Tech Talk

I caught another miniseries on Hulu, Alex Garland's Devs.  Garland started as a writer and has directed his own scripts in recent years, putting out Ex Machina and Annihilation.  If you've seen these films, which explore concepts like self-awareness and reality itself, you can see he's interested in thought-provoking sci-fi.  And Devs is that in spades.

The eight-episode show is about tech company Amaya, run by CEO/guru Forest (Nick Offerman). In the premiere episode, Forest invites employee Sergei Pavlov (Karl Glusman) to work at his top secret project Devs.  Turns out it's about designing a computer that's supposed to be able to understand our deterministic universe--if properly programmed and built, it'll be able to look into both the past and the future with perfect accuracy.

Sergei, however, is a spy who tries to steal information on the project, and is killed by Amaya head of security Kenton (Zach Grenier).  The company covers it up by making it look like a suicide. This sets Sergei's girlfriend, Lily (Sonoya Mizuno), on a path of intrigue to discover what actually happened.  She's helped on her quest by cybersecurity master and former boyfriend Jamie (Jin Ha).

Meanwhile, the team at Amaya, including Lyndon (Cailee Spaeny), Stewart (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and chief designer Katie (Alison Pill), are perfecting the Devs project, which will lead to a clash between Lily and Forest.

While the spy stuff isn't bad, it's not what interested me about the show.  I was more captured by the concept of a machine that could, based on where everything is today, know where everything was in the past and will be in the future.

I've always been intrigued by the idea of determinism.  If the universe is material, the argument goes, then if you know where every particle is right now, and understand the physical laws that act on them, you can figure where they will be in the next second, and the second after that, and so on.  The idea of a computer having all this information is ridiculous, of course (at least it is at present), but just because we're not smart enough to figure out what has to happen next doesn't mean what actually happens isn't inevitable.  And if everything is inevitable, this suggests (some would say proves) we don't have free will, only, at best, the illusion of free will.

There are various arguments against determinism, but it's not easy to shake. (Even religious people can't get away from it.  Though some say the soul is not material and allows for free will (which leads to other problems), many also believe in an omniscient Supreme Being--presumably, then, this Being knows precisely what will happen in the future, so how can there be any freedom if everything is pre-ordained?)  There are also arguments that one might call fanciful--such as the "many worlds" concept, brought up in the show, where there are infinite universes with every possible circumstance--that at least seem to fit the known data.

Determinism also creates paradoxes.  If you could create a machine that sees perfectly into the future, then you could see what you're about to do and, presumably, not do it.  Even if an omniscient, omnipotent being told you what you would do in the future, if you actually had free will, you wouldn't have to do it.  So how can perfect predictions, once known, exist?  And if you can't have perfect predictions, then how can determinism be true? (Or is determinism true only if we're not smart enough to figure it out?)

Garland is clever enough to keep the story moving while bringing up these issues.  As noted, the cloak and dagger stuff isn't as exciting (to me) as the philosophical debate.  But Garland does keep you guessing as to how things will turn out. (Garland is the Supreme Being who has determined what will happen, but the show has free will from the watcher's point of view.)

The show features some good performances, especially from supporting actors Henderson, Grenier and Pill.  It would be easy to get swallowed up in all the philosophy, but they carve out memorable characters.  It's also got great design.  I suppose a lot of people will find it moody and slow, but I'd recommend it.