NEILL BLOMKAMP TALKS ABOUT ALIENS

Neill Blomkamp (District 9) was invited to TEDxVancouver to give a talk about science fiction.  He sent in the video below.  He starts by saying he doesn’t think real aliens look like the ones in District 9, which turns into a 13 minute discussion of what alien civilizations and our own civilization may look like in the future.  Spoiler alert: we’re probably screwed.

The video of his talk went up a couple of days ago, and regardless of whether it contains the direction of his next/a future film (which I strongly feel it does) that he’s going to do, it’s a pretty captivating, theoretical science-driven vision of our universe, life on other planets, and the future of human civilization in a way that most of us probably haven’t ever thought of. [/film]

I like the cut of his jib.  Kind of a sidenote here, but does anyone else reflexively start tuning out when someone starts talking about Ray Kurzweil?  His predictions seem either totally obvious (e.g. his 1999 prediction that future students would be using portable computers weighing less than a pound, so just like the laptops we were already carrying to class, but lighter.  How does he do it?) or so far out there in a way humans would probably not allow technology to be taken so quickly.  One of his predictions is that a $1,000 personal computer will be 1,000 times more powerful than the human brain by 2029.  Sure.  Will I at least not have to type in CAPTCHA codes anymore then?