The world of Blade Runner is one full of futuristic cyberpunk technology, including lifelike androids, space travel and giant, holographic billboards. But there are a few pieces of modern technology that are strangely absent in this sci-fi universe. Namely, there are no cellphones and no Internet. That might seem like a strange omission in this day and age, but there are actually several reasons why the Blade Runner universe is missing those crucial pieces of technology.
The simplest explanation is that the original Blade Runner simply couldn’t have predicted the ubiquitous nature of cellphones, the web and social media in the 21st century. Not only was that film released in 1982, it was based on a Philip K. Dick novel published in 1968. In some ways, Blade Runner was very prescient in envisioning the world as it would exist in 2019. The film predicted China’s rise to become a global superpower, the nonstop sensory barrage that is modern advertising and the fact that humanity would increasingly have to deal with the effects of climate change. But in other ways, Blade Runner was way off the mark. Unless some big changes happen very quickly, we’re not likely to have flying cars, androids and off-world colonies by the year 2019.
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