The month of November is here, and that bring three totally-foreseen changes to the internet. 1. You see a ton of great Halloween costumes that you cannot use, either as your own costume or for publishing, since Halloween is over, 2. Mariah Carey is singing that Christmas song non-stop, which will continue the rest of the year, and 3. the movie Blade Runner is no longer set in the future. Yes, as the intertitle told us, Blade Runner takes place in Los Angeles in November 2019. Back in 1982, when the movie was released, that may have seemed to be far in the future, but here we are.
Blade Runner depicts a November 2019 where mega-corporations rule the world with little resistance from the government and the institutions of civil society have been effectively crushed under their boot heels. Instead of scientific advances that benefit humanity, technological innovations in the world of Blade Runner are channeled into fantastical wastes of resources for the sole benefit of an ever-narrowing class of elites who consider themselves akin to living gods. And people themselves? In Blade Runner, human laborers are almost completely devalued, replaced by hostile, artificially engineered simulacra. This should all sound pretty familiar!
But still no flying cars. Or at least no flying cars that anyone can afford. And what about replicants? Tom McKay believes they already walk among us. See an example at Gizmodo.