Humans Are on Schedule to Bring One Part of Blade Runner to Reality

It’s not flying cars, off-planet travel or Darryl Hannah-like sex androids (sadly), or even a super crowded and rainy Los Angeles teeming with Asians (well, the crowded and Asian part anyway).  It’s the part where animals are virtually extinct.

The 2016 version of WWF’s biennial Living Planet Report, published Thursday, found a 58 percent overall decline in vertebrate populations from 1970 to 2012, the latest year with available data. The nonprofit warned that if current trends continue, the world could lose more than two-thirds of wildlife by 2020.

In just 50 years, look what we’ve accomplished.  Give us another 50 and the oceans, jungles and plains will be bereft of life.

The title of the Phillip K. Dick book the film “Blade Runner” was based on was “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.” The title alludes to both the friction between artificial intelligence and self-awareness of life and mortality but also to a society in which actual animals have been rendered extinct so the wealthy have zoos of electric animals to go with their android servants.

Great film, great book, horrible potential future we’re bringing to reality.

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