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Transcendent Man - Is the singularity near?
(by rsherfan) on 8/03/2011, 1:48pm		   

Been waiting for Transcendent Man to be released to the rest of the world for a long time now - perhaps over a year of waiting actually - and finally on 1st March (ended up being the morning of the 3rd of March due to time differences between US and Aus) - finally my download ticket came through and I got the 720p 1.8Gb file.

If you've been following Ray Kurzweil for a while, you may be a bit disappointed to find that it is quite simply an ample regurgitation of all his publicly available works albeit concentrated and presented with very nice animation and voiceover work by Ray himself. The rest of the documentation explores his own life, the life of his father and a handful of prominent supporters and nay sayers that either support his claims or fervently dismiss them.

I watched it first by myself as I couldn't wait. Was in the middle of a work-day but I didn't give a shit --- after that I showed it to my parents who were immediately intrigued... however once he started talking about

[SPOILER ALERT]
downloading consciousness into machines and machines in the future being able to generate in real time virtual beings that sound and look and interact with us as if they were human and flying through virtual reality and having outer body experiences
[/SPOILER ALERT]

they started to laugh at him and just started to dismiss the whole film (to my disappointment).

If I could have edited the movie I would have removed some of the more sensational / out there material and perhaps put it in an addendum and simply expanded some of the more "here and now" plausible explanations of GNR and life extension that feel more real and it isn't as far fetched as some of the later part of the documentary. Although it glosses over GNR and doesn't really delve into it - I felt like the film could have done so much more than simply re-present his current works. Kind of like Stephen Hawking's The Grand Design which I read a few months earlier - there was so much new material it was a very very satisfying read, even though I didn't quite understand everything - I understood enough to be appreciative and amazed. With Transcendent Man, even though it provided an amazing journey, it felt like it was a repeated journey if you've watched videos of Ray's speeches on TED and read his articles on-line.

About the only thing that was further insight into Ray was

[SPOILER ALERT]
his apparent self-obsession against death and the relationship he had with his father and how he plans to bring him back virtually once the technology becomes available
[/SPOILER ALERT]

this recurring "demon" started to become quite annoying to me. Even though it may have been a part of Ray's character, judging by his previous speeches and writings, it seems quite over represented and it did very much ruin the latter part of the documentary for both my mother, father and aunt with whom I enjoyed the company of watching it a 2nd time.

Some people wouldn't give 2 hoots about this documentary, of course, so it's not for everyone. My gf is a medical scientist at rpa and she's doing cell research into cures for various things. She fell asleep, literally, watching this movie. Guess she is just not interested in it. The irony!!! considering her line of work. She's more interested in stuff like My Kitchen Rules!

So, if you are undecided on this film, just watch one of Ray's vids on TED and then work out if you'd like a more elaborate docco about the same stuff. I don't regret watching it, in fact it was $15 well spent (yep, that's how much it cost me for a digital downie). But of course I had very high expectations of the film... and I guess I wanted a whole heap of new stuff. It didn't quite deliver on that.



NOTE: The above is the 2011 version of the Transcendent Man trailer, which shows more elaborate footage from the actual film. The previous trailer showed slightly different material. There seemed to be material that was omitted from the 2011 release or just left on the cutting room floor so-to-speak, such as Anthony Robbin's interview which is clearly shown in the original Trailer. Anthony Robbins isn't anywhere in the 2011 version of the documentary.

 
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