Westworld on dvd. Love me some Thandie Newton. The show is, of course, a variation on a theme that has been with us quite a while, going back at least to Frankenstein, maybe to the golem or further: If man creates a being in his own image, thus taking on a prerogative that is god’s and god’s alone, he does so at his own great peril. But why now? Well, why then? There seems to have been a notion in the European zeitgeist when Mary Shelley was living, and modern science was still fairly young, that men were trying to go to places where men ought not to go. Now? Well, shit. Looks as if that notion had some truth to it, not in terms of science per se, but technology and the “white man’s burden” to rape the planet. And I guess there’s some anxiety these days about AI.