Jane Smith
Eng 132
Valerie Haas
October 9, 2014
Our Future Selves
Societies evolve as life evolves. The theory of evolution is it’s designed to weed out the
weak and keep the strong. A dystopian society can be looked at the same way. There’s one
governing body, multiple law enforcement departments to carry out their laws, and the
civilization struggling to survive by these laid out laws set forth by this governing body. Society
dictated by one commander doesn’t have harmony among its people. In “The Minority
Report,” by Philip K. Dick, this near-future dystopian society thinks it is close to perfect because
it has eliminated major crimes like murder, but what it has also done is removed free-will and
self-determination of the people, as well as the presumption of innocence.
John Anderton founded a law enforcement agency called Pre-Crime 30 years ago, but is
now aging and nearing retirement. This system is based on the predictions of future murders
by three physically damaged people with enhanced brain function in the form of visions of
future crimes. Anderton doesn’t question a society that he is a part of designing until he
becomes one of the wanted criminals. Struggling to prove his innocence is no easy task. With
becomes more difficult minute by minute. Anderton goes on the run to prove his innocence, or
to come to grips with the fact that he may in fact kill someone as the pre-cogs predicted (Dick
1-20).
We could ask ourselves--should proving one’s innocence be so difficult in a supposedly
free society? The answer is “no”. If a person has committed no crime, then how can one not
be tried, still be found guilty, and sentenced to confinement for life! Whatever happened to
the rights of people to have a trial by our peers and let them decide our fate? In “The Minority
Report”, people aren’t given the opportunity to change their future, let alone prove their
innocence. Again, we have one governing body deciding on how society will function.
The view painted by the short story is one of not so much demise, ruin, and dismay, but
of one with dictatorship, bias, and zero tolerance. Is it really that farfetched? How much does
it differ from our own society that we exist in today? Not by much at all. We don’t use brain
waive technology or precognitive fortune-tellers to decipher right from wrong. For the time
being we still use the good ole judicial system that was designed many years ago. Does it have
its faults? Of course it does. We have people today that are appealing cases in which they were
found guilty 10, 15, and 20 years ago for crimes they didn’t commit. With the technology we
have today, defendants are able to prove better that they were indeed innocent. The idea in
Dick’s story is that brain waive technology can’t be fooled. But if we think about it…if in today’s
day and age, a person can fool a polygraph, would it really be that difficult to fool a machine
designed to read brainwaves? Would it be difficult to trick someone who could see the future
In the movie version of Minority Report it showed the common use of retinal scanners.
Disembodied voices driven by advertising logarithms called out to people in stores in a mall
(Minority Report 2002). The military has been using retinal scanning for years. We as a society
aren’t using them to make purchases or for a means of survival. On the other hand, our society
has been using credit cards, debit cards, and ATM cards for more than 20 years. The
technology used to encode and protect the cards is increasing every year. Our iPhones have
fingerprint identification technology. Cash is becoming an obsolete item. Not too many people
use checks either. Most of the stores don’t even accept checks; so will it be cash or charge?
The short story and the movie both have representations and relevance to what our society
could become. The technology exists. It’s up to the businesses and the government whether or
not they want to use it for the betterment of society, or to create a dystopian society with it.
Life in the short story and the movie don’t depict squalor and famine. There doesn’t
seem to be stereotypical depictions of dystopia, except for in the film when Anderton goes out
for a run to buy drugs. There, on the streets of the city, are homeless and squalid conditions.
There were also tenements where poor people lived, and Anderton went in search of new eyes.
When the police, looking very militaristic, came looking for Anderton, they sent the spider bots
into the building and we could see how low rent the building was, and the people living there
were rather stereotypically poor as well (The Minority Report 2002). Life was good in the good
parts of the city and dirty and unsafe in the outer districts. This is not too unlike our society.
Our major cities already operate under similar circumstances. Take Detroit for instance.
One can venture downtown and see its museums, casinos, hotels, riverside, and sporting events
dropped. How willing would people be to accept the Pre-Crime department described in “The
Minority Report”? People might think it would be a good idea; an idea that might keep them
safe from the random violence they see almost every day. Yet, how easy might it be to trade
one type of oppression for another? It’s up to the people of our society to see that the right
changes happen for the right reasons. We should never allow the rights that our forefathers
fought so hard to attain to be taken away by a governing body that just wants control. Even if it
seems to be for a good reason.
Short stories and films paint a more vivid idea of what the writer or director is trying to
show. They want their readers to envision a moment that is real and possible to every
expectation. Both versions of “The Minority Report” paint visions of idealism, dictatorship, and
corruption. If one wants to live in a “Utopian” society, then one must take part in that society
to defend the ideals of that society. People shouldn’t allow one person, corporation, or
governing body to dictate how they’re going to live. Our legal system isn’t perfect, nor is it
completely corrupt. As long as the people stand together, they can accomplish many things.
Harmony can be obtained, but it’s up to the people whether or not they want it. It would seem
that the people in the society of “The Minority Report” traded some of their civil liberties for
the prospect of safety, but is any truly free society capable of being 100% safe? Dwight D.
Eisenhower once said: “If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given
medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.” Is safety worth so precious a
Works Cited
Dick, Philip. “The Minority Report”. (1956). Eng132henry.googlesites.com. Short story: PDF file.
The Minority Report. Dir. Steven Spielberg. Perf. Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Max Von Sydow. 20th Century
Fox. 2002. Film.
