19 / Bali

On the plane trip from Japan to Bali, I saw a movie I never would have gone to see in the United States: Surrogates. The film definitely addresses the relationship between the world of nature and the world we create, since its main conceit is that we will soon be able to create "surrogates," who will look like human beings, but who will actually be sophisticated machines, acting under our direction and in our stead in the "real" world.

As you might suspect, it doesn't exactly "work out" in the end, and havoc ensues when a computer virus brings down, simultaneously, all of the billion or so "surrogates" then deployed (on the highways and elsewhere). The news commentary that concludes the film sums up the human condition this way: "It seems we're on our own, at least for now."