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Comment by skmurphy | Hacker News Reader

Concluding paragraph:

"San Francisco is in the future. San Francisco's future isn't pretty. It's cold, hard, technological. It's fueled by both extreme poverty and extreme wealth. By technology and heroin. It is the future of dystopian novels. It is the future of Gibson and Philip K. Dick. It is the future of Blade Runner. Someone needs to take hold of the dystopia dial and turn it back down. Quickly. Before it becomes too late."

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I saw Blade Runner (1982) in the theatre this last weekend. First time I’ve watched it in probably a decade. It’s still an absolutely mesmerizing film, but I couldn’t help but think of San Francisco and Los Angeles while watching. The fact that it’s always raining in what’s supposed to be Los Angeles in 2019 foretells environmental disaster that seems not far off. The abject and gross poverty reminded me of the tent villages in SF. It’s a timeline I have little faith we’ll jump out of.

Life isn’t a movie: there are no mandatory self-fulfilling prophecies and learned helplessness is optional. Also, you can break by the bystander effect by actually doing something. Most people just pretend homeless people don’t exist, don’t deserve to be treated like people and shouldn’t be helped. Be different.

I also watched it last weekend, and one of the interesting tidbits was when talking to Sebastian he mentions that there's no housing shortage, and he wasn't allowed off-world, implying that everyone had wanted to get off world and those left behind are those who couldn't. Which seems a little contradictory (if everyone's trying to get off, why do Replicants want to come back?), but whatever. I wonder if Musk has thought about Blade Runner through this lens.

Don’t forget the thousands of pigeons, the millions of black gum splotches in the sidewalks, and the white 20-somethings.

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