This weekend I finally watched Alien: Romulus (2024) given I thought it might give me something to talk about for Tech Noir, I was right. I enjoyed the return to the original Alien (1979), which in many ways is one of the pillars of the tech noir genre with its focus on greedy hi-tech companies; sleeper agent androids designed to do the powerful’s bidding; and a dark and claustrophobic atmosphere—oh yeah, there are also the aliens that the corporation secretly direct the android to return to earth for seemingly dubious purposes. But more than anything for me from the original Alien is the beautiful visualization of the technology of the future, like captain Dallas seemingly immersed within the MU/TH/UR 6000 computer.
In fact, the entire ship is a series of automated computers that was hard to fully wrap your head around in 1979:
The internet of things was a long way off:
The visual style of Alien is part of what made it so memorable, and that doesn’t go just for the technology, but also for the sense of ominous darkness that follows each character as they are hunted by the Xenomorph.
That aesthetic even extends to Jonesy the cat:
Romulus is quite intentionally an homage to the original, and some very early shots highlight the “Cassette Futurism” of Ridley Scott’s original vision. Flickering CRT screens and blinking buttons were used to highlight the out-dated technology of the well-worn workspace of the mining ship.
MU/TH/UR 9000
This point is brought home when they highlight a similar, yet more recent, operating system the mining company is running on the abandoned ship: MU/TH/UR 9000. In fact, both the plot line and the visual aesthetic of Romulus are loosely re-tracing the original. Watching essentially the same film 45 years later is still better than most of what you’ll find on Netflix, so sign me up. I was enjoying the film up and until they introduced the likeness of actor Ian Holm (he died in 2020) who played the role of the evil android Ash in the original. He was, oddly, a different android named Rook who also had as his prime directive to ensure the aliens on board were delivered safely to the company at all costs. Hmmm.
Ian Holm’s likeness used to play the android Rook in Romulus, you would be right to think this was an image from Alien Isolation video game that came out ten years ago
Many people took issue with the CGI used to render Ash Rook—it was terrible for sure—but that was not my biggest beef. My issue was the very danger the figure Ash warned us about in the original, namely the costs of artificial intelligence passing as human in order to serve the agenda of the rich and powerful, is unironically realized in the conceptualization of this re-make. Despite being dead for years, Ian Holm was included in the film not through re-used footage, but as a totally new character using his voice and likeness. While his estate seems to have been consulted on the inclusion, he has effectively lost agency over how the film companies use his likeness. In effect, his legacy as an actor is brought into question. Which, in turn, opens up the broader question of how such deep fakes in Hollywood impact any actor working presently (or not). One has to ask if some part of Holm’s soul (to use that term broadly) as an actor is now owned by the Alien franchise corporation (5 or 6 more years in the Hollywood mine, the company appreciates you!)—it’s prime directive being to make profits on the shoulders of those who helped make it successful: dead or alive.
“You still don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? … Perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.” Alien (1979)
Despite the larger ethical questions around AI, deep fakes, and the loss of control of our likeness (Hollywood just being one example), the other question worth asking is did Romulus even need this poorly executed reference? It was apparent they were returning home to the original, and quite frankly the opening scene on the mining colony; the hijacking of the abandoned ship; and the face hugging barrage was an excellent start to the movie. The aesthetic references to the original were apparent, but the plot details were different enough to be an homage while providing their own twist, but when Ian Holm’s butchered (both figuratively and literally) likeness appears, there was a sense that we could no longer go home to the original again. Not only was it forced, but it felt wrong. Holm is an amazing actor and Alien was jut one of many roles that established him as a great talent, yet here he is coming back from the dead as a terribly re-created CGI figure with a role that only his talent could save from the implicit mediocrity of the idea—but that talent is no longer with us, he is dead. What part of that equation did director Fede Álvarez fail to understand?
The cast of the 1979original Alien
Filmmaking is an act of orchestration between the director, writer(s), cinematographer, designers, and most of all the players. What made Alien so great even beyond the aesthetics were the characters and the performances that made them by greats such as Sigourney Weaver, Yaphet Kotto, Harry Dean Stanton, Veronica Cartwright, Tom Skerritt, and especially Ian Holm. It’s that alchemy that made the original one of the greatest films of the 20th century. It’s the very reason why Alien is a franchise at all, so to just mindlessly mine that talent post-humously for a half-assed wink highlights the soullessness of these franchise films. As the case with Marvel and Star Wars, we see Alien attempt redemption by returning to the source, but all the while forgetting it’s the humanity of talent that made the original great. The Tech Noir themes of this film are in many ways as much about the politics of re-making the original as the story itself. Fight me.
I am creating a course aggregation site for the current 
The ABCs of Blogging: Always Be Commenting
I think it was the great Scottlo that underscored the “Always Be Commenting” mantra while teaching ds106 in Japan, and it’s something I’ve returned to constantly over the last 10+ years—even when not living up to it’s eternal truth. So this blog is not only an ode to blogging, but a peaen to those folks who take the time and energy to share some love in the comments. Back in the fall of 2010 I was teaching my second ds106 course and trying to figure out what made an online course community work, and from the very beginning it was all about the “art of commenting”:
Damn, that kid was locked-in in 2010! Laying down truth like it was his job: the blogosphere was hot!
In fact, Twitter was where a fair amount of those comments went, and they resulted in a networked community for the course starting in 2011 that was pretty much pure magic. But comments on the work still happened in droves, and the idea of the students being engaged with each other’s work was still paramount. Twitter was like a portal to the world beyond UMW (although the course was the context) and there were some students who stepped through, but others that didn’t. With the fall of Twitter came the diaspora with folks decamping to Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn (lord bless their souls!) while others headed for the hills preaching the coming federated rapture on Mastodon. But as I’m feeling more smitten with the blog than any one platform these days, I idealistically wonder if a return to commenting might help re-focus the vision of a distributed community. I know commenting is far from perfect, and amazing bloggers like Audrey Watters turned them off on Hack Education given all the bullshit an open form on the web can result in. This is why we can’t have nice things!
via GIPHY
So acknowledging the definite limits of commenting to save the world, I’m still making a commitment in 2025 to spend a lot more time commenting on other folks work than I have in a long time. I may be overthinking this, but I have gotten the sense that folks might be planning a return to the blog. Aaron Davis is back at it, and uses a quote from Audrey Watters’s recent post to frame the title, “But here I am, blogging on my own domain. Silly me.” If Audrey’s back, why not? I’ll join that club.
via GIPHY
My number one guy of all time, Timmmmmmmmmmmyboy, is absolutely owning the blogosphere, as he is wont to do when he gets something in his head. I’ll ride that train to its very last stop. All aboard the blog train!
via GIPHY
But it doesn’t stop there, Tim Klapdor’s been way down in Adelaide blogging the hell out of the Southern hemisphere for some time now, and more recently he has figured out how to get his static site to ingest comments from Mastodon for specific posts—bridging the federated world and his blog, which is quite cool. I’m telling you, there is something in the blog water.
I think there’s something in the water
And of course Maren Deepwell has rung in the new year on the blog with a personal tech stack review series, that’s one I still need to comment on.
Kin Lane, the mighty API Evangelist, is always blogging and recently he made an apt analogy between AI and automobiles as he thinks out loud. I still need to blog/comment on this, there is so much awesome here. And I found it thanks to Kate Bowles on Mastodon, so how about those networked apples?
And was it my blogfather D’Arcy Norman who essentially wrote an abbreviated 30-year history of edtech on his blog like a boss? Yes indeed!
Maybe I’m just delusional, but something tells me blogging is gonna be hot in 2025! Hold all my calls, Rowan, I’m blogging (and commenting)!