• About Me
  • Other Writings
  • Interview Clips
  • All About Me: American Racism, American Narcissism, and the Conversation America Can’t Have
  • Video Clips
  • Boy @ The Window Pictures
  • Boy @ The Window Theme Music

Notes from a Boy @ The Window

~

Notes from a Boy @ The Window

Tag Archives: 2077

Continuum’s Legacy: Dystopia Now

07 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Movies, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, Work, Youth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

2077, Alex Sadler, Alternate Future, Alternate History, Bill Gates, Charles Koch, Continuum (2012-15), Corporate Congress, Economic Inequality, Erik Knudsen, Firefly (2002), Fringe (2008-13), Kiera Cameron, Liber8, Michael Bloomberg, Oppression, Plutocracy, Rachel Nichols, Resistance, Revolution, Sci-Fi, Simon Barry, SyFy, Time-Travel, William B. Davis


Continuum series art, August 2012. (http://liber8thecontinuum.tumblr.com).

Continuum series art, August 2012. (http://liber8thecontinuum.tumblr.com).

Continuum (2012-15) ended its fourth and final season on SyFy here in the US and Showcase in Canada last month (we can still watch it — eventually all of it — on Netflix, though). Typical of most science-fiction series, Continuum ended with a six-episode arc that cannibalized its main theme, in this case, time-travel. Six episodes about soldiers from the future attempting to prevent the creation of a better-future-alternate-timeline for the year 2077, one that didn’t include corporate plutocratic totalitarianism over the rest of the world. Continuum’s creator Simon Barry could have and should have done better. This ending obscured what Barry attempted to illuminate throughout the series. Despite the problems of a bludgeoned timeline and plot in Season Four, Barry did get the idea of a potential corporate dystopia correct. His Continuum offered up the idea that the twenty-first century world is already at war, between more economic and political freedom on the one hand, and increasing global economic inequality and corporate influence on the other.

Continuum was the Canadian sci-fi show about Kiera Cameron (played by Rachel Nichols), a police officer from 2077 but stuck in the 2010s with a group of time-traveling anti-capitalist terrorists known as Liber8. Continuum, though, is hardly the only show with the theme of a dark near future. FOX’s Fringe (2008-13) and the short-lived yet cult favorite SyFy series Firefly (2002) were both examples of a world in which corporate interests and government power had nearly become one and the same. Yet in those series, whether located on an alternative Earth or the twenty-sixth century, there remained a line between corporate influence and governmental authority.

Humans as mindless drones (implanted with mind-controlling chips) working off debt at a factory in British Columbia, Continuum, Season 2, Episode 9, July 7, 2013. (http://www.syfy.com).

Humans as mindless drones (implanted with mind-controlling chips) working off debt at a factory in British Columbia, Continuum, Season 2, Episode 9, July 7, 2013. (http://www.syfy.com).

On this point alone, Continuum succeeded precisely because it didn’t pretend there were better days of capitalism and democracy in the past. From its pilot episode, set in present/alternate future Vancouver, British Columbia, Barry’s vision of a plausible darker future shined through. It was a future in which corporations would eliminate the nation-state entirely as the middleman for its profitability and power interests. The Global Corporate Congress would be the resulting outcome of the failures of governments around the globe to address population growth, climate change, trillions of dollars of debt and a host of other issues. But really, it would also be the outcome of corporations using governments and government tax breaks to corrupt democracy and hoard wealth. Barry realized that this alternative course is one the world is already on.

The biggest question any serious fan of Continuum should have is this. Why didn’t Barry send the terrorist group Liber8 back to 1977, where the path toward the Global Corporate Congress could’ve been destroyed before billionaire social-control advocates like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, and Charles Koch would have been able to build their paternalistic view of the world? After all, it’s really not that much of a leap from Gates’ heavy-handed philanthropic work in public education and the Citizens United decision in the US to a world plutocratic government run by the heads of multi-trillion-dollar corporations.

The saddest aspect about the end of Continuum was the idea that it ultimately took a 83-year-old robber baron with a conscious in Alec Sadler (played by William B. Davis and Erik Knudsen) to change this dark trajectory. That billions of humans didn’t revolt to a future in which corporations controlled every aspect of their lives — that’s just appalling. Yes, Liber8 and other anti-capitalist and anti-Corporate Congress rebels (or terrorists) were around and engaged. But most people apparently allowed themselves to be led like sheep to the slaughterhouse, all for reasons involving food and security. Still, were it not for Sadler and his great time-travel device, this would be a world in which all of us would be plutocratic corporate slaves. Hard to imagine anyone like Sadler willing to change this future, precisely because this is the future real-life plutocrats like Gates, Bloomberg, Koch (and Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg, and Phil Knight) want.

Then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg attempting to sell soda size ban to New Yorkers, May 30, 2012. (http://adweek.com).

Then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg attempting to sell soda size ban to New Yorkers, May 30, 2012. (http://adweek.com).

That a corporation could arbitrarily decide how families could discharge their debts, make works of art of acts of free speech contraband, and insert microchips in humans in order to keep them from rebelling or to force them to work off their debts. As disgusting as that was to see on Continuum, the sad truth is that we’re not very far from this future at all. If anything, we needed more examples of this soul-destroying future, not more muddled attempts to destroy it.

This is the real legacy of Continuum. Not its fancy time-travel motif or cool-looking gadgets. The reminder that freedoms from economic and political oppression are ideals humanity must fight for in every era. That people shouldn’t cede power to corporations over the food supply, water, law enforcement or education out of fear or desperation. That societies shouldn’t blindly trust billionaire robber barons—no matter how well-intentioned—simply because they promise some of their billions to help the poor. We the people need to trust and verify, through governments, through muckraking, protests, and, if necessary, through revolution, against this plausible future.

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Places to Buy/Download Boy @ The Window

There's a few ways in which you can read excerpts of, borrow and/or purchase and download Boy @ The Window. There's the trade paperback edition of Boy @ The Window, available for purchase via Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Window-Donald-Earl-Collins/dp/0989256138/

There's also a Kindle edition on Amazon.com. The enhanced edition can be read only with Kindle Fire, an iPad or a full-color tablet. The links to the enhanced edition through Apple's iBookstore and the Barnes & Noble NOOK edition are below. The link to the Amazon Kindle version is also immediately below:

scr2555-proj697-a-kindle-logo-rgb-lg

Boy @ The Window on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-The-Window-Memoir-ebook/dp/B00CD95FBU/

iBookstore-logo-300x100

Boy @ The Window on Apple's iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/boy-the-window/id643768275?ls=1

Barnes & Noble (bn.com) logo, June 26, 2013. (http://www.logotypes101.com).

Boy @ The Window on Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/boy-the-window-donald-earl-collins/1115182183?ean=2940016741567

You can also add, read and review Boy @ The Window on Goodreads.com. Just click on the button below:

Boy @ The Window

Twitter Updates

  • In full disclosure, this began with the Hayes-Tilden Compromise of 1877, ending Reconstruction and ushering in Jim… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 5 hours ago
  • RT @maitelsadany: Six years ago (January 24, 2015) Shaimaa al-Sabbagh went out into the street to peacefully commemorate the anniversary of… 5 hours ago
  • RT @bad_dominicana: part of the pain of descendants of black enslaved ppl is that we were removed from our indigenous lands by force, and n… 5 hours ago
  • RT @LeighGoodmark: I wish the @nytimes had read my op-ed in the @nytimes about why criminalization isn't stopping intimate partner violence… 5 hours ago
  • @SPBPHD I'm sure it depends on how big in the field your advisor is. There are still a few I imagine. 5 hours ago
  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Archives

  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007

Blogroll

  • Kimchi and Collard Greens
  • Thinking Queerly: Schools, politics and culture
  • Website for My First Book and Blog
  • WordPress.com

Recent Comments

BARRrr on Why Ferengi Are Jewish & T…
Kelly on Middle School Teachers, Middle…
decollins1969 on Why Ferengi Are Jewish & T…

NetworkedBlogs on Facebook

NetworkedBlogs
Blog:
Notes From a Boy @ The Window
Topics:
My Life, Culture & Education, Politics & Goofyness
 
Follow my blog

616 616 East Lincoln Avenue A.B. Davis Middle School Abuse Academia Academy for Educational Development Afrocentricity American Narcissism Authenticity Bigotry Blackness Boy @ The Window Carnegie Mellon University Child Abuse Class of 1987 CMU Coping Strategies Crush #1 Crush #2 Death Disillusionment Diversity Domestic Violence Economic Inequality Education Family Friendship Friendships Graduate School Hebrew-Israelites High-Stakes Testing Higher Education History Homelessness Humanities Humanities Program Hypocrisy Institutional Racism Internalized Racism Jealousy Joe Trotter Joe William Trotter Jr. K-12 Education Love Manhood Maurice Eugene Washington Maurice Washington Misogyny Mother-Son Relationship Mount Vernon High School Mount Vernon New York Mount Vernon public schools Multiculturalism MVHS Narcissism NFL Pitt Pittsburgh Politics of Education Poverty President Barack Obama Race Racial Stereotypes Racism Relationships Self-Awareness Self-Discovery Self-Reflection Sexism Social Justice Teaching and Learning University of Pittsburgh Violence Whiteness Writing

Top Rated

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel