DEVS - Style over substance?

I just finished watching the TV series DEVS that has been on the BBC. I watched most of it on catch-up. It looked interesting as it was about a technology company, but I did not know too much to start with. I had not seen this trailer that gives away a lot of plot points.

I knew director Alex Garland from Ex Maschina which deals with artificial intelligence. This show has a similar feel to it. Firstly, it looks gorgeous. The set design of the DEVS lab is amazingn and there are lots of great shots of San Francisco. From the credits I see some was done at UK studios, so maybe they did interiors over here. It also has a good soundtrack. Some of the music used on the titles and credits is avant-garde stuff, but I liked it.

If you want to go in completely fresh then skip the rest of this. I will say I found it entertaining and enjoyed some of the geeky stuff they threw in. Some of the acting is a bit wooden, but then the characters are odd anyway.

I have been thinking about the technology portrayed here. Basically the company Amaya has a quantum computer that can see into the past and future by extrapolating from objects that they scan. It gets into philosophical issues of fate and free will.

Some of the characters are firm believers in determinism that says everything depends on what has gone before. Of course that is true, but when you throw in consciousness and if the people have seen what is coming then they can react to that. I am not an expert on this stuff, but I have pondered it. If you are looking at the future, then does that future take account of you knowing it beforehand?

I know some people think things happen because of fate, whatever that is, but I think it is more about physics and consciousness. If you think something has to happen to you then you will probably act to make it happen. Amaya boss Forest feels guilt for the death of his wife and child in a car accident when he may have been a cause. If it was predetermined then it is not necessarily his fault.

Then there is the actual technology featured. I like that Forest has an old Commodore PET in a glass case in his office. There is talk of Fibonacci numbers and encryption. The developers working on the machine talk about Von Neuman, Penrose and particularly Hugh Everett who proposed the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics. By the way he is the father of E from the band Eels. Quantum physics is often confusing as it deals in probabilities rather than fixed events. I am no expert on this either. Einstein had issues with it and said that 'God does not play with dice'.

To be able to extrapolate even a short time into the past or future you would need to know the position and velocity of every particle that could affect events. Heisenberg postulated that we cannot know both of these to complete accuracy. Even if you could then you need infinite precision of measurement as chaos theory shows that even slightly different starting conditions can lead to very different outcomes in simple systems such as the movement of a pendulum.

The idea of being able to extract sound from thousands of years ago is cool, but sound waves decay rapidly to random noise. Even if shouted at some surface that vibrated those vibrations would be pretty chaotic and you could not hope to get the original sound back if it were even as simple as a single word.

The DEVS computer would require practically infinite storage and processing power. It would even need to model itself as it affects events. Quantum computers show promise in specific fields of computation, but they cannot change the laws of phyics (neither can Scotty). The image from the linked article may have inspired the show.

These things need to be kept really cold to reduce the noise of vibrating atoms.

A friend reminded me of the Total Perspective Vortex from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Maybe this was an inspiration for the scanning of the objects in the show.

Of course this show is just entertainment. We suspend belief for most science fiction and fantasy, but when it seems so close to our own world then niggles like these may spring to mind. I read a lot of popular science books, so I pick up bits and pieces. I also work with computers, so I know a lot of what is possible, but there is plenty of research out there I am unaware of and maybe some of what I think is impossible may actually be achieved. This show just pushes some ideas way beyond what could ever be possible in order to tell the story they wanted.

Enjoy it for what it is.

This video attempts to explain what happened at the end. I pretty much agree. I am sure there are plenty of other people analysing it.