West World
I watched this movie yesterday on the free Movieland streaming channel. I had seen it back in 1973 and thought another view might be interesting.
The movie was science fiction fantasy back then, It was about the ultimate vacation ground where people could go for a dream vacation in a setting as a medieval king in a castle or as a Roman senator living indulgently or as an 1882 western gunslinger. Either fantasy chosen included all the sex and violence one cared to do. That is until things went horribly wrong.
Watching a 47 year old movie, with the perspective of now in 2020, I was astounded over how a science fiction movie then has become our future. The robots in the movie had artificial intelligence long before there was such a thing. When the robots started having violent human killing software breakdowns that were unexplained then, now I see it was the malicious software of today. Everything that happened during the dream vacations was captured on video, now in 2020 we are living in an age when Google, Facebook and our own telephones record everything we do, just like in George Orwell's 1947 book "1984" when big brother had video surveillance of everyone, everywhere and it also recorded conversations.
I am continually amazed at how science-fiction writers manage to see so far into the future and get things correctly. I am now thinking of the Buck Rogers comic books of the thirties with spaceships going to the moon. How did that writer think of that?
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