Trailer: Is the Future Incorporated?
November 30, 2016
WHY WE CARE: Incorporated is a smart, psychological thriller set in the year 2074 where competing multinational corporations have unlimited power and unilateral control over employee lives. The story centers on Ben Larson (Teale), an ambitious executive who conceals his true identity to survive as a company man until a turn of events forces him to jeopardize his position at great peril. Enhanced by a sleek, inventive production design offering plausible near-future technology, the series tangles with such resonant themes as strictly enforced societal castes and privilege, eroding rights, and lost privacy imposed by digital tracking. It reads more like a cautionary tale than escapist sci-fi, which makes it all the more compelling.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
December 1, 2016 at 7:36 am
Film director “Ridley Scott” has stated on numerous occasions that corporations will step in to do things in the future which governments will be unwilling or unable to do (perhaps this point of view comes from his business dealings in Hollywood)
In 1979, Ridley Scott released the scifi-horror movie titled “Alien” where we learn that the commercial spacecraft Nostromo (owned by “The Company”) is ordered to investigate alien technology on the planet LV-426. The real horror here is not the creature. It is the fact that a corporation appears to be willing to do anything in order to make a buck developing military technology based upon that Alien.
p.s. in later movies this becomes the Weyland corporation.
In 1982, Ridley Scott released the distopic sci-fi thriller “Blade Runner” which was the director’s interpretation of “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick. Here we learn that the Tyrell Corporation has created human-like technology (The Replicants) but treats them like slaves “in the off-world colonies” (and the Replicants don’t like it). Tyrell wants to make them more-human-than-human but they will still be slaves. The horror here is that the audience begins to identify with the replicants (believing that human rights could just as easily be dismissed by corporations)
December 1, 2016 at 12:19 pm
I would strongly recommend the first four seasons of “Continuum”, the Canadian time travel Sci-Fi. (Although you probably won’t take the advise, I would strongly recommend skipping the fifth, rushed partial season. Consider yourself warned.)
You actually don’t see a great deal of the future, mostly just a couple of minutes at the beginning of each episode that help give you a clearer idea who the main character is, but the future incorporated, with a “corporate congress” after a failed democracy. Really good acting, particularly from the woman playing Kira, interesting, surprising episode plots in a story with a well-designed arc. I burned through the series then got my wife hooked and saw it with her.
I’m also a fan of time travel sci-fil series Babylon 5 and 12 Monkeys, the last of which is still going. The first is from the 1990s. Interestingly, both really take off in their second season. Time travel plays a crucial role in the five season arc of Babylon 5, but it takes place in only a few episodes. Four, I believe.
For those who are interested, Bab 5 seems consistent with the Novikov self-consistency principle posited in the 1980s where a self-consistent timeline is subject to constructive quantum interference (lending itself to benign forms of grandfather paradox), a bit like the “quantum walk” responsible for efficient energy transfer in photosynthesis. Outside of that, time travel is probably best seen as a metaphor that may act as a lens for understanding the role of choice in human existence, where the alternatives between which we choose are viewed as if they were fully-realized concrete actualities.
December 3, 2016 at 12:18 pm
Unless I am mis-remembering, I don’t remember any time travel in Babylon 5. I do remember some flashback sequences during the retelling of some stories (like early conflicts between the Shadows and the First Ones which include the Vorlons). Could you elaborate further?