Transcendence - Movie Review

I know it's been a long time since I wrote on my blog.  A whole three months worth of inactivity.  I guess I was busy because I procrastinated and had to finish work.  Plus I was studying for some AP Exams.  So I guess that's a lesson to not procrastinate and such.  I do have a lot more time now that I'm not in high school.

During April vacation, I watched Transcendence at the movies with three friends.  I guess we all liked it.  I also watched this a while ago so I don't remember all the details that well.  Also don't expect this to be spoiler free because this is a movie review done by someone who already watched it.  I also wanted to complete this a long time ago but I didn't get to until now.

Although I've never done a movie review before, I don't be giving those numerical scores to movies because it's kind of silly to me.  I mean, if you have a number scale it should be universal but this kind of material is subjective - so scores are also out of the question here.

What I really liked about Transcendence was that it was very though provoking.  It wasn't like a I am Robot, saying that technology will be the bane of human existence.  Its message was more like, "If you get too focused on fixing the world with technology, you miss out on a lot in life."  This was evident because technology was very prevalent and was used throughout the beginning of the movie.  When Dr.Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is uploaded into the computer, he eventually makes amazing advances in technology.  It seems like Caster is altruistic and things should be fine until the other characters realize that the healed people basically have Caster uploaded into their brains.  Apparently others cannot think for themselves or it is inefficient to do something like that if "advances" are to be made.  However these "advances" were in name only because the healed people, who controlled by Caster, were not conscious that they were healed.  In the somewhat tragic downfall of the uploaded Caster, Caster makes himself a body so he could be with Evelyn, his wife but he is finally shut off by the virus nanobots that Evelyn has.  All of the movie events Caster was in seemed like a waste when he was trying to make Evelyn happy but in almost all the wrong ways possible ways.

There was one thing I didn't get: why Dr. Will Caster had to look like a hipster.  Well, that was when Caster had his glasses on.  That probably bugged the frick out of my friend (since he made an incensed comment about how horrible Peter Parker looked in The Amazing Spider Man 2 with a hipster hairdo).  If they think that the hipster look made Caster smart, the movie people were wrong.  Hipsters are known to have vanity issues or identity complexes ... now that I'm thinking about it, the hipster look does fit Caster because of that.

I just looked at the ratings for Transcendence and there were pretty low... 3/5 star rating low.  I could see why - it did have a lot of logical problems.  For instance, Caster at one point in the movie knew that the anti-tech people were trying to implant a computer virus.  Yet at the end, Caster lets Evelyn into the super computer place and heals her, which lets the virus inside Evelyn into Caster and end him.  (I just realized that angry critics could use this as a STD joke.)  There was that kind of little things that would make this movie perfect for counting "movie sins" in another YouTube episode of "Everything Wrong with Transcendence."

An interesting not is that this movie is difficult for those religiously conservative people, especially of a monotheistic religion, to get very upset about the movie's content.  The movie, in my perspective, didn't encourage people to value technology over personal worth or anything like that.  I thought the movie had more of an attitude of: "You can have as much technology as you want but feel very empty inside of yourself."

Despite all of this, this was a good movie that would have lots of good discussion topics dealing with advances in technology vs. human nature and things like that.
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Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Transcendence2014Poster.jpg

Not the Death but The Decline of Camcorders

Technology has always been changing often replacing the old with the new.  One doesn't have to look far back into recent history to see this way of the technology industry.  An excellent example of this is the smartphone, which has not only changed the way people see and use their cellphones but also even changed other technology markets.  Some technology have declined with the rise of smartphones.  Devices that have declined due to mobile technology are cameras, especially the DSLRs, voice recorders; and camcorders.  Certainly the average person doesn't go out and buy these "declining" devices.  Only people who really need them would get these less popular devices.  However just because the demand for a device is declining doesn't necessarily mean that it is or will be obsolete.  The persistence of camcorders is the most pertinent here.

Camcorders have been around since I could remember.  I remember watching America's Funniest Home Videos in the afternoon when I was in third grade (around 2004).  I always remembered that I always wanted one because I could see that other people could record cool content with camcorders.  Although I've never had a camcorder, I know they have their pros.  Camcorders are good for what they were made for: recording videos.  So there's no fear that a recorded video can only be 20 or so minutes long.  Also, camcorders are not really limited by their video quality, memory space, or battery life on one charge compared to more convenient video recording on devices like the iPhone.

For those who think that everyday video recording can be replaced by all-in-one machines (a.k.a. smartphones), think again because this case, multipurpose devices with video in them almost always have compromises to make everything fit into one convenient package, such as the iPhone.  Despite what is stated on the gung-ho info page on the iSight Camera on the iPhone 5S, the iPhone is nothing compared to dedicated camera - even a point and shoot one.  Remember that what you see on that iSight website was the iPhone only its best, which means that the pictures could only get worse than that marketing bullcrap.  Besides I've only seen my vulgar classmates use iPhone cameras to post selfies with as many people for Snapchat and those pictures are really horrible in everything technical about a digital photo, from quality to lighting.  Besides, how much can the iPhone camera improve since it still has an 8MP camera since the iPhone 4S.  Other than some very fine details, software has made the iPhone camera better compared to the hardware itself.

The decreasing popularity of a device doesn't mean that the device is useless.  For example, radio isn't the first form of media most people go to when given the choice.  There's the TV and Internet, which are more appealing than the radio because the TV and web are very visual.  Yet that doesn't take the usefulness of the radio, especially in the car or when the TV and the Internet are unavailable.  Similarly, the recent audience for camcorders have dwindled down to the ones who really are looking for a camcorder and not those who get one just because "everyone else has one."  It all goes down to functionality and specifications - just how many purposes a device can have and how well does the device do each function.  Despite smartphones winning over in functionality with their multitude of uses, the camcorder is victorious in video recording by a lot.

Camcorders are not so popular as they used to be.  Since smartphones are becoming more widespread now the use of camcorders have fallen significantly, along with many related and similar technology.  However camcorders still survive because of the niche audience who really wants or needs the functionality of a camcorder over, say, an iPhone camera.  Devices in technology should always be looked at both their aspects in function as well as specifications before deciding how popular or disused they are.