Chapter 4 – Intellectual Property 

Intellectual property is the corner stone of the movie and the motivation the protagonist group, Inception is about a criminal group that has access to a technology able to penetrate the victims mind and through his dreams be able to steal and plant ideas on the individual vulnerating his own intellectual property. Despite the idea portraits a rather unrealistic technology and a very dystopian use of it, nowadays intellectual property is protected with a law that still experience violations almost daily. Software piracy, corporate espionage and copyright infringement show how this system is not bulletproof and often struggle to keep up with digital technology. Also we should point out that these laws protect constructed ideas, not raw undeveloped ones. That gap leaves an unsettling conclusion portraited in inception: what if the most valuable part of our mind, the part that creates and develops the thoughts, could be perpetrated? Thankfully there is no technology capable of directly overwriting or stealing a person's thought as shown in inception. However that does not mean that you can't be manipulated. Historically literature and traditional media helped us learn about the world around us and develop critical perspectives. However with the introduction of social media and the algorithms this has undermined the original effect becoming a perfect tool to filter information, reinforce biases and polarize individuals just for some profit. So while there is no machine that can implant thoughts there is one that can shape them, so it might not be as different as it looks. In the end Inception dramatizes a real problem: the intrusion and manipulation of human thought. The film's technology might be unrealistic, yet the warning is real. The problem is not to protect constructed ideas but to protect the creative process itself from external manipulation and control.