Just saw a brand new movie, not yet released, "Speed of Life"

[Coventina]

Very thought-provoking sci-fi / kinda romance.

I won't say much about the plot, because I don't want to give too many spoilers.

It's a glimpse about 25 years into the future. It's kind of a more "benevolent" mash-up of 1984/Logan's Run.

Picture Alexa being government mandated, and monitoring absolutely EVERYTHING about your life, including what you excrete into the toilet. Tampering with or removing the devices is against the law. However, the devices are corporate, rather than government run. In other words, in the future we become almost literal corporate slaves.

The mandatory retirement into a government gulag at 60 I didn't buy, but the rest of it felt very plausible, if not inevitable.

Anyway, it's actually a lovely little story, very heartwarming at the core.

Themes of lost love, pondering life choices, and making peace with them are the central themes, against the sci-fi backdrop.

But, the lingering creep factor of the setting has stuck with me.

I don't have a smart phone, but more and more I am under incredible pressure to get one. So many things require having a smart phone now. It makes me want to dig in my heels even more. I want to avoid that future.

We keep inviting corporations to monitor and define everything for us. Where does it end?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. I likewise don't have a smart phone.

I haven't a clue what the actual numbers are, but I know other people with a cell phone, not a smart phone. A lot of people who have them think that they cannot possibly function without it, but the reality is that they've been sucked into the dependence.

The best example I can give is GPS. While GPS is wonderful, and I would not ever suggest we get rid of it, I've also seen too many examples of people with GPS who have totally lost any ability to read a map, and wind up having a lot of trouble getting somewhere because of the real limitations of GPS.

When I'm going somewhere that I don't already know the way to, I check out the route using Google Maps. I'll then make a few notes to make sure I get on the right roads, and off I go.

[Alien Symphony]

2. Thank you

This is a good movie.

Thanks

[hunter]

3. This one?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8353466/

https://www.speedoflifefilm.com/

My own electronic life is highly compartmentalized.

My cell phone is just a number people can call or text. It's completely disconnected from my e-mails, my internet hobbies and work, or anything else. It's pay-as-you go, and I buy refill cards wherever.

I'm sure various shady U.S. government and corporate agencies have connected this phone with the real world me, it's not exactly a "burner" phone, but I haven't noticed any creepy and overtly intrusive activity... yet.

My wife's work offered all sorts of "helpful" apps she could install on her personal phone but she said something like, "No, thanks. If you want me to use those apps, give me a separate work phone that has those apps pre-installed."

She was fully intending to leave that work phone locked in her desk at work whenever she wasn't working or on call.

They never did give her a phone, and my wife never installed their helpful apps on her personal phone.