On Rollerball and Brave New World
In response to a post about Bill Gates’ prediction about the future of American education, a reader writes:
I didn’t see “Rollerball” when the film was released in 1975. It is a dystopian film about the distant future in 2018. It is not so distant anymore.
Dystopian films and novels are warnings, not predictions.
I just finished re-reading Brave New World, which I must have read fifty years ago. There is so much about the novel I didn’t remember. It bears re-reading. I was struck by the planned rank-ordering of people. No need to test them to put them in their status as Alpha or Beta or Gamma or Epsilon. The rankings were selected at the time
| “Corporate society takes care of everything. And all it asks of anyone, all it’s ever asked of anyone ever, is not to interfere with management decisions.” – Rollerball (1975) |
Dystopian films and novels are warnings, not predictions.
I just finished re-reading Brave New World, which I must have read fifty years ago. There is so much about the novel I didn’t remember. It bears re-reading. I was struck by the planned rank-ordering of people. No need to test them to put them in their status as Alpha or Beta or Gamma or Epsilon. The rankings were selected at the time