The Hummingbird Project – Notes after the viewing

Project Hummingbird tells a story about speculation, dreams, technology, capital, and destiny.

Dreamer and speculator Vincent Zaleski, and his cousin genius programmer Anton Zaleski, after convincing venture capitalist Bryan, resigned from Eva Torres' fund company to build a fiber optic line from the New York Stock Exchange of the New York Stock Exchange to the Kansas Electronics Exchange of kansas Electronics. The transaction time is shortened to 16 milliseconds, that is, the time for hummingbirds to flap their wings once, so as to obtain high-frequency risk-free arbitrage in securities trading and obtain high returns, which is the so-called hummingbird plan.

Throughout the story, there are several characters:

Fanatical dreamer and speculator, Vincent Zaleski. He believes that the Hummingbird Project is what he must do in this life, even after finding out that he has stomach cancer, he still chooses to postpone treatment, resolutely promote the project, and do whatever it takes to dream, even his own life.

This makes one wonder, what is the reason and motivation for Vincent Zaleski to be so fanatical?

At the beginning of the film, Vincent Zaleski tells a small story when he convinces the venture capitalist Bryan that when he was in college, in order to earn tuition and living expenses, he gave a plumber a hand, had an accident, was knocked unconscious by the pipe, and in a trance, he saw a man saying "The line" to him. The story is not known whether it is true or not, whether the man who said "The line" is really someone, whether there is really a person, it is not known, but the plumber I guess should be Vincent Zaleski's father, Vincent Zaleski described the plumber this way:

“And my boss takes me to this basement in Queens. I mean, I could, I could smell the funus. And he asked me to unscrew this , like, 100-pound steel pipe. You know, he's sipping coffee in the corner of the room while he asked me to unscrew this massive thing by myself, you know, for minimum wage, OK?”

It's a small foreshadowing that Vincent Zaleski's father had an important influence on him.

At the same time, there is a plot in the film, Vincent Zaleski, with the help of engineer Ophelia Troller, solves the problem of digging pipes in the swamp forest area, and during the journey to the construction site in an inflatable boat, Vincent Zaleski confides in his family and growth:

"My parents were born in Russia. Yeah, they moved here in the 60s, moved into a tiny apartment with 10 other Russian families. Two weeks after he got here, these police came, knocked on his door, threw him in the back of the car,thought we was a spy, which he wasn't. They interrogated him for, like 4 weeks or something. He never saw the light of the day. "

"That's insane! "

"Yeah! My mother said he became like a totally different person. He became, like, angry. Yeah, and I was born a few years later, so lucky! Yeah! He always told me the same thing. He said, "Whatever you do, make sure you own your freedom.""

"Own your freedom? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of freedom?"

"Yeah, maybe. And he was always trying to, like, scare me or something into being, like... I don't know, like, successful. "

"So, you think you're doing this to prove your father wrong?"

"Wrong about what?"

"About being successful. It's a pretty crazy project you got going here. "

"It's just... it's just something I need to do."

There is a saying that goes like this: Money is the greatest tool of freedom. Perhaps for Vincent Zaleski, the Hummingbird Project is a necessity to ensure that he owns your freedom. In his consciousness, he is David, David's enemy giant Goliath, the former boss of Eva Torres, who treats employees as disposable assets, who is not of high social status, who is a violent institution in the United States, who is ruthless in securities trading, who is all oppression and unfreedom. However, fate played two jokes with him, two fatal jokes, not long after the hummingbird project began, Vincent Zaleski found out that he had stomach cancer, and it was advanced, and immediately began to receive treatment, the probability of survival for 5 years was one in two, of course, Vincent refused treatment, at the expense of his own life, insisted on the hummingbird plan; the other joke was even more deadly, when the hummingbird project was half completed, Vincent's former boss Eva Torres was helped by a Chinese student , solved the problem of the whole wave function in microwave transmission technology, completed the construction of the microwave transmission line before the Hummingbird plan, and the round-trip time from the Kansas Electronic Stock Exchange to the New York Stock Exchange was 11ms, which for Vincent was tantamount to a bottom-up salary, hitting the snake to seven inches. Under the double whammy, Vincent unexpectedly fell into madness, despair and collapse. As a quick-witted speculator, Vincent tries to defraud the insurance compensation by failing to apply for a hummingbird plan when the matter is revealed, and then Lady Luck seems to have completely distanced himself from him, and the insurance company finds out the reason and refuses to pay compensation.

Hummingbird's route passes through a farm that belongs to a family of devout Christians who believe that faster networks and more advanced technology will not lead to a happy life, and they believe that the land under their feet is God's gift and used to serve God, so they refuse Vincent Zaleski's fiber pipe to pass under their land, even if they lose $230,000. Vincent and his party later discovered that local state law was more than ten feet below and could be built without the consent of the owner of the land. At the end of the film, Vincent, accompanied by his cousin Anton Zaleski, returns to the farm, where Vincent tells the farmer that the line has been removed and that faster internet speeds will no longer disturb their lives; the farmer looks at Vincent's pale and morbid face and chooses to forgive. Finally, Vincent had this conversation with Anton:

"You know, sometimes I wonder, if all the time that was given to me was, like... like, 16 milliseconds... and I had no past memory... I had nothing carved into my mind before those 16 milliseconds... and the only thing... that was left imprinted in my brain... were the images and the smells and the feelings of those 16 milliseconds... how do you think I would process that? "

"I don't know. I think your life would feel exactly as long as someone who lived for 100 years."

If your life is only 16 milliseconds, only 16 milliseconds of thoughts, memories, feelings, then for you, your life will be as long as those who have lived for 100 years. For the long river of time, 16 milliseconds or 100 years, there is no difference; for people, the impermanence of life, we often can not determine the length of our lives, although we can influence to a certain extent, we can regularly work and rest, do not stay up late, healthy diet, do not overeat, eat more healthy food, but maybe a flying disaster may change everything, maybe the length is not so important, the breadth and quality are more important, the starting point of healthy diet and regular work and rest may be more in the quality of life, and not the length. Throw yourself into your life with all your heart, whether we have 16 milliseconds or 100 years.

Capitalist, unscrupulous former boss Eva Torres, big bets win big venture capitalist Bryan.

With the same strong desire for profit, Eva Torres chose quantitative finance, high-frequency trading, and chose to shorten the trading time as much as possible; Bryan chose venture capital, trusted one entrepreneur after another, and chose the Hummingbird program.

With the same powerful ability to control social resources, Eva Torres, in retaliation for Vincent and Anton, bribed Vincent's construction team to arrest and imprison Anton through the FBI on the pretext of endangering the country's financial stability; Bryan, in order to dig fiber pipes in the Appalachian Mountains, obtained permits through resources in politics, which was difficult for Vincent, but a piece of cake for Bryan.

They are people at the top of American society, people who own their freedom, and masters of the game. As Eva Torres says to Tech Otaku Anton:

"You are so fucking boring. It's like there's a part of your brain that operates like a genius, and then there's another one that is handicapped. And this is why you needed me. This is why we were so good together. "

Science and engineering man, technical otaku, Anton, just like the programmers in life, has a superb IQ, is obsessed with technology, is not good at communication, or disdains communication, and at the same time loves and hates clearly, has its own set of values, this set of values is often out of date, out of touch with mainstream society, but anyone or anything touches the bottom line of this set of values, and the counterattack and reaction are extremely fierce. Simple like a child, stubborn like a stone.

Some people say that this is an anti-technological progress movie, not so, to know that it is precisely microwave communication that ends the Hummingbird plan, it is precisely technological progress. In my mind, the meaning of "Hummingbird Project" is about technology, and it is not just technology, it is about choice, about merit, about money, about capitalism, about financial markets, about faith, about human nature, about fate, the aftertaste is long.