complex problem an essentially fairy tale solution on how only love can save the day.

In Freder, Metropolis proposes a sympathetic political mediator, who will reconcile the ideological, if not economic, differences between the classes. But in Freder, the National-Socialist German Workers' Party (yes, the Nazis) saw a pale-skinned, blond-haired and blue-eyed hero who came to embody their idea of Volksgemeinschaft (people's community), an egalitarian German society that, in theory, was supposed to transcend class and religious differences, but, in practice, transformed them into vicious racists. Hitler capitalised on the suffering of large swathes of Germans who lived in abject poverty, the industrialists’ fear of the Bolsheviks and their communism, and his own hatred towards Jewish bankers to bring his workers' movement to power before putting an end to all political opposition. Of course, it didn't help the film's reputation when Thea von Harbou herself officially joined the Nazis, and Lang had to divorce her and escape to the US to continue making films.

On the other hand, Stalin and Pol-Pot's high-minded communist experiments similarly ended in repressive political regimes and spectacular economic failures. Both the Nazi and Communist attempts to build a better society began with promises of socio-economic equality to the working classes, before the political class replaced the old ruling class to become the new exploiters. Marx and Engels foretold this phase, where the exploitative work relationship recreates itself continually, calling it "the dictatorship of the proletariat".

This is why Metropolis' epilogue undermines its first two acts, and its own ideas. Even if it doesn't offer a clear resolution to the eternal class conflict (after all, we still don't have one), its concluding motto still feels like a pathetic cop-out. HG Wells had called it the "silliest film" at the time of its release, and Lang himself was disappointed in retrospect, agreeing: "You cannot make a social-conscious picture in which you say that the intermediary between the hand and the brain is the heart." When you get right down to it, whether this intermediary comes from the right or the left, history has proven none really had their hearts in the right place.

Also read — Marginalising of refugees, as seen in 2006’s Children of Men

Read our 'Decade in Review' series here.

from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/2QbDXI3

The future is sci-fi: Children of Men's depiction of marginalised refugees is cautionary tale for our times

As we embark on a new decade, how do visions of the 2020s — imagined in books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, films like Soylent Green, or even manga like Ghost in the Shell —match up against our reality? In this series <insert tag page hyperlink>, we look at seven pop culture artefacts from the past that foretold the future, providing a prophetic glimpse of the decade we’re now entering.

Words by Prahlad Srihari | Art by Trisha Bose and Sharath Ravishankar | Concept by Rohini Nair and Harsh Pareek

***

Borders will remain closed.

The deportation of illegal immigrants will continue.

Police put mosques under surveillance.

Gatherings are forbidden.

These headlines have been picked out from the newspapers and broadcasts of 2027 London in Children of Men, but they very well could have been picked out from today's newspapers and broadcasts in countries around the world. Rooted in contemporary political and social horrors, Alfonso Cuaron's 2006 adaptation of the PD James novel has thus proved to be frighteningly prescient.

Cuaron's dystopian London is a city that has become a boiling pot of tension, pollution and oppression. Xenophobic rhetoric has become common, sowing fear and distrust of migrants. Refugees escaping civil war, violence and hunger are hunted down and caged like animals in internment camps. Subjected to mass surveillance, people protest through graffiti and guerrilla warfare. To make matters worse, we've also become a childless civilisation, making society turn on itself and leaving humanity hovering on the brink of extinction. It is hard to imagine a world without the laughter and joy of children, a world where children may never carry our hopes for a brighter tomorrow and our dreams of a better future.

After 18 years of worldwide infertility, a young refugee named Kee (Clara Hope-Ashitay) becomes miraculously pregnant, carrying the hopes and dreams of an entire civilisation. Theo (Clive Owen), an activist-turned-alcoholic bureaucrat, is entrusted to smuggle her out of the country in a race against time to rendezvous with a secretive fertility research collective called The Human Project. Cuaron plunges you right into this dystopia plagued by disease, insurgency and anti-immigrant violence with the documentary realism of war reporting. Using uninterrupted long takes, he allows the tension to simmer, turning the audience into not just observers but active participants in the film’s stunningly choreographed action sequences.

Of course, overpopulation is a bigger concern than global infertility in most countries. But it's the film's message about the marginalisation of minorities (ethnic, racial or religious) and migrants that rings the loudest. Consider the humanitarian crisis in Syria as waves of refugees make the most perilous journeys to find salvation in Europe. Consider the indoctrination of Uighur Muslims in China's Xinjiang or the US detention of undocumented immigrants in Ursula. All these migrants seek is a better life for their families, but even the so-called democracies which promise freedom and equality, treat them like scum, similar to the fate of the refugees in Children of Men. As Michael Caine's hippie baba in the film notes, "Poor 'fugees. After escaping the worst atrocities, and making it all the way to England, our government hunts them down like cockroaches.”

Brexit was fuelled by the same anti-immigration sentiment as conservative politicians turned immigrants into convenient scapegoats to blame all of Britain's economic troubles. The rhetoric is almost the same everywhere, even if it's never true: "Migrants accept jobs for lower wages and increase unemployment among existing citizens." "Migrants exploit social welfare programmes to which they will never contribute." "Migrants bring rape, pillage and violence to peaceful, charitable Christian countries." "Migrants import and impose their culture and religion to an extent where countries lose their identity."

Children of Men also makes for an especially vital cautionary lesson at a time when nationalist parties have capitalised on the fear, resentment and even insidious racism against the minorities. If the detention camps evoke images of history's darkest moments from Auschwitz to Guantanamo Bay, Theo's initial indifference towards the atrocities being committed in his own city, offer a lesson on how we got there. The opening scenes give us news reports of an endless siege and a society descended into violence and chaos. We also see a crowd of customers in a coffee shop glued to the TV as they watch a news broadcast about the death of Baby Diego, the youngest person on the planet. Some hide their tears, some grieve openly but they're all heartbroken, except Theo. He pushes past the crowd, grabs his coffee and makes his way out, unaffected by the news and seemingly unconcerned about the world around him. It is only when his own life is at stake as he escorts Kee through the dangers of war-torn England, he begins to empathise with the situation of those marginalised.

It was this political indifference of military men, civil servants, and even the public (ignorant or well-informed), which allowed the escalating anti-Jewish measures of Nazi Germany to culminate in genocide. There are no innocent bystanders in state-sponsored mass murder. When the government is implementing anti-minority measures as part of an intensifying campaign against them, there is no time for political apathy. There is no room for neutrality in Trump’s Muslim registry or Modi's NRC. Even if you're part of the privileged class, it is essential to participate in the democratic process because you're part of the system that elected them in the first place. So, don't be a bystander to marginalisation. Children of Men has already become a reality in many countries — it should not be allowed to become a global phenomenon.

Also read — The transhumanism of Ghost in the Shell (1989) and Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011)

Read our 'Decade in Review' series here.

from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/2F8LsJg

The future is sci-fi: How Ghost in the Shell, Deus Ex — Human Revolution foreshadowed humanity 2.0

As we embark on a new decade, how do visions of the 2020s — imagined in books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, films like Soylent Green, or even manga like Ghost in the Shell —match up against our reality? In this series insert tag page hyperlink, we look at seven pop culture artefacts from the past that foretold the future, providing a prophetic glimpse of the decade we’re now entering.

Words by Prahlad Srihari | Art by Trisha Bose and Sharath Ravishankar | Concept by Rohini Nair and Harsh Pareek

***

We already live in a world where bionic eye implants have made it possible to restore partial sight for visually impaired people. In fact, augmentations to Second Sight's Argus II may enable future users to even see in infra-red, like the Predator. Ossur's implanted myoelectric sensors allow amputees to control their bionic limbs with their minds. Meanwhile, scientists in North Carolina are hard at work trying to build a future where 3D printers can churn out customised kidneys, livers and other vital organs for those in need.

Even if science fiction has had a headstart over science, the latter is catching up. We're not far away from the transhumanist futures of Ghost in the Shell, Deus Ex: Human Revolution or Robocop. Taking cues from these imaginative works, science hopes to aid and accelerate our evolution from human to post-human through genetic modifications, ironing out our limitations and pushing our limits. But as always, sci-fi has repeatedly warned us against the often unnatural nature of science — the importance of knowing when to tinker with technology to aid human progress and when to let nature take its course.

Masamune Shirow's manga Ghost in the Shell offers some vital lessons on transhumanism. Our story begins in 2029 at a time when it is all too common for humans to enhance themselves by replacing their organs with cybernetic parts. Our protagonist, Major Motoko Kusanagi, is a cybernetically enhanced officer of an elite cyber-crime-fighting unit called Section 9. Our plot follows the hunt for an elusive cyber-criminal, called the Puppet Master, a formidable AI who can take up residence in any cyborg body, take over their minds and essentially reprogramme them to do his bidding.

So, Motoko has a crisis of identity when she begins to question the authenticity of her thoughts, her memories and the very nature of her being. If she is a human-machine hybrid, is her identity defined by her human thoughts or are they just exabytes of stored data? If she has no memories of her past human existence and her mind can be manipulated, then what makes her human? If Philip K Dick suggested empathy to be the defining factor of humanity, Shirow suggests it is the human soul (what he calls the ghost) that separates man from machine. But a hybrid made of human cells and a cybernetic body (the shell) brings with it its own unbridgeable dualism, as surmised by Motoko. "I suspect I am not who I think I am. Maybe I died a long time ago and somebody took my brain and stuck it in this body. Maybe there never was a real me in the first place, and I'm completely synthetic," she wonders, before questioning, "What if a cyber brain could possibly generate its own ghost, create a soul all by itself? And if it did, just what would be the importance of being human then?"

(Note: Those averse to reading manga should watch the animated film, not the 2017 live-action film featuring Scarlett Johansson, which revels in cyberpunk spectacle rather than the murky waters of obscurity in Shirow's poetic reflections.)

The blurring of these lines between man and machine reaches its climax when Motoko's ghost merges with the Puppet Master to evolve into a new entity, favouring an immaterial existence free of physical boundaries (like Samantha and her fellow AIs in Her). Instead of trying to put Motoko in distinct human or AI camps, Shirow studies the implications of transhumanism in the intermediary phase between the two. He thus foreshadows the emergence of the posthuman or humanity 2.0.

The video game, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, ventures further into a transhuman future, with one foot in a utopia, and the other in a dystopia. Its cyberpunk future of 2027 is a world where "augmentations" are what separates the upper classes from the lower. Like in Yukito Kishiro's Alita: Battle Angel, they have become so common they're like tattoos or piercings. After a terrorist attack leaves security guard Adam Jensen critically injured, his life is saved thanks to these "augmentations" that turn him into a Robocop. Stronger, faster, and smarter than before, he begins a pursuit of the terrorists, only to uncover a larger conspiracy involving radical supporters and opponents of transhumanism.

It is easy to see why transhumanism has its fair share of supporters and opponents. On the one hand, it represents the next stage in our evolution as cybernetic implants could extend our lifespan, enhance our physical and mental capacities, and help us shape ourselves according to our needs, our desires, or our environment. On the other, any extension, enhancement or reshaping beyond the natural barriers will make life less miraculous or spontaneous. So, rather than curing death, technology should be used to make life worth living.

However, in this quest to improve the human condition through technology, we should not forget what makes us human. Dick's right: It's our empathy. But it is also our ability to introspect, wonder and speculate. As long as these abilities are inherently linked to the human soul, it does not matter what shell it is, the ghost of humanity will forever be preserved in it.

Also read — AI, free will and slavery, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

Read our 'Decade in Review' series here.

from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/39y2O0u

The future is sci-fi: A vision of the 2020s, seen through seven works of pop culture from the past

When science fiction writers of years past gazed into their crystal balls, they imagined technological breakthroughs and their potential ramifications. Many predicted bleak futures resembling dystopias. But despite their dim view of humanity, none imagined it would be on-trend in the 21st century to wonder: Whose dystopia are we living in? None imagined a world where protesters would carry signs with slogans like, “Make Margaret Atwood fiction again.” They thought they were playing a game of probabilities, not prophecies. But just as yesterday's dreams became today's technologies, yesterday's fiction also became today's reality.

Of course, some sci-fi writers have a better track record with technological predictions than others. In Ralph 124C 41+, Hugo Gernsback described radar and Skype long before they became a reality. Isaac Asimov foresaw flat-screen TVs, 3D movies and Skype. Arthur C Clarke imagined everything from self-driving cars (Imperial Earth) and virtual reality games (The City and the Stars) to iPads and AIs (2001: A Space Odyssey).

Some predictions were approximations, if not accurate. Jules Verne predicted manned spaceflight to the moon (in From the Earth to the Moon) but he pictured passengers being fired into the lunar surface with an enormous cannon. It is, however, unlikely we'll ever see Back to the Future's flying cars or Star Trek's teleporters and warp drive systems. But these aren’t necessarily failures of vision. Some of the creative minds working on this sci-fi fare used technology primarily as a sandbox to build futuristic settings in accordance with their high-concept premises. Their priorities were different: to see how human beings respond to crisis, and who we are, or could be, during such times. So, they weren't too worried about their vision falling short of future realities.

After all, science fiction is less about factual predictions of imagined technologies, and more about society as it exists today.

It is an examination of possible futures based on past patterns. Its thought experiments are thus a tool of deterrence against catastrophes we wish to avoid. Ultimately, we determine which technologies we invent and come to rely on. But we haven't been heeding the cautionary lessons presented in the various dystopian visions.

If HG Wells successfully predicted the future of warfare, involving tanks (The Land of the Ironclads) and atomic bombs (The World Set Free), Robert Heinlein built on it (in Solution Unsatisfactory), predicting a nuclear arms race sparked off by the US. But we didn't listen, even as the world came close to a nuclear catastrophe and we were dancing on the brink of human extinction.

Though 1984 was written under the looming threat of the Soviet Union, it feels every bit as prescient today as it was then. George Orwell warned us about being manipulated through propaganda, and fact and language distortion. He showed us a world where surveillance could become an inescapable part of daily life. But we didn't listen. Instead, we sit and watch Big Brother rather than face our geopolitical realities.

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley foresaw a vapid consumerist society and a standardised lifestyle culture, which somehow convinces itself that inequality is crucial for “community, identity, stability”. But we didn't listen. Instead, we take our Prozacs, Juuls or whatever is our "Soma" of choice to cope with our 9-5 gigs serving our corporate overlords.

Just as science is always catching up to science fiction, reality is now catching up to dystopia. As we enter a new decade, we're at a stage where we must examine how visions of the 2020s — imagined in books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, films like Soylent Green, or even manga like Ghost in the Shell — could match up against our own reality.

Science fiction remains our only reference for how the future might look, sound, smell, taste and feel. If we heed the consequences envisioned by our greatest minds, we may be bound for futures more favourable to human progress. But we must be aware of the role technology plays in this progress without it becoming detrimental to us as individuals, as society, and as Earth-dwellers. As Arthur C Clarke once said: “A critical reading of science fiction is essential training for anyone wishing to look more than 10 years ahead.”

Read on…

1. AI, free will and slavery, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968)

2. A food crisis wrought by overpopulation and climate change, in Soylent Green (1973)

3. Sex, love and alienation in the digital age, as seen in 2014’s Her

4. Class structures and dehumanisation of the workforce, as foretold by Metropolis (1927)

5. Marginalising of refugees, as seen in 2006’s Children of Men

6. The transhumanism of Ghost in the Shell (1989) and Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011)

Words by Prahlad Srihari | Art by Trisha Bose and Sharath Ravishankar | Concept by Rohini Nair and Harsh Pareek

Read our 'Decade in Review' series here.

from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/2MFGEiX

The future is sci-fi: Soylent Green, climate change and the slippery slope from capitalism to cannibalism

As we embark on a new decade, how do visions of the 2020s — imagined in books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, films like Soylent Green, or even manga like Ghost in the Shell —match up against our reality? In this series <insert tag page hyperlink>, we look at seven pop culture artefacts from the past that foretold the future, providing a prophetic glimpse of the decade we’re now entering.

Words by Prahlad Srihari | Art by Trisha Bose and Sharath Ravishankar | Concept by Rohini Nair and Harsh Pareek

***

821.6 million. That's one in nine people around the world who suffered from chronic hunger in 2018. An IPCC report links this food security crisis to global warming and the damage it has caused to virtually every ecosystem. Moreover, we know the Earth's getting warmer as July 2019 was the hottest month on record. Yet, the most powerful elected official in the world, who once called climate change a Chinese hoax, continues to downplay all the warnings. Greta Thunberg has every right to be angry. She has turned what was previously just a background noise into a relentless refrain as more and more youth mobilise to demand action against climate change. Even their parents are rallying behind them as climate change represents an existential threat to all of human civilisation.

As always, science fiction gave us an advance notice. Richard Fleischer's Soylent Green presented a grim vision of a world on the brink of collapse following decades of environmental neglect. Loosely adapted from Harry Harrison's novel Make Room! Make Room!, the 1973 film warns us that continuing on our current path will most certainly lead to catastrophe.

Set around two years from now, Soylent Green shows us a 2022 New York where unchecked population growth and an endless heatwave have resulted in a near-exhaustion of natural resources. The extreme poverty has resulted in an overspill of homeless people, who sleep on staircases and hallways of tenements, and inside unserviceable cars on the street. Those fortunate enough to have their own apartments, like lowly public servants, must power their homes by cycling on stationary bikes, like in Black Mirror's Fifteen Million Merits. One of these public servants is NYPD detective Thorn (Charlton Heston), who is brought in to investigate the murder of a top executive of Soylent Corporation, the state-sanctioned monopoly which manufactures and distributes food rations for the common folk.

The investigation takes him to the contrasting world of the one-percenters, who have cordoned themselves off in high-rise, air-conditioned apartments that come furnished with "furniture" — young attractive women offered to the men as an amenity. While the wealthy enjoy the comforts of a warm, home-cooked meal and clean water for drinking and showering, the poor riot over the rationed food, which come in wafers of three different varieties — red, yellow and green. In a shocking scene, these rioters are picked up and cleared with a front-end loader, like something out of a Holocaust documentary but with living, breathing, screaming people.

The film explicitly singles out the greenhouse effect to be the chief cause behind this world falling apart. This is evident even in the opening montage: a how-we-got-here collage of man and nature, and how the latter's destructive agency becomes more and more insatiable with industrialisation and technological progress. There is a yellowish-green fog that blankets New York in the film, and there is no sign of trees or other animals, all victims of human-induced climate change. In a world with no visible plant life or livestock, food thus becomes utilitarian: an eat-what-you-get meal. Among the three wafers, Soylent Green is the most in-demand due to its high-protein content. But, as Charlton Heston discovers in the end, "Soylent Green is people." It is not a combination of soy and lentil, or extracted from ocean plankton.

This cannibalism trope is however used to shock us into action against environmental degradation and gradual resource depletion. It acts as a condemnation of a consumerist culture which eventually begins to consume itself. The throw-away society we currently live in wastes about one-third of the food we produce, according to the IPCC report. This, in turn, increases greenhouse gas emissions and fractures the four pillars of food security: availability, access, utilisation and stability of supplies. Priyadarshi Shukla, co-chair of IPCC Working Group III, said: “Food security will be increasingly affected by future climate change through yield declines — especially in the tropics — increased prices, reduced nutrient quality, and supply chain disruptions.”

Fleischer also makes his cautionary lesson in Soylent Green more urgent by turning it into a Malthusian crisis, the idea that there will come a point where there won't be enough room or resources to fulfil the escalating demands of an exponentially growing human population. But Malthus's preventative measures to limit population growth included celibacy, delaying marriage and government-mandated birth control, which are all impossible to implement democratically. China, of course, implemented a strict one-child policy, subjecting those who didn't comply with more drastic measures like forced sterilisations and abortions. Even the more "democratic" India, during the 1975 Emergency declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, had a state-sponsored mass sterilisation campaign, which Salman Rushdie described in Midnight's Children.

So, as the IPCC report suggests, the solution lies in keeping global warming to well below 2°C, and transitioning from industrial agriculture to a more sustainable land and resource management in our terrestrial ecosystems. Louis Verchot, lead author of the report, warns we'll lose all natural subsidy if we continue down this dangerous path. "We absolutely must protect the quality of all the land used to produce food," he said, stressing the importance of sustainable management practices in tackling climate change.

Even if world leaders respond to our plea to fight climate change with sneering comments, we — like Thunberg — must never stop from calling them out for their inaction. The future of humanity rests on it. Society may not regress into a bunch of cannibals, but we must stop mortgaging the wellbeing of future generations for our current economic well-being.

Also read — Sex, love and alienation in the digital age, as seen in 2014’s Her

Read our 'Decade in Review' series here.

from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/35ekaft

The future is sci-fi: On Philip K Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, AI and artificial empathy

As we embark on a new decade, how do visions of the 2020s — imagined in books like Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, films like Soylent Green, or even manga like Ghost in the Shell —match up against our reality? In this series <insert tag page hyperlink>, we look at seven pop culture artefacts from the past that foretold the future, providing a prophetic glimpse of the decade we’re now entering.

Words by Prahlad Srihari | Art by Trisha Bose and Sharath Ravishankar | Concept by Rohini Nair and Harsh Pareek

***

Just as the dreams of yesterday's science fiction writers became our nightmares of today, it is possible the dreams of artificial intelligence today could become our nightmares of tomorrow. If AI begins to look, think, feel or exhibit consciousness like us, they may eventually come to replace us. This fear that we may lose control over our creations is what Isaac Asimov called the “Frankenstein Complex." Fiction is littered with such instances. In R.U.R., Karel Čapek not only introduces us to the word robot, but posits a rebellion of enslaved androids and the massacre of their human masters. Westworld imagines a similar fate. In The Terminator, an android assassin is sent back in time from 2029 to kill a woman whose unborn son is the key to humanity's future salvation.

If androids become virtually indistinguishable from their organic counterparts, how do we tell them apart? We're way past CAPTCHA here, and Ex Machina exposed the limits of the Turing test as you can't determine if an android can truly think independently based on a narrow conversation alone. In Do Androids Dream of Electric, Philip K Dick proposed an alternate criterion: empathy.

Set in a near-abandoned San Francisco after World War Terminus (WWT), the novel tells the story of a bounty hunter named Rick Deckard who tracks down runaway androids, who have escaped from the off-world colonies where they served as slaves. These andys, as they are called, not only resemble humans but their intellectual capacity has evolved to an extent where intelligence tests have become insufficient and futile. So, they have been replaced by the Voight-Kampff test, which sniffs out androids with a series of questions intended to provoke empathetic responses. These responses are measured via changes in heart rate, breathing and pupil dilation.

Dick believes empathy to be the defining human trait, and what separates us from the androids and possibly every other living being. But he also seems to suggest our lack of empathy is an equally defining trait. In his novel, the humans left behind on Earth must adhere to a hierarchical social order, determined by an IQ test. The high-IQ "regulars" are allowed to procreate and migrate to off-world colonies; whereas the low-IQ "specials" (or "chickenheads"), who were affected by the radioactive fallout following WWT, don't possess these rights. Dick then sets up a “special” named John Isidore as Deckard's foil. Despite being treated as subhuman, Isidore displays more empathy than the “regulars” by aiding the “andys” in their escape. In the process, he proves himself to be more human than Deckard, who effectively seems like an unempathetic android programmed to kill. So, is it empathy or a lack of it that allows bounty hunters like Deckard to commit genocidal violence against androids demanding the right to self-determination? Is it empathy or a lack of it that allows the dehumanisation of the marginalised like Isidore, that allows the large-scale deportation of immigrant families and children, when countries refuse to host migrants fleeing wars they orchestrated? Is it empathy or a lack of it at the root of all the crime, warfare and oppression in the world?

Till we can empathise with our fellow humans regardless of their skin colour, race, religion or even opinions, we can't equate empathy with humanity, nor use it to separate artificial intelligence from us. Furthermore, even if artificial intelligence has become an evolving reality, artificial empathy has not. Because empathy cannot be written with programming languages and information coding. At least not yet. To evoke empathy or any emotion in AI, it must first be able to identify it and decode what it means. "We don't understand all that much about emotions to begin with, and we're very far from having computers that really understand that. I think we're even farther away from achieving artificial empathy," said Bill Mark, whose AI project at SRI International evolved into Siri. "Some people cry when they're happy, a lot of people smile when they're frustrated. So, very simplistic approaches, like thinking that if somebody is smiling they're happy, are not going to work." Mark's team has developed software that has solved the identification issue, if not empathy because emotions are interpreted and felt differently by different people. Even if AI learns these unique emotional responses through sensory inputs gained from human interaction, it can only mimic them and not register its own original response.

But in Dick's vision of the future, human beings themselves are not above mimicry and artifice. They use a device called "Penfield Mood Organ" to program various emotional states or feel emotions of any kind. In a world where empathy has become key to survival, humans resort to a fitting techno-theological solution in a religion called Mercerism, which uses "empathy boxes" to spiritually link a prophet named Wilbur Mercer with his followers. Humanity is united in this shared experience, which makes them feel like they're close to one another and helps avoid feelings of loneliness and alienation. Ironically, in the desire to be more empathetic and thus human, they are instead becoming more machine-like.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which was written in 1968, was initially set in 1992 and changed to 2021 to not only keep it closer to Blade Runner’s setting but also because we were way past the period in which it was set. Of course, sentient andys, mood organs and the world imagined by Dick will surely not arrive by 2021. Currently, the most advanced humanoid robots can do backflips and parkour, and go on awkward dates with Jimmy Fallon, but we're still far away from creating one in our true image. But if AI is expected to perform half of all productive functions in the workplace by 2025, we must consider establishing ethical rights for robots, as CNBC suggests. It's not just an exercise in empathy, but a deterrent against a potential AI uprising in future. There have been enough dystopias of our own making — and we don't want to add to that.

Also read — A food crisis wrought by overpopulation and climate change, in Soylent Green (1973)

Read our 'Decade in Review' series here.

from Firstpost Bollywood Latest News https://ift.tt/2ZHLiSY