It seems easy to hack humans, says Lisa Joy
Lisa Joy, the co-creator of Westworld — an American science fiction show — feels that it’s easy to hack humans. Talking about the interesting things that happened during the second season of the show, Joy said, “Everybody, while talking about new technologies, has the big fear that what if those technologies get hacked. And, But, what comes to my mind is what if those technologies hack humans? Because it seems to be very easy to hack humans. We maybe aren’t as complicated as we seem, and recently, we’ve all been looking at media and the changing face of it. In Westworld, it’s about hosts who fake reality programs and fake back stories, and they’re taught to believe in a lie.” She added, “We are susceptible to manipulation through technology now than we ever thought possible.” The show is about female robots who are victims of sexual violence. They later lead a resistance.
Is it possible to make a show that isn’t influenced by the larger political context, like the #MeToo movement? She replied, “It was possible for us because we’d written the second season before all that happened. The election happened while we were writing, but everything else hadn’t. And the election didn’t surprise me. The outcome did not surprise me.” “Just because something becomes discussed widely in culture, it doesn’t mean it just happened. It was just the moment where culture en masse started talking about it,” she explained.