An Engineer Reviews Elysium

I walked out of the movie theater last night thinking that Elysium should give the engineering communities much to think about.  The Earth in 150-years looks like what we have all been discussing for years - adding another three billion people this century is  nine United States or two Chinas.  We are adding another million people to the planet every four days.  Elysium has the look and feel of a collective population that has forgotten where resources, like food, fuel, and water, were going to come from for an additional three billion. 

The Earth in 2154 looks bad.  Crowded, hot, and ugly.  Not one leg of the Triple Bottom Line in the context of sustainability has worked (The Elysium "platform" circling the Earth surely has like triple gold LEED certification).  One of my concerns is that Earth in 2154 looks bad because parts of Earth in 2013 looks even worse - the Earth scenes in Elysium were filmed in Mexico.  With a current population of seven billion, we already have a billion people going hungry.  Do the hungry math as we match toward 10 billion.  At some point, are the one-percenters really going to make the jump to the big gated community in the sky and the other 99% have to kind of figure it all out on their own?

Technology rules the movie.  Most of it is believable; some not.  Most of the technology will probably be available long before the end of this century.  From genetic advances in medicine to robotic security forces - - we are a people that just expects a much higher tech future.  Consider the following rundown of the technology in the movie:

• Robotic Police and Security - Technology and economics tackle this one.  The age of the local policeman retiring at 50-years old on 75% pay and free medical insurance intersects with huge leaps in robotics and artificial intelligence.  A robotic future is also a "full math" future - with the ability to add to, subtract from, divide by, and multiply a vast number of social, economic, political, and economic forces.  Disruptive with a capital "D."
• Robotic Disaster Response Crawlers - Rapidly already in place.  A future of increasingly climate change disasters will only enhance this movement.
• Drones - A given in the next years.  Will be able to track criminals as they run down streets and jump over fences.
• Weapon Systems - All the personal weapons systems in the movie will be available.  Way too much money and R&D efforts in weapons development not to have a science fiction/reality future..
• DIY Network Hacker Movements - Didn't we invent this in the 2000s?
• DIY Surgery - Maybe.  Online courses and YouTube are still probably not enough for open heart surgery.  This will not prevent people (note to future VC investors - show me the business plan and your tattoos - the guys and gals  with the tats can start businesses) like seen in the movie from inserting a variety of electronics in your body.
• The Curing Tanning Booth - Jump into something like a tanning booth and your cancer goes away.  This is the one that we all really want (and just reinforces the 10 billion problem) - but seems to be unlikely by 2154.  A great issue to think about - and probably the most unsustainable piece of technology in the movie. 
• Space Travel - We just need to get on with it.  We have been talking about this for 100-years.
• Brain Dumps - USB porting to everything in your head. Seems like we might have this ready by 2153.  This one has a high creepiness factor.
• National Identification System - Embedded in your skin.  Politics will drive this.  If we get into a lot of forced migration due to climate change or similar, look for this gaining traction.   
• DNA Tracking - For identification purposes.  Similar political context as above.
• Electro-Mechanical Skeleton Enhancements - Construction and manufacturing may be the leaders in this movement.  Productivity needs combined with more electrical/mechanical hybrid research and experts moves this along quickly.

The bottom line to me - in 2013, you walk out of the  movie theater thinking, "Looks like all this stuff will come true by 2154."  We seem to have developed a deep and lasting cultural commitment to technology advancements.  We don't see limits, we only see opportunities in terms of technology and innovation.  If you had gone back in time to 1800 and shown people the movie Apollo 13, you would have ended my with no takers on a space future (and probably hung in the local town square).  But our last 100-years, from the horse to Apple computer, has been the most remarkable 100-years of innovation, creativity, and engineering in human history.  We have come to expect the remarkable.  We have come to expect the remarkable from our engineers.

The Elysium space platforms is my primary concern.  We're not going into space in large numbers anytime soon.  Many space experts see this differently - from the Huffington Post:

"Actually building an Elysium-like space station would require some major advances in humanity's ability to live in space for an extended period of time and it might not be able to happen in 150 years, Uhran said.

"If you threw everything you had at it, could you reach a space station of the scale of Elysium in 150 years?" Uhran told Space.com. "That's a pretty tall order."

Scientists would need to develop a new kind of propulsion that could haul enough material into orbit to create a huge Elysium-like station. At the moment, chemical propulsion won't cut it. Nuclear propulsion could be a viable possibility eventually, but the idea isn't ready for prime time yet.

"In order to lift that much mass into orbit or even to go retrieve it from asteroids or mine it on the moon, you probably couldn't do it with chemical propulsion," Uhran said. "That's a lot of mass in that Elysium space station.""

The social/economic issues from the movie are also worth thinking about.  Mismanagement of the environment, overcrowding, income inequality, etc. - all themes of the movie.  I get the Spanish on Earth part - but French in space is another issue.  Why 2013 clothes in 2154?  Is Jody Foster's hairdo what we have to look forward to?  Will we look, act, talk, and dress differently in 2154?

Finally, from the current issue of the New Yorker.  The guys with the tattoos may not have the right answers, but at least they are thinking about the questions.  You never get to see the one-percenters of Elysium with the passion and interest of Max - this was too bad.  The people of Elysium should have been allowed a brief Q&A session with the engineering community.

"One thing the pod will not cure, however, is boredom, which must be the most common affliction among Elysians. Disease-free immortality is theirs, but who wants to spend eternity strolling a weedless lawn and picking out sashimi for lunch? From where I was sitting, heaven looked like hell, or, at best, like a long weekend in Bel Air, and the strangest aspect of Blomkamp’s film is his almost complete indifference to the place that bears its title. How come we never meet an Elysian family? Why not introduce an unwashed teen-ager who wants to lurk in his room and listen to old Anthrax LPs, or a wife so refulgent with good fortune, like Catherine Deneuve in “Belle de Jour,” that she can’t wait to nip back to the planet and get nasty with that guy from the tattoo parlor? The truth is that, as with Blomkamp’s previous movie, “District 9,” what stokes the drama is not satirical nicety but political wrath. The mighty should be pulled down from their seats, and that’s that. The only one of them who is allowed to be a major character is Delacourt (Jodie Foster), the Secretary of Defense, with a helmet of white-blond hair and the voice of a strangulated Brit. Foster is not the first actress you would choose to play a bringer of darkness, stripped of all moral intelligence, and you keep waiting for her to see the light, but it never comes to pass."