> One obvious problem, as the movie suggested, was the total absence of privacy when in public places. When in public, we expect people to see and hear ourselves and everyone else. We don't care that much. With interactive advertisements lining the street, though, added to that a watcher can learn your name and likes and dislikes with ease. Would the prevailing attitude also change, so that this information was also tuned out? It seems to me that it goes too far. I've just realized, writing this, that I have no concept of what a right to privacy entails, or why we would have one. I can't say then what is and is not too far, except by feeling.

> The other non-problem is the store the character entered. It had no visible human employees. The video model who greeted the customers at the foyer, instead, was the ideal of all salespeople. She was beautiful, spunky, friendly, courteous, and knowledgeable. She remembered the last purchases of everyone who entered, and checked up on them. This is cool. If implemented at Wal-Mart, the company would have to change its name. Except, I think it is unwise to teach people to respond to a mere machine as they normally would with a human.

Sometimes I'm not certain what this "right to privacy" is either. Libertarians and those who frequent Slashdot seem to feel that there is some nefarious plan that either the government or corporations are engaged in that will be implemented once they know everything about us. However, I don't think it is such a bad idea as some suggest. We already have track and trace programs running -- things that instantly pop into mind are your school's "permanent record", credit reports, and government databases of fingerprints.

There's also the voluntary things we give away. When I go to dvdempire.com and log in, if I haven't ordered anything in a while and I seem to be looking at a large range of items (and based on my past purchase history), I usually get a digital coupon in my e-mail. When I visit amazon.com, a page of recommended books appears, based on what I've looked at and purchased. In many ways, The Gap store in the movie is just an extension of this.

In several K-Marts and Target stores (and some grocery stores), I've seen self-checkout lanes. Like the video salesgreeter at The Gap, I like this technology. The fewer underpaid and unmotivated cashiers, the faster the checkout process and the decreased chance of mistakes during the process.

The personalized advertisements I don't think would be as annoying. Already, advertisements are geared towards demographic groups; the ads in Maxim are different than the ones in The Amazing Spider-Man. The coupons I get at the grocery store are tailored to what I just purchased. (Whenever I purchase Kleenex, I always seem to get coupons for Scotties with my receipt.) Again, the ads featured in the movie are simply a logical extension of today's ads. Where is the privacy line supposed to be drawn, if at all?

No, the only two things I dislike about the personalized advertisements are:

1. The usage of one's name in the ad. Insanely distracting. If I'm out for a walk trying to concentrate on a problem, I wouldn't want my name being constantly shouted. Note that in Minority Report, Jon Anderton kept glancing to his side when the advertisements started calling out his name. Besides, they'd probably screw up pronouncing my last name. How annoying would that be?

2. Artistic control surpassed by advertising concerns. Not really mentioned in the movie, but one possible extension of overpersonalization could be seen in movies. Three of us are sitting in a movie theater (of the future!) wearing our simsense flexmasks. The hero, Rex Goatbottom, grabs a soda. I see a can of Coca-Cola. You see a Pepsi. Our friend sees a Dr Pepper. Minor, yes. But what if the entire movie is like that? Everything in my movie's version is tailored to me, potentially even the storyline. It's like watching Blade Runner and having Deckard say, "I am a replicant." In Dave's version Deckard says, "I am not a replicant."

>> The movie has some logical flaws (it'd be tough for a movie with this subject matter to be completely flaw-free, though) but in total it's a rocking-good movie that I heartily recommend to any SF fan.

> The biggest flaw is a real puzzle, but it is a testament to a well constructed story that the problem doesn't hurt it any.

I've heard people say there were holes in the movie, but still, there was nothing that seriously distracted me from the film. Reflecting on the film, I did have some questions.

Why, if these are the only three clairvoyants and their abilities seem to be confined to an area in and around Washington DC, does the government think that they can extend the Pre-Crime program to the rest of the nation? Perhaps the specific genes in Agatha, Dash, and Arthur have been mapped and could be recreated in others. Too bad this wasn't hinted at or touched on during the film.

Anderton's argument and illustration of prediction still doesn't hold well with me. "You're still arresting people who have committed no crime," Ed Witwer of the Justice Department says. People make predictions and act on them all the time, Anderton counters. He rolls a ball along a desktop and Witwer instinctively catches the ball. Why did he stop the ball? Because if he didn't, the ball would have dropped to the floor. "The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn't change the fact that it was going to happen." The scene ends.

However, the ball still didn't hit the floor.

A better analogy would be if the ball was breakable -- if it hits the floor it is shattered. Back to Anderton's illustration, after Witwer catches the ball, the Pre-Crime unit continues acting as if the ball had just been broken: they sweep up the ball, put it in a little baggie, and place it in the garbage. But they do this to an intact, perfectly fine ball.

Of course, for the movie to work, "The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn't change the fact that it was going to happen." would have to be the prevailing thought in the minds of that era's lawmakers. Even the movie touches on the ACLU and civil rights groups arguing that people are being incarcerated for crimes they haven't committed.

If I'm ambivalent about imprisoning people because they haven't committed a crime, I was uncomfortable with haloing the red ball cases. Without premeditation, these people have been interrupted in their moment of weakness. I believe that the untimely interruption of the Pre-Crime unit would have snapped the potential perpetrator out of the moment. If anything, after the police had left and the cuckold had time to fully understand what had happened, he would take a more civilized action. Besides, if once distanced from the initial shock of discovery the pre-criminal decides to murder those who did the wronging, we're now looking at pre-meditated murder.

Thirdly, there is introduced a prisoner of the Pre-Crime system who, for the last five plus years, is still unidentified. Even fifty years into the future, I would still think there would be multiple ways to determine who people are, even if they did evade the main way of identification. Even if the retinal identification was the only way possible to identify someone, wouldn't he have been identified as whomever's eyes he had in? A minor quibble.

-FP