It must be about 39 years since I watched the first Alien film, that's too long to really remember much. I saw the Director's Cut version (whatever that means last night) and caught up with myself having traveled back in time. The future then was a cold, push button world that has now been surpassed and replaced by screen interfaces, apps and implants and a lot less flashing lights, just not much interstellar travel or proper alien encounters so far. A bit disappointing really, the visionaries did their bit, played their part, wrote the scripts, described the jet-packs, robots and worm holes in great detail only to discover that economic and political reality couldn't keep up and deliver. Then everything became distorted through the corrupting lens of social media. No direction, no up or down, no time, only metrics and randomised advertising and strangely targeted messages. So now we live in a virtual video game fantasy where everybody pretends they're having a proper unscripted adventure. Sat Nav trips to supermarkets and drive-thru fast food outlets are our WW3 battles and our most testing human encounters, at least until the real thing comes along. We buy cars that set us free to explore the wild tarmac places, dressed like gangsters or mountaineers depending on the kind of music we like or reality show we watch. Then when the snow comes we hide out in our cocoons, stay in the warm and revisit past places with confused and critical eyes trying to make some sense out of it all.
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