H. G. Wells reviews "Metropolis" (1927)
I recently watched Metropolis for the first time with my kiddo, to learn about silent film and earlier ideas about the future.  That it was set 100 years in the future and nearing 2027 made the prospect intriguing.<p>While some of the themes are obvious—rich living in the sky, poor toiling underground… I had trouble fully understanding the point of the lady robot and &quot;heart mediating between the head and the hand&quot; angle.  Wells&#x27; helped me come to a better understanding, thanks for that.<p>I think he gets much right, about art&#x27;s fear of technology.  I found his complaints about car and plane models nitpicky however.  (They had already spent too much, I suppose they could have spent more.)  I am generally pro-technology&#x2F;efficiency, however there are negative aspects that often need to be addressed for the good of society, and aren&#x27;t.<p>But then he drops square into urban planning and the density&#x2F;NIMBY debate, which affects many parts of society today:<p><pre><code>    That vertical city of the future we know now is, to put it mildly,
    highly improbable. Even in New York and Chicago, where the pressure on
    the central sites is exceptionally great, it is only the central office
    and entertainment region that soars and excavates. And the same
    centripetal pressure that leads to the utmost exploitation of site
    values at the centre leads also to the driving out of industrialism and
    labour from the population center to cheaper areas, and of residential
    life to more open and airy surroundings.

    That was all discussed and written about before 1900. Somewhere about
    1930 the geniuses of Ufa studios will come up to a book of
    Anticipations which was written more than a quarter of a century ago.
    The British census returns of 1901 proved clearly that city populations
    were becoming centrifugal, and that every increase in horizontal
    traffic facilities produced a further distribution.

    This vertical social stratification is stale old stuff. So far from
    being &#x27;a hundred years hence,&#x27; Metropolis, in its forms and shapes, is
    already, as a possibility, a third of a century out of date.

</code></pre>
He&#x27;s both right and wrong, and there is definitely a tension between these forces today.  Mid-century the movement was outward, these days inward.  It took decades, but NIMBYs seem to have finally lost the upper hand, in my city at least.  Population is increasing so it is somewhat inevitable in the long run.<p>Interestingly, Wells also gets bogged down in the details of mechanical efficiency, which have put numbers of folks out of work.  But when we watched it, my brain immediately converted the factory to a metaphor of modern work, not the physical production of cheap goods.  We see today it is quite possible to fleece the poor and increase homelessness by limiting housing and inflating assets, cheap goods or not.  Manipulating the masses has never been easier, as well.  In any case, lots to think about.