Thinking About Thinking Machines: Metropolis
Past Present Future is a podcast on the History of Ideas with David Runciman, in partnership with the London Review of Books.
Poster for Metropolis by Boris Bilinski. Public Domain.
For the first episode in our new series on the history of thinking about thinking machines, David talks to philosopher Shannon Vallor about Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). The last great silent film is the most futuristic: a vision of robots and artificial life, it is also about where the human heart fits into an increasingly mechanised world. Is it prophetic? Is it monstrous? And who are the winners and losers when war is declared on the machines?
