Brother, can you spare some time?
New Zealand writer-director made one of the all-time classic bioethics films, Gattaca, about the pursuit of genetic perfection. His latest is a thriller about life extension, In Time, with Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried. The premise is that the world overlords have developed a robber baron technology for controlling population growth in the year 2061.
New Zealand writer-director Andrew Niccol made one of the all-time classic bioethics films, Gattaca, about the pursuit of genetic perfection. His latest is a thriller about life extension, In Time, with Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried. The premise is that the world overlords have developed a robber baron technology for controlling population growth in the year 2061. As of your 25th birthday, you will die within exactly 365 days unless you acquire more time by working harder, going into debt or stealing it. Seconds are the new currency. A cup of coffee costs 4 minutes… The poor die young; the rich can aspire to fresh-faced immortality without ever ageing. Some critics have complained that the idea was great, but the execution imperfect. Still, it looks far more intellectually stimulating than watching Adam Sandler in another limp-as-week-old-lettuce comedy.
Michael Cook
enhancement
films
life extension
More Stories
Owner of castration website in UK found guilty of grievous bodily harm
“Enhancement” normally connotes adding powers beyond normal human functioning. However, there are dark kinds of enhancement which remove them. A...
Quebec man has two healthy fingers amputated to relieve ‘body integrity dysphoria’
Doctors amputated the healthy fourth and fifth fingers of the left hand of a 20-year-old Quebec man because he believed...
Is ‘heightism’ the last socially acceptable prejudice?
You may remember Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997 in the cabinet of President Bill Clinton. His distinguished career...
A boost for cryonics? After 46,000 years in Siberian permafrost, nematodes can revive
In a ground-breaking discovery published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS Genetics, scientists have found that tiny roundworms, known as nematodes,...
Faster, higher, stronger with drugs: the Enhanced Olympics
Marion Jones. Lance Armstrong. Ben Johnson. Tim Montgomery. Svetlana Podobedova. The list of drug cheats, athletes who were stripped of...
Do Americans support embryo testing for complex traits like IQ?
Americans are surprisingly supportive of embryo testing for traits such as intelligence, according to an article in the leading journal...