Toliver had me watch a YouTube video today that demonstrated how carburetors work through the construction of a transparent one. It was really good, but then another video of a deleted scene from the movie Groundhog Day was recommended that got me thinking.
If you haven’t seen the movie, you absolutely should. It holds up, although I admit that it’s been a little while since I last saw it. Bill Murray does an excellent job of playing a weatherman who ends up reliving the same day over and over again. (I bet the day is an easy guess). After enjoying the concept at first, he runs out of things to do fairly quickly. The deleted scene video plays it out fairly well, showing that he’s basically memorized all the things he could.
But, the movie was came out in 1993. The Internet wasn’t all that ubiquitous at the time, although I was on it because of course I was. I’m a big nerd. How we live has changed quite a lot in the past almost 30 years.
I started thinking about what it would be like to reboot the movie, as seems so popular lately. Imagine the premise of the movie set in present day. It didn’t take me all that long to conclude that the presence of the Internet would completely change everything, and could almost invalidate most of the premise of the movie itself.
Think about how much content you could consume now compared to before. Streaming movies and shows, eBooks. Online learning platforms. You could learn all there is to know about so many subjects. Sure, you might get bored, especially since you wouldn’t be able to travel all that far (because of the reset once you fell asleep), but you get to retain your knowledge. That’s a big plot point for the original movie, our hero gets wiser over time.
The biggest downside I can see is that you’d always be stuck in that same point of time. Just like in the movie, how the same games played themselves out to the same scores, the current events would always be the same. This would greatly influence the algorithms that suggested content to you. You could find new stuff, sure… but you’d have to go actively seek it. Since you don’t lose your memories, this might not be all of that big of a deal.
Luckily, I think this movie is quite safe from getting rebooted. There wouldn’t be much point based on how things have changed in the world, and the original concept was so completely unique that it can stand on its own.
Also, RIP Harold Ramis.