There are more than a few utopian-turned-nightmare, future imperfect movies that have come out over the past decade.

Why so afraid of the future?

Surrogates is the latest in a long line of "technology is terrifying" movies. The basic premise: Everyone is able to experience the world through a robot that they control. People have become addicted to the point where they use it as a replacement of themselves. They even go far enough to show 'surrogate junkies' who get a twist off of electrical current, and people walking around in the flesh are called "meat bags." Bruce Willis plays the tortured FBI agent who finds his humanity just in time to save the world.

Incidentally: H+ Magazine has an interesting interview with the author of the original graphic novel.

Some other examples over the past several years have also made it a point to show how technology is the antithesis to humanity:

District 9
War of the Worlds
The Day the Earth Stood Still
the Island
The Matrix
Independence Day
Signs

Some of these are alien movies, yes, but they each provide a stark contrast between scenes of 'real-blooded humanity' and the cold, lifeless nature of technology. Aliens and technology inhabit the same paradigm--we don't know what it is, but it's probably dangerous.

Someone once told me, "Fear of the unknown is what got us to the top of the food chain." So, by proxy, we should be afraid of investing ourselves too much in something we don't fully understand. This is why we've been able to stay alive so long in the first place.
Granted--this isn't an entirely unwise way of thinking. But should we ethically pigeon-hole a technology before it becomes reality? Not that it isn't a good idea to anticipate problems before they occur, but if Henry Ford had known that cars would become the single greatest killer of people in the world, would he still have built them?

For most, technology represents a convenience without consequence. For some, technology is the inevitable host to our next step in evolution. And for others, technology is the harbinger of our destruction.

Regardless of what anyone may think, there are very powerful implications for what is coming. Nano-technology is just starting to appear in concept. Computers more powerful than ever dreamed are being built. Have you noticed that both Google and Microsoft are building face recognition into their photo search software? The debate about whether or not Technology is bad for us is long past. We should be worried about how we use what we develop.

Microsoft recently put out an interesting montage (their vision for 2019):



Everything in that video is real, and in the concept stage at Microsoft as we speak.

All of this is greasing the slope toward total immersion. Technology will be as natural and a part of us as breathing, and we won't even notice when it happens (joke's on you, if you're reading this, it's already happened to you).

Some movies have a more positive outlook, or use technology as an ally:

Bicentennial Man
Contact
Minority Report
Fifth Element
The Matrix
Solaris
Vanilla Sky

The movies above, for the most part, avoid the pitfall. 'Technology' is a word. Like anything else, it can be used for good or evil--and the argument loses focus the moment that technology becomes the subject of the debate. Also, while technology is cool and fun for sci-fi nerds, it's meaningless without the addition of humanity as an emotional backdrop.

The definition of humanity will most likely be debated in the years to come, but until that day, we don't have to scare the crap out of ourselves in the process of getting there.

Note: Some have already asked me why the Matrix is in the both lists, being that the enemy in the movie is clearly a product of technology. That's the trick. It isn't entirely. The ideology behind the enemy technology is the enemy, not the technology itself. (But there is effort paid to making the tech look all spidery and evil.)