Yesterday’s Tomorrow Today

Carmichael Centre at The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work

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Science fiction films unpacked to explore the impact of technology on workers and society today.

15/12/2022

Minority Report

This week*, Duncan and Mark review 2002's Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise along with Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Max von Sydow (a regular on this podcast) and Neal McDonough. This is a film loosely based on Isaac Asimov's short story The Minority Report. Seriously, by loosely we mean that the film's treatment of problems with techno-authoritarianism in the hands of the police competes for screentime with Steven Spielberg's focus on slapstick-comedy action sequences and often the latter wins out. Kind of a metaphor for the post-9/11 world really. But for all its faults, Minority Report shows us a future in which Elon Musk is still the biggest loser ever, hahahaha. In one sentence: Minority Report has aged waaaay faster than its main star Tom Cruise has in the last 20 years (he still looks 40). Seriously, please don't watch it. Yesterday's Tomorrow Today is sponsored by the Carmichael Centre within the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute. *A note from your podcasters: between covid and dogs eating laptops, it's been a challenge to get episodes out regularly the past couple of months. We also lost an episode which may or may not be recovered - hopefully we find it, it's a good one. So this may be the final episode of Season 1 and we're grateful to all our listeners for the support! We've gone truly global (we've got listeners in 4 countries). So we hope we can keep doing more podcasts in 2023. Until then, stay safe, enjoy the holidays and always treat technology as political. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

1 h y 15 min
15/12/2022

Predator

US military imperialism, meet your biggest threat: a full-scale Soviet invasion force on your Latin-American doorstep. This film also features a highly advanced extra-terrestrial lifeform hunting humans for sport. Only one man, and his crack special forces team of muslce-bound misogynists, can put an end to both. Yesterday's Tomorrow Today is sponsored by the Carmichael Centre within the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

55 min
25/11/2022

Wall-E

What happens when your pet dog has a disagreement with your laptop? You can't publish this week's episode last week like you were supposed to! Despite the delay (we're very sorry, comrades), it's Wall-E time! And what perfect timing given recent events - Wall-E depicts an idiotic future that only someone like Elon Musk could genius us into, and which only solidarity can get us out of. I still can't believe Musk bought Twitter just so internet losers would like him. An update for those not keeping tabs: it's gone so bad that it could hilariously mean the end of Musk's various vanity projects (like Mars, Tunnels and Exploding Cars). What you'll learn from this podcast is that Wall-E is the opposite of Elon Musk - funny, cool, and capable of inspiring a revolutionary mindset amongst his fellow worker-bots, proving we can have free frozen yoghurt AND unions. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

56 min
10/11/2022

Terminator (w/special guest Dr Jim Stanford)

Episode 7 saw a rejuvenated post-Euro vacation Duncan, and a nascently emerging-from-Melbourne-winter Mark rejoin their forces to tackle 1984's Terminator, James Cameron's (and Arnold Schwarzenegger's) breakout film, which featured light commentary on the narrative of technological determinism and humanity's - at this point almost boring - belief that robots are going to murder us all. We're joined by our special guest, Dr Jim Stanford, Director and Economist at the Centre for Future Work, whose research over an illustrious career in the labour movement provides swads of evidence to prove that Arnie's claim "I'll be back" was a little overblown - both then, and now. Yesterday's Tomorrow Today is sponsored by the Carmichael Centre within the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

46 min
03/11/2022

Alien (w/special guest Matt Grudnoff)

If a tree falls in space, can anyone hear you scream when it falls on you? Trick question - there's no trees in space, not to mention that space is technically flat so you're on the same plane as the tree and who knows which did the falling? With that whole facehugger-and-egg analogy in mind, we're joined in this episode by The Australia Institute's Senior Economist, Matt Grudnoff to talk about Matt's favourite film, Alien, the 1979 masterpiece that defined science fiction blockbusters forever after. It also reminds us that even in the 1970s people could tell capitalism was going to produce an inter-stellar hellscape for workers. Yesterday's Tomorrow Today is sponsored by the Carmichael Centre within the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

53 min
20/10/2022

Judge Dredd (w/special guest Lily Raynes)

In Episode 4, Duncan and Mark are forced into watching and talking about the 1995 film Judge Dredd, starring Sylvester Stallone and sadly, also Rob Schneider, who steals the show and not in a good way. But there's good news too: we're joined by the Centre for Future Work's resident industrial relations law expert, Lily Raynes! Lily walks us through the jurisprudence (law philosophy) issues that arise from a future shaped by the embodiment of justice and punishment in police-judges that wear clunky, awkward armour over black spandex bodysuits. Yesterday's Tomorrow Today is sponsored by the Carmichael Centre within the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

1 h y 8 min
13/10/2022

Gattaca

In our third episode, Duncan and Mark dive into the 1997 sci-fi noir, Gattaca. Duncan skips out on the squirmy bits, but both our podcasters ultimately complete the viewing of this underrated film with a sense that the eugenicist strive to perfection that so often infiltrates the thinking of tech companies is perhaps not a good thing. Yesterday's Tomorrow Today is sponsored by the Carmichael Centre within the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

50 min
06/10/2022

Starship Troopers

In Episode 2, Duncan and Mark review Starship Troopers, the 1997 Paul Verhoeven and Ed Nieumeyer film that is part tragedy, part comedy, all comment on the farce that is a future in which Nazis have been normalised and the cast of Melrose Place do humanity's shooting, spaceship driving and brain-bug hunting. Yesterday's Tomorrow Today is sponsored by the Carmichael Centre within the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

1 h y 10 min
30/09/2022

Robocop (Pilot Episode!)

In the Pilot episode of Yesterday's Tomorrow Today, Duncan and Mark talk about Robocop, police union strikes, privatisation, gentrification, deindustrialisation and all the other fun things that late-stage capitalism has gifted the world. Yesterday's Tomorrow Today is produced with the support of the Carmichael Centre within the Centre for Future Work at The Australia Institute. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

1 h y 12 min

9 episodios

Science fiction films unpacked to explore the impact of technology on workers and society today.

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Carmichael Centre at The Australia Institute's Centre for Future Work
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