Is Tyrell Corporation a Glimpse into our Future?

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Considering the Tyrell Corporation and the contemporary world, I think it would be a very far reach to say that corporations are headed in the direction of the type of cyberpunk future depicted in Blade Runner. While we can see a rapid incline in the use of artificial intelligence and other technologies, I think that Blade Runner and the Tyrell Corporation offers a hyperbolic critique of reality. The Tyrell Corporation created “replicants”, robots with human-like appearances, made for labor and the exploitation of actual humans. They increase corporation profit and technological advancement at the expense of human ethics and the environment. While human rights are becoming more and more expendable, when it comes to the agenda of corporations and those in power, an ultimate goal of creating human-like robots to use as slaves is a very extreme case, and hopefully does not become anything close to reality. Furthermore, other aspects from Blade Runner such as environmental decay, social inequality, and dehumanization are all themes that are reflected in the contemporary, but taken to an extreme in the movie. The Tyrell Corporation used actual robots to portray the dehumanization of people, showing that humans are only necessary for labor. This depiction of society is a hyperbolic reality. I will say that the environmental decay and social inequality are both realistic predictions of the future of the contemporary world, but ultimately, these aspects have been the reality for years now, so I don’t see any progression of environmental decay or social inequality having as big of an impact on contemporary society as the implementation of something like a “replica” would have. In conclusion, while Blade Runner and the Tyrell Corporation do offer some aspects that can be seen as accurate predictions of contemporary society, considering where we are now, I believe that the corporation as a whole does in fact offer a hyperbolic prediction of the future.