From Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies by Andrew Maynard
“They are armed, and I’d like them dead.”
―Carlisle
On September 17, 2011, a small group of social activists occupied
Zuccotti Park in New York City. The occupation became the
spearhead for the global “Occupy” movement, protesting a growing
disparity between “haves” and “have-nots” within society. Two
years later, the movie Elysium built on this movement as it sought
to reveal the potential injustices of a technologically sophisticated
future where a small group of elites live in decadent luxury at the
expense of the poor.
Elysium is, it has to be said, a rather earnest movie. It deals with big
social issues, and it takes itself very seriously—to the point where
its overly simplistic portrayals of technological innovation and
greed-driven social inequality are accompanied by equally simplistic
solutions. And yet, for all this, it’s a movie that shines a light on the
potential dangers of new technologies benefitting the rich at the
expense of the poor. It also showcases some cool tech which, while
implausible in how it’s portrayed in the film, nevertheless reflects
some quite amazing developments in the real world.
In 2011, just a few months before Occupy Wall Street moved into
Zuccotti Park, the economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote in Vanity Fair:
“The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations,
the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing
that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding
that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.
Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent
eventually do learn. Too late.”[^66]
Stiglitz foreshadowed the Occupy movement, but he also touched
on a deeper truth that has resonated through history—that, while
there is a natural tendency for the rich to live at the expense of the
poor, this is a recipe for social and economic disaster in the long
term. And while he didn’t explicitly call out the potential impacts
of emerging technologies on social inequity, it’s hard to ignore
the ways in which science and technology can, if not developed
and used responsibly, deepen the divide between those who live
comfortable, privileged lives, and those who do not.
This is a theme that the movie Elysium piles on in spades. In the
film, the rich are pampered by every conceivable technological
innovation, living lives of luxury in grand mansions on a Beverly
Hills-like space habitat, looked after by subservient AI robots, and
living long, healthy lives in perfect bodies, courtesy of home-based
medical pods that can cure every ill and erase every blemish. In
contrast, the poor have inherited an Earth that has none of these
advantages, and instead feels more like the impoverished slums of
a Brazilian favela, or some of the less salubrious parts of LA. And
rather than being served by technology, these communities are
suppressed by it.
Elysium is driven by the social inequities that are sustained and
magnified by these technological disparities. But it’s the medical
pods that lie at the heart of this tale of the 1 percent versus the 99
percent. These pods can seemingly detect any illness or injury in a
patient and treat it in seconds, even down to reconstructing human
tissue and bone. It’s a dream technology that, in the movie, has
conquered sickness and disease, and made permanent injuries a
thing of the past. But it’s also a technology that’s only available to
citizens of Elysium, the orbiting space habitat that gives the movie
its title. Everyone else left on Earth is destined to grapple with
outdated technologies and with disease, injury, and death, living
The medical technology in Elysium is very much used as a metaphor
for how technological capabilities in the hands of a few people can
amplify the power they have over others. I’m not sure the medical
pods are meant to be a realistic portrayal of a future technology,
and to be clear, they are not scientifically plausible. Rather, I suspect
that they represent an extreme that drives home the message that
powerful technologies come with great social responsibility. And
yet as we’ll see, scientifically implausible as they are, these pods
echo some quite amazing developments in 3-D tissue and organ
construction in the real world that are beginning to radically
challenge how we think about some forms of medical treatment.
As Elysium opens, we’re introduced to Max (played by Maxwell
Perry Cotton as a child), a young orphan living in the future slums
of Los Angeles, looking up into the sky toward a massive toroidal
space habitat. This is Elysium, a technologically advanced spaceorbital where the uber-rich live in opulent luxury, surrounded
by technologies that keeps them disease-free, secure, and deeply
pampered. In contrast, the “99 percent” who are left on Earth live
in dirt, poverty, and misery, working long, hard hours under the
watchful eye of zero-tolerance autonomous-robot law enforcement.
Max’s dream, one he shares with his childhood sweetheart Frey
(Valentina Giron), is to make enough money to move to Elysium.
But like so many dreams, it fades into the harsh reality of a life
trapped in poverty as he grows up.
Here, we fast-forward to a grown-up Max (played by Matt Damon).
Max is still living in the slums of LA. Since we saw him as a
child, he’s dabbled in some less-than-legal activities, but is now
legitimately employed and is working long hard hours for little pay
for the company Armadyne. This is the company that supplies much
of Elysium’s technological needs, together with the AI-based security
robots that keep order on Earth. Max is going straight when we
catch up with him, but an offhand comment to a security robot leads
to him being mercilessly beaten and ending up in hospital with
a broken wrist. There, he’s reunited with a grown-up Frey (Alice
Braga). Frey is now working as a doctor, and, as we later discover,
has problems of her own. Max wants to renew their relationship, but
Elysium: Social Inequality in an Age of Technological Extremes
hard, stressful lives while constantly being reminded of how little
they have compared to the people they serve.
Frey brushes him off, and discourages him from getting involved in
her own complicated life.
Once his wrist has been seen to, Max is required to visit his parole
officer—another humorless autonomous robot—and once again his
flippant attitude gets him into trouble. Having finally got through
his parole meeting, he arrives late to work, and is threatened with
dismissal for being tardy. Fortunately for him, Max gets off with a
warning, and goes back to making robots designed to suppress the
poor and pamper the rich. But when a glitch in the manufacturing
process threatens production, he is forced to take a dangerous
shortcut to fix it, and receives a lethal dose of radiation in the
process.
Following the incident, an Armadyne robot patches Max up, gives
him a bottle of pills to counter the radiation’s effects, and calmly
tells him that, in five days’ time, he’ll die. Meanwhile, Armadyne’s
CEO John Carlyle (William Fichtner) is horrified by the thought
of having a sick and incapacitated worker on the premises,
and responds with a less-than-caring “Does his skin fall off or
something? I don’t want to replace the bedding. Just get him out.”
Carlyle is a “citizen” of Elysium, and the person who originally
designed the station’s operating system, although, because of
his position with Armadyne, he spends a lot of time commuting
between Earth and the orbital. As Max’s really bad day plays out, we
discover that Elysium’s Defense Secretary Delacourt ( Jodie Foster)
is conspiring with Carlyle to oust the orbital’s current President
and install herself into this position of ultimate power. Carlyle, it
transpires, wrote the operating system for all of Elysium, and is
still able to hack it. This is a system that defines and oversees all
of the orbital’s operational and social functions, including who is a
citizen (and therefore has access to Elysium’s facilities) and who is
not. It also determines who has the authority to govern the orbital,
and who occupies the highest positions of power, including that
of President. Because of this jaw-dropping level of vulnerability in
the technology, Carlyle is able to write a patch that reconfigures the
system, replacing the current President with Delacourt.
Carlyle configures the patch while on Earth, and securely saves
it in his brain using a neural interface (this is, it has to be said, a
technology of convenience that supports the movie’s narrative, but
otherwise makes little sense). And because the patch is so valuable,
Meanwhile, Max is dying, and he’s angry. His only hope of surviving
is to get to one of the medical pods on Elysium, and so he makes
a deal with an old partner-in-crime, Spider (Wagner Moura), to
smuggle him up to the orbital on one of Spider’s “illegal immigrant”
runs.
Spider agrees to help Max, but at a price. First, he must agree to
steal something from an Elysium citizen that will enable Spider to
more successfully circumvent the orbital’s defenses. Max agrees, but
on one condition: He’ll only participate in the theft if the mark is
Carlyle. Fortunately, an opportunity to jump Carlyle arises almost
immediately. In the ensuing hijacking, Carlyle is killed, and Max
ends up with his Elysium-reboot patch in his brain; little realizing
at the time how dangerous it is. Spider, however, understands all
too well what he has stolen, and that this is a piece of code that, if
executed correctly, could make Elysium and everything it represents
accessible to anyone on Earth. In his mind, it’s the key to wiping
out the social inequity that Elysium, and its medical technology
in particular represents, and one that could level the social and
technological playing field between the orbital and the Earth. But
there’s a problem: If Spider runs the patch, Max dies.
Incensed that Max has interfered with her plans, Delacourt
dispatches Kruger (Sharlto Copley), a psychopathic mercenary, to
track him down and reclaim the patch. Max evades Kruger, but
sustains serious injuries in the process, and this leads him back to
Frey. As Max persuades Frey to treat him, he learns her daughter
is dying of leukemia, and, just like Max, her only hope is to get to
Elysium.
Unfortunately, Kruger discovers Frey’s connection with Max, and he
kidnaps her and her daughter in an attempt to bring him in. Kruger
is well aware of what’s in Max’s head, and is formulating his own
plans for how he could use the patch himself. But for this, he needs
Max alive. Having little choice, Max gives himself up, and persuades
Kruger and his crew to shuttle him, Frey, and her daughter to
Elysium by threatening to destroy the patch if they don’t. And,
as they are transported up to the orbital, Spider tracks them, and
follows behind with his own crew.
This being a sci-fi action film, lots of fighting, blood, and grisly
deaths follow. Eventually, though, Frey gets her daughter to one
Elysium: Social Inequality in an Age of Technological Extremes
he adds a lethal security lock which will end up killing anyone who
tries to steal and run it.
of Elysium’s medical units, only to hit a seemingly insurmountable
problem. Because Frey’s daughter isn’t a registered citizen of
Elysium, the machine refuses to treat her. The only solution is for
Max to use the patch to reconfigure Elysium’s systems so they
recognize her as a citizen, but the only way he can do this is to be
killed in the process.
Max insists that Spider make the necessary modifications to the
patch, and sacrifices himself so that Frey’s daughter can live. But
it’s not just Frey’s daughter who benefits. Spider has reconfigured
the patch to reclassify everyone on Earth as a citizen of Elysium.
And so, as Max dies, the “99 percent” finally have access to all the
privileges of the “1 percent ” that Elysium represents. As the change
in citizenship registers, the orbital’s autonomous systems realize
there’s a whole planet full of citizens who are sick and suffering
below it, and they commit Elysium’s extensive resources—which
(inexplicably) include hundreds of medical relief vessels—to
assisting them. Through Max’s sacrifice, the technologies previously
used to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor are made
available to everyone, and social equity is restored.
It has to be said that Elysium is, in many ways, a rather naïve movie.
In real life, the roots of social inequity are deeply complex, as are
the ways of tackling them, and they are certainty not amenable to
simple, quick fixes. And, throughout the movie, the plausibility of
the technologies we see plays second fiddle to the story the film’s
creators want to tell. Yet despite this, the movie highlights social
challenges that are deeply relevant to technological innovation in
today’s world. And, despite its naïvety, it gets closer than might be
imagined to some of the more disruptive technologies that are now
beginning to emerge around us, including (re)constructing biological
tissues with 3-D printers.
In 2016, a quite remarkable series of images started to permeate
the internet. The images showed what looked like the perfectly
formed outer parts of a human ear. But, unlike a real ear, this one
was emerging, as if grown, from an iridescent pink liquid held in a
laboratory petri dish.
The ear was the product of a technique that scientists around the
world had been working on for some years: the ability to, quite
The year 2016 might have been a landmark year for bioprinting, but
it was far from the first successful attempt to 3-D print biological
structures. Some of the earliest attempts to use 3-D printing
technology with biological materials date back to the early 2000s,
and by the mid-2000s, an increasing number of papers were
beginning to appear in the scientific literature on bioprinting.
But these early approaches led to materials that were very basic
compared to naturally formed tissues and organs. Unlike even the
simplest natural tissues—the cartilage that forms the structure of
ears, for instance—they lacked the fine structure that is inherent
in the stuff we’re made of. Scientists had begun to make amazing
breakthroughs in printing 3-D structures that looked like viable body
parts, but they lacked the essential ingredients necessary to grow
and function as effectively as their biological counterparts.
This was only a temporary setback, though, and the 2016 ear was
proof that the technology was progressing by leaps and bounds.
The ear, created by Anthony Atala and his colleagues at Wake Forest
School of Medicine, was printed from a bio-ink mix of rabbit ear
chondrocytes—cells that form cartilaginous tissue—and a hydrogel
that enabled a persistent three-dimensional structure to be formed
while keeping the cells viable. The shape of the ear was based on
a 3-D scan of a real ear, and when printed, it looked uncannily like
a flesh-and-blood human outer ear. What made it unusual, though,
was the inclusion of microscopically fine channels threaded through
Elysium: Social Inequality in an Age of Technological Extremes
literally, print replacement body parts. Inspired by developments
in 3-D printing, researchers were intrigued to see if they could
achieve the same effects using human cells. The idea was relatively
simple: If a matrix of living cells and a permeable but shapeholding material could be formed using a modified 3-D printer,
it should be possible to build up three-dimensional human tissue
samples, and even complete organs. Of course, the devil was in the
details, as even the simplest tissue samples have a highly complex
architecture of capillaries, nerves, connecting tissues, and many
different cell types. But early enthusiasm for “bioprinting” 3-D tissue
samples using sophisticated cell-containing inks, or “bio-inks,” paid
off, and research in this area is now leading to quite revolutionary
technological breakthroughs. And while Elysium-like medical pods
that reconstruct damaged bodies in seconds will always be beyond
our grasp, 3-D printed replacement body parts may not be as far off
as we think.
its structure, allowing nutrients to diffuse to the cells and enabling
them to stay alive and multiply.[^67]
Atala’s team effectively demonstrated that it’s possible to print
simple body parts that remain alive and healthy long after the
printing process is finished, and that are potentially useable as
transplantable replacements. But despite this, bioprinting continued
to be dogged by the extensive challenges of reproducing naturallyoccurring biological materials, and doing this fast enough to prevent
them beginning to die before being completed. It’s one thing to be
able to print something that looks like a functioning replacement
body part, but it’s something completely different to bioprint tissue
that will behave as well as, if not better than, the biological material
it replaces.
Part of the challenge here is the sheer complexity of human
tissues. Most organs are made up of a finely intertwined matrix of
different types of cells, materials, and components, which work
together to ensure they grow, repair themselves, and function
as they’re supposed to. Embedded within this matrix are vital
networks of nerves and capillaries that relay information to and
from clusters of cells, provide them with the fuel and nutrients
they need to function, and remove waste products from them.
Without comparable networks, bioprinted parts would remain crude
facsimiles of the tissues they were designed to replace. But building
such complexity in to 3-D printed tissues would require a resolution
far beyond that of Atala’s ear, and an ability to work with multiple
tissue types simultaneously. It would also require printing processes
so fast that cells don’t have time to start dying before the process is
complete.
These are tough challenges, but at least some of them began to be
directly addressed in 2018 by the company Prellis Biologics. Prellis
is working on a hologram-based 3-D bioprinting technology that,
rather than building up organs layer by layer, near-instantaneously
creates three-dimensional structures of cells and support material in
a specially prepared liquid suspension. By creating a light hologram
within the liquid, the technique forms brighter “hot spots” where the
light-sensitive liquid is cured and set, creating a semi-solid matrix of
cells and support material. If the “hot spots” are a three-dimensional
In other words, we’re getting close to a technology that can
reproduce the structural complexity of something like a kidney,
capillaries and all, in a matter of hours. Reflecting this, Prellis’
ultimate goal is being able to print the “entire vasculature of a
human kidney in twelve hours or less.”
Whether this technology continues to develop at the current
breakneck speed remains to be seen. I’m a little skeptical about how
soon we’ll be able to print replacement body parts on demand, as
biology is constantly blindsiding us with just how deeply complex
it is. But, despite my skepticism, there’s no doubt that we are
getting closer to being able to print replacement tissues, body parts,
and even vital organs. And while we’re still a world away from
the fantastical technology in Elysium, it’s shocking how fast we’re
beginning to catch up. With advances in high-speed, high-resolution
and multi-tissue bioprinting, it’s conceivable that, in a few years, it
will be possible to 3-D-print a replacement kidney or liver, or jaw
bone, or skin grafts, using a patient’s own cells as a starting point.
And even if we can only get part of the way toward this, it would
revolutionize how we’re able to treat diseased bodies and extend
someone’s quality of life. With kidney disease alone, it’s estimated
that over 2 million people worldwide depend on dialysis or kidney
transplants to stay alive, and the number of people needing a
new kidney could be as high as 20 million. The ability to print
replacement organs for these people could transform their lives. But
why stop there? New livers, new bones, new hearts, new limbs; once
we crack being able to print replacement body parts on demand that
are fully biocompatible, fully viable, and act and feel just like their
naturally grown counterparts, our world will change.
This is quite amazing stuff. In a world where there remains a
desperate need for new technologies to counter the ravages of
disease and injury, it’s a technology that promises to make millions
of lives better. And yet, as Elysium reminds us, just because we
can cure the sick, that doesn’t mean that everyone will benefit.
As bioprinting-based medical treatments become available, who
Elysium: Social Inequality in an Age of Technological Extremes
representation of an ear, or a kidney, the living architecture for the
3-D-printed organ can be produced in seconds. But here’s the clever
bit. Above the resolution of the system, which is a few micrometers,
complexity is essentially free, meaning that it can be used to
produce extremely complex three-dimensional tissue structures
with ease; including embedding capillaries within the organ that’s
being printed.
will benefit from them, and what are the chances of this leading
to a two-tiered society where the rich get to live longer, healthier
lives and the poor get to sit on the sidelines and watch? This is a
scenario that already plays out daily with less sophisticated medical
technologies. But if bioprinting turns out to be as revolutionary
as it promises, it could drive a much bigger social wedge between
people who are rich enough and powerful enough to constantly be
upgrading their bodies with 3-D-printed parts and those who are
destined to be left struggling in their wake.
This is the scenario that plays out in Elysium, as the inhabitants of
the orbital enjoy access to medical facilities that those left on Earth
can only dream of. But it’s only one of a number of ways in which
powerful technologies lead to social disparity in the movie. Another,
and one that is near and dear to my professional heart, as it’s an
area I focused on for many years, is just how risky workplaces can
become when their owners put profits before people, regardless of
how sophisticated the technology they are producing is.
The first job I found myself in as a newly minted Doctor of
Philosophy was not in a university lab, but in a government research
center. In September 1992, I joined the British Health and Safety
Executive as a research scientist (later moving into a similar role
with the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health),
and for the next thirteen years, I became deeply engaged in
workplace safety. I was a full-on bench scientist for many of these
years, conducting and leading lab-based research on airborne dust
exposure (which, trust me, is more interesting than it sounds). But I
also worked closely with health and safety professionals, as well as
manufacturers and workers, and this gave me a deep appreciation of
the risks that many people face in the places where they work, even
when those workplaces use and produce advanced technologies.
It’s often assumed that technology innovation make workplaces
cleaner and safer places to be. This, sadly, is a myth, and it’s one that
I suspect is propagated in part by images of pristine clean rooms
and sleek automated production lines. In many cases, of course,
new technologies have led to improved working conditions. Yet the
reality is that manufacturing at scale is often dirty and dangerous,
even if the technology being manufactured is not. And this is one
area where Elysium does a surprisingly good job of reflecting the
reality that, no matter how advanced our technologies are, there’ll
Of course, we’ve known for thousands of years that working for a
living can be bad for your health—especially if you mine materials
out of the ground, grow produce, or manufacture materials and
products. And partly because of this, there’s a long history of
privileged groups using less privileged people to do their dirty work
for them. It wasn’t the rich, ruling classes that got their hands dirty
building the Egyptian Pyramids or the Roman plumbing systems,
or who mined the coal that drove the Industrial Revolution. Rather,
it was those who had little choice but to sacrifice their health and
longevity in order to put food on the table for their families. It
would be pleasant to think that we live in more enlightened times,
where no one has to take unnecessary risks to earn a living wage.
Sadly, this is not the case. Elysium may be implausibly futuristic in
some respects, but it’s right on the nose with its message that, even
in a technologically advanced future, there’ll still be dirty, dangerous
jobs, and rich people who are more than willing to pay poorer
people to do them.
Thankfully, there have been substantial improvements in working
conditions over the past 100 years or so—in some countries, at
least. This has been spurred on by a growing realization of just how
socially and economically harmful it can be to treat workers badly.
But this is a surprisingly recent development in human history, and
one where new technologies have not always been synonymous
with better working conditions.
In 1977, my grandfather died of pneumoconiosis after decades of
working as a coal miner. Even though he’d long moved on from
working down the pit, the coal dust he’d breathed day in and day
out had done its damage, and the progressive and irreversible
scarring that resulted from it eventually killed him.
Coal miner’s pneumoconiosis, or “black lung,” is caused by the
constant inhalation of fine, insoluble dust particles, and a gradual
and progressive deterioration of the lungs as they become inflamed
and scarred. It’s a disease that has most likely plagued coal miners
for centuries. Yet it wasn’t until the early to mid-1900s, at the tail
end of the Industrial Revolution, that it began to be recognized
Elysium: Social Inequality in an Age of Technological Extremes
still be someone slaving away somewhere in an unsafe workplace to
make the products we use, if we’re not careful.
as a serious occupational disease.[^68] Despite massive advances in
technological innovation over the previous century, uncertainty in
the science behind black lung delayed action on this occupational
killer. This was an uncertainty that suited the mine owners, and
one that they seemed to be no hurry to address. In the 1800s and
early 1900s, coal was the what fueled the Industrial Revolution,
and mining corporations and manufacturers couldn’t afford to
acknowledge they might have a problem.
It wasn’t until the 1940s in the UK that substantial steps were taken
to improve workplace conditions down mines, following a growing
recognition of how serious a challenge lung disease was amongst
miners. Even then, pneumoconiosis continued to be an issue. And
in the 1990s, fifty years after those first substantive steps to improve
working conditions, I became involved in a new wave of efforts to
address occupational lung disease in coal mines.
The mines I visited back then—all in the northeast of England—
were dusty, but not oppressively so. Yet there was a palpable tension
between trying to comply with exposure regulations and struggling
to remain solvent. In 1991, similar tensions had led to a scandal in
the US coal mining industry when it was discovered that dust was
either being removed from samples designed to monitor exposures,
or the samplers were intentionally being misused.[^69] The intent
was to make it look as if dusty mines were complying with federal
regulations, even if they weren’t in compliance, in an attempt to
put profits over the lives of those mining the coal. Over 800 mines
were implicated in the tampering scam, and the proposed fines that
resulted exceeded $6 million.
Similar concerns prompted some of my work in British coal mines,
and one of my last visits down an English pit was to ensure samples
weren’t being messed with (thankfully, they weren’t). The sad reality,
though, was that, in this industry, and despite massive strides in
understanding how to use technology to protect worker health,
it was all too easy to cut corners in order to increase production.
And even more sadly, despite living in one of the most advanced
technological ages in human history, coal miners’ pneumoconiosis
Coal mining is, of course, just one example of a workplace where
tradeoffs are made between safety and productivity. In the US alone,
there are close to 5,000 workplace-related fatalities a year, and
in excess of 140,000 cases of workplace illness.[^71] In 2014, Jukka
Takala and his colleagues published estimates of the global burden
of injury and illness at work. From their analysis, there were 2.3
million workplace-related deaths globally in 2012, with two million
of these linked to occupational disease.[^72] These are high numbers,
and certainly not what might be hoped for in a technologically
advanced society. Yet while technological innovation has made some
workplaces safer, it has also displaced people into potentially more
harmful working conditions; and the harsh reality is that, for many
people, a dangerous job is better than no job at all. This is perhaps
seen most clearly in the displacement of manufacturing to countries
where wages are lower, regulations are weaker, and working
conditions are poorer than they are in more affluent economies—for
instance, in the manufacturing of clothing and electronics. Here,
rather than saving lives, innovation is leading to people being
potentially put in harm’s way to satisfy a growing demand for the
latest technologies.
Even with new and emerging technologies—for instance, the
production of new materials using nanotechnology, or the use
of genetically modified microbes to mass-produce chemicals in
vast bioreactors—there is relatively little correlation between the
sophistication of the technology and the safety of the environment
in which it’s used. On the contrary, the more powerful the
technologies we produce, the more opportunities there are for
them to harm the first tier of people who come into contact with
them, which includes the people who manufacture them, and in
turn use them in manufacturing. This has been seen in an intense
Elysium: Social Inequality in an Age of Technological Extremes
is once again on the rise. In spite of all the technological
breakthroughs we’re surrounded by, companies are still sending
people to work in environments that could severely shorten their
lives, while not taking the necessary steps to make them safer, so
that others can live more comfortably.[^70]
global focus on the workplace health risks of producing and
using engineered nanomaterials[^73] (a topic we’ll come back to in
chapter ten and The Man in the White Suit), and a realization that
one of the greatest threats to workplace safety is not a lack of
technological innovation, but ignorance of what might go wrong
with novel technologies.
But even where there is not a lack of understanding, greed and
human nature continue to jeopardize workers’ health. In the case of
Elysium, this tradeoff between profit and people is painfully clear.
Max’s occupational “accident” has all the hallmarks of occurring
within a company that sees its workforce as disposable, despite the
fact that they are producing high-tech goods. The additional irony
here is that those “goods” are robots that are designed to further
suppress the earth-bound population. In this future society, the
polarization between rich and poor has become so extreme that the
poor have precious few rights remaining as they serve the lifestyles
of the rich.
How likely is this? If we don’t take workplace health and safety
seriously, and the broader issues of social justice that it’s a part
of, I’m sad to say that it’s pretty likely. The good news is that an
increasing number of companies recognize these dangers, and
are diligently implementing policies that go beyond regulatory
requirements in order to ensure a healthy workplace. And they
do this with good reason: The economics of accident and disease
prevention make good business sense, as do the economics of
fostering a happy and thriving workforce. Emerging thinking
around concepts like corporate social responsibility and responsible
innovation help here; so does innovative corporate leadership that
actively strives to reduce social inequity and serve the needs of
those who work for them.[^74] But the fiscal temptation to use cheap
labor is sometimes a tough one to resist, especially when some
people are willing to work for less and cut corners to get ahead of
their peers. This is where preventing a future disposable workforce
becomes the responsibility of everyone, not just employers or
regulators.
In September 2017, the Pew Research Center released the results of
a comprehensive survey of public attitudes in the US toward robots
and automation.[^75] The results should be taken with a pinch of salt,
as these were opinions rather than predictions, and they come with
all the usual challenges associated with asking people to predict
the future. Yet they’re quite revealing when it comes to what people
think about automation. Some of the results aren’t too surprising.
For instance, some people who responded were worried about the
prospect of robots replacing them in the future, and respondents
generally didn’t like the idea of computers deciding who to hire
and who not to. Other results in the survey were more surprising.
For example, 56 percent of participants would not want to ride in
a driverless vehicle, and of these, safety concerns were uppermost
in their reasoning. And this is despite safety being one of the big
arguments made for getting rid of human drivers.[^76]
As part of the survey, participants were asked what they thought
the impacts of robots and computers would be on inequality. This
was specifically framed in terms of what the outcomes would
be if automation replaced many of the jobs currently done by
people. Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority of participants ([^76]
percent) thought that increasing automation of jobs would increase
inequality.
How this stacks up to how things are actually likely to play out
is complex. As Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAffee point out
Elysium: Social Inequality in an Age of Technological Extremes
This is something of a moot point in Elysium, though, as Max and
his fellow workers don’t have much of a choice in where they
work and what they are required to do to make ends meet. Despite
living in a highly automated future, they have work, but it’s not
necessarily the work they would choose, given the chance. For
them, automation didn’t deprive them of a job, but it did deprive
them of choice. How realistic a reflection this is of the real world is
debatable—this is, after all, Hollywood. Yet in one form or another,
new technologies that lead to further automation are a growing
issue within today’s society.
in their 2016 best seller The Second Machine Age,[^77] automation
is radically changing the way we live and the work we do. The
question that is challenging experts like Brynjolfsson and McAffee,
though, is whether this will lead to a net reduction in jobs, or
simply a change in the types of jobs people do. And it’s not an easy
one to answer.
Looking back over the recent history of automation, there have
been pivotal shifts in the types of jobs available to people. There
have also been industries that have been largely stripped of human
labor. In the 1800s this was at the root of the Luddite movement
(something we’ll revisit in chapter nine), as textile artisans began
to see their skills being replaced by machines and their livelihoods
taken away. And since then, every wave of automation has led to
further job losses.
But, at the same time, new jobs have been created. When I was
finishing high school, and going through the tedium of career
advice, many of the jobs that people now do hadn’t even been
invented. Web designer, app coder, Uber driver, cloud computing
expert, YouTube creator, smart-city designer, microfinance
manager, and so on—none of these appeared in the brochures I
was encouraged to digest. There’s no question that, over the past
few decades, the job market has radically changed. And this has
been driven by technological innovation, and to a large extent by
automation.[^78]
To some, this suggests that we are nowhere near the limit of our
capacity to create new things that people can and will pay for, and
all that automation does is create new opportunities for enterprising
humans to make money. This is not a universally held view, and
there are many economists who worry that emerging technologies
will lead to a serious net reduction in jobs. From the Pew survey,
many others have the same concerns, and while this is based on
impressions and gut feeling rather than hard evidence, it’s probably
justified in one respect: Increasing automation will replace many
of the jobs people do today, and unless they have the capacity to
develop new skills and switch job and career paths, this will lead
to job losses. And this in turn leads us to the challenges of ensuring
people have access to the educational resources they need as
technological innovation continues to transform our world.
How to address this, of course, is challenging. But there are an
increasing number of initiatives to address the emerging educational
needs of the industrial and technological revolution we’re in. In my
own institution at Arizona State University, for instance, there’s a
growing recognition that bricks-and-mortar universities simply don’t
have the capacity to serve the needs of a growing global population
that’s hungry to develop the knowledge they need to thrive.[^79] In a
future where unique skills are needed to ride the wave of radical
technological change, we’re going to need equally radical innovation
in how over seven billion people are going to acquire these skills.
Online learning is beginning to fill some of the gaps here, but
this is just a start. If we are going to avoid increasing automation
and technological complexity marginalizing a growing number of
people, we’re going to need to start thinking hard and fast about
what we teach, how we teach, and who has access to it. More than
this, we’re going to have to recalibrate our thinking on what we
mean by “education” in the first place.
In 2005, a new video-sharing platform was unleashed onto the
world. Now, YouTube is the second-largest search engine globally,
and the third most-visited site after Google and Facebook. It’s also
where more and more people are turning to learn what they need in
order to succeed. Over a billion hours of YouTube are watched every
Elysium: Social Inequality in an Age of Technological Extremes
Education is one of those issues that is both critical to social
and economic growth, and at the same time deeply contentious.
Everyone, it seems, has an opinion on what a “good education”
is, and how we should be “educating” people. As a teacher, and
someone who’s married to one, it’s hard to escape the deeplyentrenched opinions and politics that surround education, and the
sheer number of people who think they know what’s best, whether
they know what they are talking about or not. And yet, despite
all of the politicking, there is one cold, hard truth as we develop
increasingly sophisticated technologies: If our educational thinking,
approaches, and resources don’t keep up with the future we’re
creating, people are going to suffer as a result.
day, and while much of this is not educational content, a surprising
amount of it is.
As an educator, I must confess to being somewhat leery of YouTube,
despite using the platform extensively myself.[^80] It remains a Wild
West of educational content, where anyone can try to convince
you of anything, whether it’s right or wrong. And yet, YouTube is
increasingly where people go to learn,[^81] whether it’s how to tie a
bowtie, put on makeup, plumb a sink, or ace an interview. This is
a platform where people are sharing what they know with others,
outside of the barriers, constraints, and politics of formal education.
And it’s where users are learning how to learn at their own pace,
and on their own terms. YouTube, and online video-sharing
platforms more broadly, are a grassroots revolution in casual, userdirected learning, and one that I suspect is only going to increase
in relevance as people discover they need new skills and new
knowledge to succeed in what they are doing.
Of course, YouTube videos are no substitute for a formal education.
There is a depth and quality to learning from professionals within
a structured environment that still has substantial value. And yet,
there is a deep desire among many people to learn on their own
terms, and to develop the knowledge and skills they need, when
they need them, that isn’t being met by formal educators. And
while educational establishments are trying to meet at least some
of these needs with innovations like Massive Open Online Courses
(or MOOCs) and “micro-credentials,” they are still barely connecting
with what people are looking for.
As YouTube and other video-sharing platforms democratize learning,
how can we ensure that users have access to material that is useful
to them, and that this material is trustworthy? The latter question in
particular is a tough one, as pretty much anyone can upload their
own content onto YouTube. Yet over the past several years, there’s
been a trend toward trusted content creators providing high-quality
educational material on the platform.
In 2011, author John Green and his brother Hank launched the
YouTube channels Crash Course and SciShow. Even though the
Green brothers were not educators in the formal sense, they set
out to make rigorous, relevant, and engaging educational content
Crash Course and SciShow are part of a growing trend in casual
learning content on YouTube that is reaching billions of people,
and is transforming how and where people develop the knowledge
and skills they need. And yet, formal educational establishments
and leading subject experts are largely absent from this trend.
This, to me, is a glaring missed opportunity, and one that my
colleagues in universities around the world need to respond to. As
the pace of innovation continues to increase, people are going to
increasingly turn to platforms like YouTube to learn what they need
to in order to keep up. And while content providers like the Green
brothers and their teams are doing a fantastic job, if even a small
number of savvy academic experts followed their lead, we would
have the opportunity to massively expand the quality, quantity,
and accessibility of learning material on video-sharing platforms.
If experts and educators can be galvanized to embrace this new
form of user-driven online learning, we could be on the cusp of an
unprecedented democratization of education.
Such radical access to knowledge and learning could help reduce
social inequity in the future, as it enables anyone to acquire the
skills they need to succeed. Done right, knowledge will no longer be
the domain of those rich enough to afford it, or privileged enough
to use it, but will be there for anyone who wants it.
Of course, education alone is not the answer to social inequity, and
avoiding a future that mirrors that depicted in Elysium will also
require a deep commitment to developing, using, and governing
new technologies responsibly and ethically. Yet meaningful access
to knowledge and understanding for all is part of the bedrock on
which social equity is built, and we ignore it at our peril—especially,
as we’ll see in the next movie, Ghost in the Shell, when we begin
to create technologies that push conventional understanding to the
limit.
Elysium: Social Inequality in an Age of Technological Extremes
available to anyone with YouTube access, and they succeeded
phenomenally. As of this writing, between them, the two channels
have attracted nearly one and three quarter billion views. But it’s
not just the views that are important here. The content on these
channels is well-researched and well-presented. It is, whichever way
you look at it, great educational material, and it’s trouncing what’s
being offered by some more formal educators.
[^66]: Joseph Stiglitz (2011) “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.” Vanity Fair, May 2011. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105
[^67]: The petri-dish ear was just one of three tissue constructs produced by Atala and his team to demonstrate their technique. They also bioprinted a mandible fragment of a similar size and shape to something that could be used in facial reconstruction, and a rat skullcap bone. Kang, H.-W., et al. (2016). “A 3D bioprinting system to produce human-scale tissue constructs with structural integrity.” Nature Biotechnology 34: 312. http://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3413
[^68]: Andrew Meiklejohn’s three-part history of lung diseases of coal miners in Great Britain provide a fascinating insight into the early understanding of coal miner’s pneumoconiosis: Meiklejohn, A. (1952). “History of Lung Diseases of Coal Miners in Great Britain” Part I, 1800-1875. British Journal of Industrial Medicine 8(3): 127-137. Part II, 1875-1920. British Journal of Industrial Medicine 9(2): 9398. Part III, 1920-1952. British Journal of Industrial Medicine 1952: 208-220.
[^69]: Frank Swoboda, “Coal mine operators altered dust samples” Washington Post, April 4 1991. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1991/04/04/coal-mine-operators-altered-dust-samples/b0fec1b0-fe9c-4847-b900-7de6f4fc3d46/
[^70]: Howard Berkes (2017) “NPR Continues To Find Hundreds Of Cases Of Advanced Black Lung” NPR, July 1, 2017. http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/07/01/535082619/npr-continues-tofind-hundreds-of-cases-of-advanced-black-lung
[^71]: More information on workplace fatalities in the US. can be found in the NIOSH Worker Health Charts, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention https://wwwn.cdc.gov/Niosh-whc
[^72]: Takala, J., et al. (2014). “Global Estimates of the Burden of Injury and Illness at Work in 2012.” Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene 11(5): 326-337. https://doi.org/10.1080/15459624.2013.863131
[^73]: Despite nearly two decades of research on the potential health and environmental risks of some engineered nanomaterials, some companies continue to use these as if they are, by default safe. This was brought home afresh to me in 2016 in the wake of seeming ambivalence over the potential health risks of using carbon nanotubes—a material that may, under some circumstances, behave like asbestos if inhaled. Andrew Maynard (2016) “We don’t talk much about nanotechnology risks anymore, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone.” The Conversation, March 29 2016. https://theconversation.com/we-donttalk-much-about-nanotechnology-risks-anymore-but-that-doesnt-mean-theyre-gone-56889
[^74]: One example of innovative and socially responsible corporate leadership here is the B Corp initiative, where for-profit companies are assessed by an independent organization to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency.
[^75]: For more details of this extensive poll on attitudes toward automation, see the article by Aaron Smith and Monica Anderson: “Automation in Everyday Life.” Pew Research Center, October 4 2017. http://www.pewinternet.org/2017/10/04/automation-in-everyday-life/
[^76]: I wrote about this in 2016. Andrew Maynard (2016) “Will driving your own car become the socially unacceptable public health risk smoking is today?” Published in The Conversation, September 26 2016. https://theconversation.com/will-driving-your-own-car-become-the-socially-unacceptablepublic-health-risk-smoking-is-today-65891
[^77]: Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAffee. “The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies” W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.
[^78]: Rachel Hallett and Rosamund Hutt (2016) “10 jobs that didn’t exist 10 years ago.” World Economic Forum https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/06/10-jobs-that-didn-t-exist-10-years-ago/
[^79]: Under the leadership of its current president, Michael Crow, Arizona State University is embarking on an ambitious plan to redefine the role of the public research university into one where higher education serves the needs of a changing world, and is as accessible, impactful, and socially relevant as possible. Part of this involves fully utilizing online teaching platforms to make educational resources accessible to a growing number of people, including those often excluded by more conventional educational models. But more than this, the ASU model is striving to ensure that how we think about and deliver education keeps up with the needs and ambitions of the technological future we’re creating. It’s why I work here.
[^80]: In 2012, I launched the YouTube channel Risk Bites as a platform for helping people make sense of risk, including the potential risks and benefits of emerging and converging technologies. http://youtube.com/riskbites
[^81]: As long as they are in a country that doesn’t block the website.