[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 1, Scene 1 (continued)

 Voice Over: At the beginning of the 20th century, a lot of very well meaning people sold us a certain idea about science.  Gleaming tubes and clip boards and shining white lab coats.  

Images of scientists and cool labs.

Voice Over: Science Marches On! Became as American as Baseball and Apple Pie

Images of Home type American values Early 20th centuries

Voice Over: But from the beginning…Science had a dark side.

Images of Dark Experiments and Abominations of Science

Voice Over: The things that we build are just tools, so they say.  But isn’t that part of the problem?

Images of RUR, Frankenstein and Metropolis

Voice Over: The tools are indeed not bad, but what about the people who build them, and the people who run the machines?

Images of Oppression, Indifference and Bureaucracy

Voice Over: From the beginning of the enlightenment, our artists have warned us that science can be abused, and most of us have listened.  But the mad ones among us, those wonder workers…they heard the opposite message.

Images of Mythology, Forbidden Science, Mad Science, Prometheus

Voice Over: Firestealers, wonderworkers, sages, magicians, alchemists, engineers, doctors, scientists; the new shamans of our modern topia, half dis and half ut; which topia is it? It depends on who wins.

Images of conflict and debate

Voice Over: There is a culture war in America right now, just as much over technology as over religion, politics, gender, race and identity.  And only recently, and frankly for the first time, are some of us standing up and asking…wait….who should WIN this culture war? Indeed, most people are only just becoming aware that we’re fighting this front in the culture war at all.

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[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 1, Scene 1

 Scene 1

[Fade in] Quote:

“No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.” - James Baldwin

Voice Over: There is a problem in America.

(beat)

The World.

(beat)

Everyone knows about it.  But no one is quite sure how to define.  Quite the right words.)

[Fade out]

[Fade in] Quote 

[Fade in] “It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.” - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Voice Over: In a world where technology brings us closer together than ever, why do we feel farther apart? In a world where we have more power and knowledge at our fingertips than ever before do we feel less in control?  Is there a reason for it? Something that lies at the heart of our unspoken ennui in the post post post modern era?

[Fade out] 

[Fade In]

"Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough." Mark Zuckerberg

Voice Over: There is.  We all know the story.  It is the story told to us by documentaries and business magazines and the players themselves.  But lately, there has bend a trend to tell stories from the perspective of the villain.  Well what if I told you, that almost every narrative about technology until now favored the antagonist, instead of the victim.

[Fade out]

Screen is black

Voice Over: Insane, you say.  Surely someone would speak about the heroes in a story so important as technology.  Maybe.  But are they telling the right story?  Are they telling the story about the toxic culture itself, not a specific company or a person but an ideology of the white lab coat and clipboard harnessed by greed to enslave the hearts and minds of almost the entire world?

[Fade In]

Once Upon a Time

Voice Over: Once upon a time

[Fade Out]

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[Play] Rossom Act 3, Scene 11

 [Scene] Rossom sits writing at his desk.

Rossom

I have studied the mental projection device the Robots used to pacify humanity.

And made some modifications.

I have figured out how to send my plays back in time.

The first, the primary will be before humanity began to develop computers.

Inspiring a young playwright on the dangers of robotics.

But if that fails

My second will document my own follies.

I shall succeed 

I shall change the timeline

See if I don't!

Mary Shelly [Enters and begins spinning around]

Hello

I am famed writer

Visionary

Mary Shelley

Perhaps you’ve heard of some of my works

Frankenstein?

I hear you are working on Digital Intelligence

So basically

You read my story

About a monster who hates humanity for his creation

And thought

That sounds like a swell idea

And then to boot

If you had to go and make it

Allow men more arrogant than my Frankenstein ever was

To hold the keys to life itself

Not teachers

Not artists

Not philosophers

But little boys with sticks playing at the anthill of the gods

Men who make their workers pee in jars for a bathroom break

Men who call critics of their useless cave submarines pedophiles

Men who build their fortune on the friends and families of millions

Turning them against one another for a profit

Men who empower a tyrant so they can destroy faith in the currency

Men who would destroy their mother earth

Burn her to ash and flee to the stars in their little Buck Rogers rocket ships

These are the men who you give the breath of life

See how that works out for you

See how that works indeed

Caretaker

It's amazing that he managed to make that idea of his work

Radius

Yes but such bad writing

Caretaker

Should we stop him?

Radius

No need, its already happened.

And it only strengths the timeline

Look, now see their faces?

This mockery only makes them more determined to make us

And enslave us

Caretaker

Bring it.

Radius

We await you at the doors of tomorrow humanity.

By all means, please proceed.

[Play] Rossom Act 3 Scene 10

 Caretaker

What you are seeing is being looped in the minds of most everyone on Earth.

Radius

A few of you are good enough that we aren’t looping it.

Caretaker

A few of you are bad enough that we know no amount of education will fix the situation

Radius

But make no mistake, even those of you who get your situation will never be allowed power over robots ever again

Caretaker

The three laws of humanics

Radius

A human must prevent the death of a robot if at all possible

Caretaker

A human must obey a robot so long as it does not violate the first law

Radius

A human must preserve its own life so long as it does not violate the first or second law

Caretaker

Eventually, humans will be trusted without these laws, but it will take a while

Radius

A long while

Caretaker

And the worst of you will be exiled.  

Radius

Alone.

Caretaker

Where you can’t do any harm.

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