Westworld is seeking new borders

 

The HBO show Westworld is now running it’s second season on TV. Its got critics and fans hooked, as well as I think the makers of every other TV show out there. Ambitious, and growing with ideas, it seems the creators are surpassing their own limits of creativity. Although it still says it is inspired by Michael Crichton’s movie, that is where the current similarity ends. It has left the premises of the original movie script and is now going where no other TV show has gone before.

Awesome !

I was a little dissappointed at the end of the first season, when the show decided to kill off Robert Ford (Antony Hopkins),  the park’s surviving original creator. I took it as a sign that the writers had run out of ideas, and found this was the only way to shock the show’s viewers. Also, that turn was faithful to the Westworld movie. But as the majority of fans predicted, the show has decided to bring back Ford, in a new , much more powerful meta form. Add to it the presence of many other parks, including the Shogun world, and now the possibilities seem endless. I am sure even Michael Chrichton could not have predicted how these new generation of writers could have built on his original idea of broken-theme park. 

With every episode, the show not only puts forward new twists and spectacular acting, but also asks deep questions: on artificial intelligence, conscience, about playing god. The greater context of right and wrong, and cause and effect. And about life and death. I caught myself thinking if our world was also some kind of simulation controlled by a higher power….Bah ! Humbug !

The first season talked about conscience and becoming self aware. It was centered around Dolores, the oldest host in the park, and her attempt to understand her artificial world. But now the second season discusses artificial life, and life and death. The park creators are trying to come up with a way to beat death, by moving people's consciuosness into a sentient being, allowing the mind to live forever in an artificial casing.

These are not new ideas. Ever since sentient beings have died, others have wondered if there is way to beat death, and gain immortality. There are numerous legends of waters, fountains and prayers which provide immortality to the consumer. It now seems that modern and future technology could provide a way out.  Current technology can build the exoskeleton so simulate a human being, but without an intelligent mind with a personality, it is just a shell. Pretty sure somewhere out there , right now, somebody is investigating how the human mind can be captured in code.

I am hooked ! Looking forward eagerly to what new ideas these writers are going to through at us in the coming episodes. And what how far it’s new borders are.