Utopia or The Art of Survival
In the early 16th century, the English writer Thomas Moore invented the island of Utopia as a literary paradise of freedom and justice. Since then, the French, the German and the Russian revolutions have failed, and communism was swept away as were the hippie dreams of an alternative life in untouched nature. So where is the Utopia of today? In the midst of animated scientific films, the breakthrough of sensational new medical progress, optimistic advertising spots and techno clips from singer Björk, German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk explains why the dream of collective happiness has to give way to individual ambition in the age of biotechnology and waste society. American political scientist Francis Fukuyama contends that capitalism can no longer be beaten. The general secretary of Greenpeace, Thilo Bode, wonders why future and progress are always wrongly considered as the same. Wagner, particle physics researcher at the DESY in Hamburg, genome research specialist Lehrach from the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, Mitchell, the dean of the Medialab at MIT in Boston and computer scientist Randy Katz from Berkeley compare scientific utopia to the status of today’s scientific research. And brain researcher Wolf Singer explains why humanity cannot be considered the pinnacle of creation.
Featuring Wolf Singer, Peter Sloterdijk, Willam J. Mitchell, Francis Fukuyama, Thilo Bode, Alain Fischer, and many others.
(60', 2000)