Devs

Devs. TV Mini Series (6 hours, 49 minutes). Alex Garland, creator. UK, USA: DNA Films, FX Productions, Scott Rudin Productions (production) / BBC Two, Disney+ HBO, Hulu (distribution), premiered 5 March 2020 (US): see IMDb and Wikipedia for videographic details.[1][2]

IMDb Storyline: "A computer engineer" — Wikipedia: "software engineer" — "investigates the secretive development division in her company, which she believes is behind the disappearance of her boyfriend."[3] The company is identified in the Wikipedia entry as "Amaya, a quantum computing company run by [the character] Forest [...]."[4]

See Wikipedia for episode summaries.[5]

Season 1 reviewed by Miguel Sebastián-Martín, SFRA Review 50.4 (Fall 2020).[6]

"What is Devs?” is the simple question that is constantly suggested by the series and explicitly asked by its characters [...]. At the diegesis’s literal level, Devs is Amaya’s grand ambition and Forest’s pet project: specifically, an ongoing, partially successful attempt at both predicting the future and recreating the past [...]. Thus, thanks to Amaya’s select team of coders and to a powerful quantum computer, the Devs machine proves capable of recreating reality in all directions of time and space, showing its results as a literal video-on-demand stream, eventually one with sound and colour.

On an immediate sociological level, the series appears as an anxious vision of the potential of predictive algorithmic/AI systems, which are currently the target of heavy investment by most surveillance capitalist corporations. Were these technologies capable of providing epistemic omnipotence, and were they concentrated upon the hands of such a secretive, cult-like few, would these be the consequences for our democracy and our individual freedoms? Relatedly, but on a more theological note, Devs (the Latin spelling of Deus, God) poses another set of questions, recently asked, among others, by Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus:[7] What would the so-called singularity[8] imply for humanity? Will technological development turn us into gods, or rather, will technology itself emerge as a new, mechanical God?[9]

"Devs"/Deus: In its archaic and classic Roman forms, the Latin alphabet had no "U," with "V" being used.[10]

Quantum computers: Very powerful, with the promise, or threat, of true AI — under current, real-world development.[11]

RDE, finishing, 4Nov21