Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made some wild remarks about the future of technology that could have come straight out of a “Black Mirror” episode.
“In 20 or 50 years taking a personalized blue pill, you just hallucinate in an entertaining way and then a white pill brings you back to normality is perfectly viable,” he said during the Wall Street Journal Live conference Monday in Orange County, raising more than a few eyebrows. “If the source of human entertainment in 30 or 40 years is pharmacological we’ll be in real trouble.”
The out-there musing was a follow-up to a rhetorical question about not knowing quite what the next big thing in entertainment will be to hook audiences. “Is it VR, is it gaming, is it pharmacological?” Hastings said onstage, according to The Independent.
While outlandish, the statement speaks to a true anxiety among media conglomerates over keeping up with demand for entertainment.
Hastings was also clearly referencing “The Matrix” and its use of blue or red pills to navigate in and out of a virtual reality that mirrors the real world, mostly without the residents of the Matrix knowing.
Of course, that future isn’t quite here yet and this is definitely real steak that we’re eating — right?