Name: “Devs” creator Alex Garland compares U.S. tech companies to monarchies
Uploaded: 2020-03-30
Duration: 4 min 57 s
Description: FX's new offering delves into quantum computing and the idea of free will.

[ SOUND ] I want you to join Devs. Devs? What is Devs? Say a Sci- Fi tech thriller, set in the world of Silicon Valley just outside of San Francisco. It's sort of based around this new form of computing that's In the process of arriving, which is quantum computing, which allows for kind of staggering amounts of processing power, and that combined with very, very big data. It was trying to get my head around. ideas to do with determinism. Which is an area of philosophy that stems from science in a way and counter mechanics which is the sort of underlying state of of everything it's like a very very good account it seems of how everything functions. I tried to get engaged in. Sort of when it goes into philosophical questions that philosophical questions that flow directly from science. It's the less sort of vague as [ UNKNOWN ] and philosophy and the more sort of concrete and which is like, well, if you don't have free will are responsible? Can you do anything bad, like where does morality sit In that scale, that kinda thing. I read about science or history or whatever it happens to be and at a certain point I feel like, okay, I've sort of gotten around this principle. And at the point I feel I understand it, that's when the story arrives. [ MUSIC ] The basic principle in terms of the sort of overall esthetic of the show Was that it was taking place in our world. So sticking a camera on San Francisco, that would be the same San Francisco that you know, it's not like people have flying cars or teleportation devices. It's, it's our world right here and now at the other end of the scale, away from that kind of gritty reality You've got this quantum computer lab, which is doing some very strange intense work. The idea was the closer we got to the scientific heart of the story, the more magical, and displaced, and mysterious the imagery got. And part of that was just to do with my own personal sense of science, that it's often seen as a kind of arrogant part of human endeavor where people say we know all the answers, and anyone who disagrees with us is stupid and wrong. And, and actually, my sense of science is the scientists have a lot of humility in many ways. It seems to me one of the only areas of life where someone could work on something for ten years then have that theory disproved. And then they abandon their theory it's like it's wrong and they move on. Usually what we do is we ignore contradictory evidence to our police and just carry on exactly as we did before. And the other thing is that science I think is seen as kind of dry and arid and antiseptic. And again, my sense of it is that it's very poetic and kind of beautiful. So, an account of black holes or quasars or pulsars, or the way photosynthesis works as a kind of embedded beauty And embedded lyricism. So I guess it's an attempt to sort of visually represent that. There's nothing oppositional about science and nature. There can be something opposition in the way that science gets used for technology and then technology uses fossil fuels and that could be an opposition to nature. But science is actually just an attempt to understand the way the world works. I think we live in a world which is partially dominated by the power of quite a small group of very, very, very big tech companies in your country. After your revolution you put in place a very brilliantly constructed Set of checks and balances, which were, in a way, designed to avoid monarchies. In some respects, these tech companies are like monarchies, and they don't have the same sets of checks and balances. There are areas within the corporations That are doing things that are extraordinarily ambitious and if they were to be achieved, would be not just life changing, but paradigm changing. It's not that I mind the power exisiting. What I mind is the lack of regulation Because unchecked power typically causes big, big problems. [ MUSIC ]

FX's new offering delves into quantum computing and the idea of free will.

“Devs” creator Alex Garland compares U.S. tech companies to monarchies

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FX's new offering delves into the idea of free will.