The hot news over the last few days has, without a doubt, been about the Nexus One, the phone that might or might not be (and isn’t, in my opinion) the fabled “Googlephone”. Everybody’s been talking about it, discussing its specs, and commenting that the name is a homage to Bladerunner. Well, technically, it’s a homage to Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by author Philip K Dick, since that’s what, as we all know, Bladerunner was based on.
We aren’t the only ones to notice the similarity, apparently, because according to The Register, Philip K. Dick’s daughter has also noticed the similarity, and isn’t happy. In the words of Isa Dick Hackett, the author’s daughter and head of his remaining estate, “In my mind, there is a very obvious connection to my father’s novel. We were never consulted, no requests were made, and we didn’t grant any sort of permissions.”
We’ll have to see what transpires, but it’s not massively difficult, at all, to see the connection myself. In the original novel (and in the Ridley Scott fillum), the replicants that Deckard was hunting down were part of the Nexus-6, advanced version of, you guessed it, androids. So, presumably, in the back-story, there was a Nexus-1 android, which is, let’s be honest, a pretty accurate description of the phone itself.
And since Google have applied for the trademark Nexus One on their phone, we can be pretty certain that’s what it’ll end up being called, even if, as I suspect, it’s a dev phone, and not a general commercial release. Hmm, maybe everyone at Google dreams they’ll one day be Rutger Hauer (except the women, who presumably want to be Daryl Hannah)…?
We shall have to see what occurs, but let’s not forget that Motorola had to be really nice to George Lucas, to release the Droid (soon to be on sale over here as the Motorola Milestone), since he owns the trademark on the word ‘droid’. So, what do I reckon? I reckon Google should get some proper promotional tie-ins going, and go the whole hog.
Yes, they should actually make it into the Bladerunner phone. Millions of nerds, worldwide (me, for one), will thank them…
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