Soy Cuba x I Am Cuba
Somehow while scrolling on Kanopy I stumbled across a movie called I Am Cuba. I thought it sounded like a good background show to have on that I could watch while taking writing breaks. Though once I started, I was struck to find the intro all in Russian and to see it’s a joint film between the USSR and Cuba from the 60s, namely propaganda. I’ve never seen any propaganda from that time period and so I got more wrapped up in it and it was no longer just background.
You can read more here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Cuba.
Luckily the narration is in Spanish and there were English subtitles (not original I imagine). Slanted or not, this is still the most footage of Cuba I’ve ever seen. The movie covers the lead up to revolution in 3 vignettes.
The portrayal of Americans is pretty funny, it’s not trying at all to hide that negative sentiment. It is propaganda after all. Though it does make me more interested in the details of the Cuban revolution, America’s role there, etc.. It’s not something I’ve learned much about. Another aside, the 3rd vignette of college revolutionaries reminds me of the Roma, that got a lot of press a few years back (2018).
Overall the movie is well shot and fun, but the dialog and storytelling is terrible. I guess this is an example of doing the wrong job well.
This idea probably germinated from this video of Elon talking about process tips. It’s something like
Make requirements less dumb
Delete the part or process
Simplify or optimize
Accelerate cycle-time
Automate
If you fail to delete the excessive steps in step 2 and then move on to step 3 to optimize an unnecessary step, you’re wasting time and effort and not necessarily making the whole thing better. Don’t waste good talent making stupid stuff, I guess. Though if you got tapped by the USSR leadership to make a movie because you were talented, it’s not like you could say no. I don’t know what actually happened in this scenario.
Also, the title also reminds me of this classic..
Not Chorizo
How’s was that for a topic transition from chorizo to tech/futurism? (I miss Silicon Valley, what a legendary show*)
I am not here to tell you what to think, but here is a fun little thread that kind of touches on the accelerationist/deccelerationist(?) debate; e/acc. Namely, does speeding up tech development make humans better off?
https://twitter.com/thatguybg/status/1769375909168222565?t=q5OJoFHOkaWe2dIMWxLrGA&s=19
If I had to guess what the goals were, I wouldn’t have guessed these. I would have guessed it was more aligned to eliminating dangerous and undesirable jobs, and also what would become automatable jobs to free up human creativity and leisure. To be fair, I don’t know the ins and outs of these groups or really know much beyond surface level, so that explains that wrong assumption.
Are these “goals” widely agreed upon? Whether or not they are, they are very forward thinking. They make me want to read Foundation again, or check out how the tv show is developing. (I’m also excited to go see Dune 2 this week. Now enjoy this Arrested Development crossover joke.)
When I think of AI futures, I don’t tend to think far enough into the future with multi-planet living. Rather, I tend to stick to a better version of our Earth.
It’s more tangible to imagine and feels less sci-fi, even if it’s also far-fetched.
I kind of believe it will be (I’m better off saying could be) a nature-embedded utopia that we’ve somehow managed to pull off through maximally harnessing the sun’s energy, cleaning up the pollution, reversing environmental damage, and integrating technology with humans and the planet to make it sustainable and also provide for all of those living on Earth. What’s AI’s actual role in this? I’m not sure. Maybe optimizing problems that increase productivity and decrease waste of things that already exist?
Listen, I know, it’s not very thought out and I’m not spending the time to really build this out now. Maybe that means I’ll have to write a sci-fi utopia/dystopia book, just to see how it goes. We’ll see.
It’s been a social weekend which means we’re keeping it short. Hope you enjoyed it. If you know some more artsy and/or foreign movies I should watch, give me a shout.
*Ok just a little more Jin-Yiang