Science-Fiction. Facebook. And an egg ‘as watching Blade Runner (again) with my family not long ago. We like this movie for its acting (Hauer, Han- nan and Sanderson are particularly good.) its dark, decadent, post industrial ambiance (which got them an ‘Oscar in 1982) and its script — not a word in excess, but el- cegantly managing to deal with the big themes of ove, mor- tality, and greed. Like so many others ofits time and genre, however, Blade Runner seems to have gotten us wrong. By “us” I mean “us, people living in the new millenium.” According to the movie, the year 2019 is the year of cars lying the dark city sky; of artificial beings, human and animal, carefully engi- neered, part-by-part (we meet an “eye specialist” — only builds eyes); and of sulky, talking/listening machines. Like the rather large printer attached to a surprisingly small tv set. Imagining our decade in the seventies and eighties in- volved, it seems, a lot of mechanical contraptions, and big ones at that. Robots (some cuter than otters) that want to be human, like the charming protagonist of 1986's Short Circuit. Computers that can read lips and guess intentions, like the one that used the information thus obtained to get rid of some bossy humans in 2001. And the obsession with alternate transportation; the flying cars, the spaceships, the pods. Their representation of “the future” seems now sur- prisingly physical, evident, mechanical, and machine-like. ‘Today's machines seem smaller, more obedient, and more utilitarian than the ones in the Blade Runner landscape. Our robots are not like us and do not “want” to be like us. And the common citizen uses his or her machines to ... engage in very traditionally human, and mostly social, activity; talk ‘endlessly on the phone, chat away on messenger, blog about, their knowledge, opinions and/or emo- tions, engage in role- playing games, or swim with a hundred (ora thousand) others in the sea of virtual friendship offered by sites like facebook or myspace. ‘These are certainly not identical to tradi- tional social activities Some authors have denounced their dangers, which, they ‘warn, go from diminished productivity to a deep sense of Toneliness, depression, and even divorce. But still itis clear that instead of sending us into the kind of mechanistic fu- ture portrayed by movies twenty years ago, technological advances seem to be used to maximize and multiply familiar human interaction. To do the same kind of stuff (ove, hate, gossip with or about) we have been doing to each other for the last 100,000 years or more. ‘Which reminds me ofa phenomenon ethologists have re- ported when observing birds. It isa fixed action pattern — a behavior that occurs in response to a particular stimulus and without the need for learning, and is therefore assumed to be hardwired for evolutionary reasons, Some birds have such a response to the sight of one of their eggs outside of the nest, and promptly try to return it. The thing is, they will do the same with any other egg nearby. Even a larger egg from a different species. Or a golf ball, for that matter. In fact, some seem to prefer the golf ball or the big egg to Rima Brusi atheir ovn egg. Why? Because the ball “optimizes” the qual- ities that make the egg visible, namely, being a more or less round object on the ground. Its therefore a “supernormal stimulus”, and elicits an exaggerated response. We are not birds, and scientists have yet to discover human fixed action patterns. But current social technology does look a bit like the egg situation. Things like Facebook or Second Life may seem to us 21st century types more egg- like than the egg, more social than traditional social endeav- ors. They allow us to have thousands of “friends”, to create alternate selves and to disseminate information about them while gathering information about others’, to engage in ac- tivities that a normal space-time frame of reference would ‘make impossible. They “optimize” our tendency to be so- cial, increasing the number of possible interactions and the information obtained beyond what could be achieved with conventional methods like face-to-face conversation. Like the bird, faced with a supernormal stimulus, we may end up preferring the golf ball to the egg, But back to Blade Runner: Science fiction in the seventies and eighties imagined a mechanized 21st century, with peo- ple surrounded by hardware and machinery. Instead, we seem to be using technology (in its smaller, seemingly gen- ter version) to do the same things we have always done: To imagine ourselves hunting vampires, driving spaceships or simply living a very different life; to look good: to create, to learn, produce knowledge; and especially, to talk to (and about) other humans. Lots of them. Dr. Rima Brusiis an associate professor at the Univeristy of Puerto Rico at Mayagiiez, her Web site is http://mirardosve- cesiblogspot.com/