Warning: Contains spoilers for Netflix’s ‘Don’t Look Up.’
I’ve seen a lot of theories making the rounds about Mark Rylance’s character Peter Isherwell in Don’t Look Up, an eccentric tech mogul whose uber-capitalism masks itself as altruistic enlightenment (even to himself). But whether Isherwell owes more to Musk, to Zuckerberg or to Page I think misses the point: The tech industry target the movie truly eviscerates is the vaunted Tech Demo.
You can argue about its actual origins, but most will agree that the concept of turning a new product or tech innovation into a stage show for public consumption gained traction thanks primarily to Apple founder Steve Jobs. Jobs was a natural showman from the very beginning, and if you have a bunch of time to kill it’s worth taking a look back through his recorded presentations, which date back all the way to 1983. Especially beginning with the debut of the iPhone in 2007, this kind of treatment became something competitors obviously felt they couldn’t help but also use to introduce new products.
Tech demos obviously existed prior to, and continue to exist independent of, their incarnation for general public consumption. Demos were also famously the way that teams internally sought the attention and approval of Jobs throughout the development of Apple’s various products, and a good demo might mean earning approval and resources, whereas a bad one could see an entire team’s efforts cut short.
But internal demos, at least when used properly, tend to be ‘warts and all’ affairs that provide key opportunities for leaders to tangibly see what their various teams are working on, and offer guidance about direction and solutions. The public tech demo is something else entirely, and at this point it’s become what it’s presented as in Don’t Look Up: An act of artifice that exists independent of (and hardly shares any common ground with) the real world.
Don’t Look Up has two big ‘tech demo’ moments that point out exactly what’s wrong with the kind we’re used to now — and a third, related depiction that’s sort of analogous to the ‘hands-on’ experience typically offered to the press after the official demos and introductory presentations. The first is the introduction of Bash’s new smartphone software, which literally reads a user’s emotions and serves them pacifying content when needed (a cute cat video in the stage show.) While introducing the software, Rylance (as Isherwell) is inexplicably flanked by children who are also holding Bash-powered phones.
Isherwell ignores a request from one of the kids on stage to say something, which is just the appetizer for his complete ignorance of them once the presentation is over, when he focuses instead on ironing out a minor detail of the demo itself.
The next demo is for a much smaller audience, the President (portrayed by Meryl Streep) and her retinue. In this one, Isherwell is demonstrating how his proposed system for intervening in the arrival of the world-killing planet that Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence’s characters identified. The demo is technically very impressive, presented via a slick hologram in which everything works exactly as intended. Isherwell also backs up the technical bona fides by name-dropping some accomplished academics, but the name-checks are crucially shallow.
Finally, the ‘hands-on’ happens when Isherwell shows off the asteroid-mining robots he’s created to the President prior the mission. It’s a brief, …….