Want to have your mind expanded? Or completely blown? "Year Million" takes a look at how the future might play out, given the current status of technologies and real concerns about quality of life.
Sci-fi writers make their money thinking about the future and hypothesizing about how future existence might look if technologies and trends were carried to their logical conclusions. This show looks to "a far future" and asks viewers to consider some surprising and startling possibilities.
In the first two episodes of this mini-series, we consider the dramatic changes that advances in robotics will bring. Our culture can expect significant changes in the next twenty years; but what might occur in hundreds of years? Will robots replace many humans? Will they threaten the existence of humans? Will they merge with humans?
Also considered are the consequences of medical research that promises longer life spans. Nanotechnology may eventually promise near immortality. Genetic advances may promise designer children. The combining of human and machine may blur our definitions of humanity, especially if the contents of the human brain can be digitized.
Will people be able to download the contents of their brains into robotic bodies? Will people be able to visit or actually live in digitized (virtual) worlds? Will cryogenics allow people to be reanimated in the future, when medical advances allow more choices or a cure for disease?
Will off-world travel and colonization be the salvation of mankind?
With any new technology comes new ethical questions. Will technology advance faster than the ethical systems designed to deal with them? Will we be able to retain what makes us human? Do we know exactly what those things are?
"Year Million" is both exciting and scary. A fantastic voice over facilitates the journey through a myriad of musings and questions.
