Through the film “Bendito Machine III”, the creator (Jossie
Malis) expresses own vision of the relationship between the technology and
society, and to me her perspective appears to be that of strong technological
determinism, that is to say that in this short movie emergence of new technology
is presented as the sole condition determining social organisation and
development of the little community featured in the film. I would also suggest
that there are noticeable features supporting the concerns of technological
non-neutrality, technological imperative, technological animism and
technoevolutionism.
What is the film
suggesting are the ecological and social implications of an obsession or fixation
on technology?
The film demonstrates non-neutrality of the
technology, which from the creator’s point of view has destructive effect on particular
persons and society in general. The threatening perspectives of such an effect
are expressed throughout the film, both by the plot of the “story” and the
choice of para-linguistic features.
To start with, the film is introduced by a picture of a
person failing to escape a destiny of being gobbled up by an oversized huge
head – that is as to let the audience know that they are about to watch a horror
film with fatal ending for a human being, which the movie proves to deliver. The
background is that of aggressive red colour, probably used to either give a
warning of a danger or to even to symbolise an emergency as a disaster is fast
approaching. The sky over the “technology mountain” is threatening, and
never-changing heavy clouds over the village add to the feeling of unhappy
present and dark future.
An obsession with technology leads the little community to
certain changes in their social organisations, which hardly appear to make the
people happy for long time and, moreover, make many of them hurt and scared,
including those people, who brought the technology on and those who worshipped
it devotedly. For instance, we can see that more and more people get fixated on
technology (a growing number of people gathering around the technology altar;
technology reaching beyond its altar and engaging with people every-day life,
like men watching football); children get “led by” technology in their games
and cannot escape it; women get preoccupied with stereotypes spread and imposed
by mass-media (they follow commonly-approved routine in order to fit in with
what is recognised as appropriate and therefore popular, and those individuals
who refuse to diet get kicked out). In the end, vast majority of people get
horrified and then destroyed by technology.
Ecology does not benefit from people’s obsession with
technology, as every new invention displaces the previous, and people dispose
of still working devices by simply throwing them from the cliff. There is a
constantly-growing pile of non-degradable garbage with birds trying to feed on
it. I assume the author could only add to the drama by making a couple of birds
choke on fine pieces…
Do the film’s
characters have any choice in relation to their technologies?
People pray for technology (at least in the beginning of the
film) and worship it. It is their choice to ascend it to the altar, which is
embellished gracefully and contrasts with their plane huts. It is some
individuals’ conscious intension to struggle up and down the mountain and
perform rituals in order to pursue new and more advanced technology. To
dethrone technology which they idolized and throw it off is evidently within
the humans power, at least before they get destroyed by it altogether. Yet,
somehow people disregard their control over the situation and allow for the
technology to dominate their lives. Should we take this as some type of
reference to the notion of technological imperative, suggesting that
humans cannot resist using what is technically possible and therefore will
inevitably do that sooner or later, regardless of consequences?
Technology is presented as autonomous or animated,
i.e. with the consciousness and will of living beings, with their own purposes
rather that performing technical functions assigned to them by people, and
therefore it is out of human’s control and can led to unforeseen side-effects.
We can see how technology transforms on the altar with no
input and to deep surprise of people. It gets of the altar, a place designated
for technology by people, and moves into the village by its own will and
spreads just about everywhere, leading and chasing people, changing their lives
dramatically. It is interesting to see how the author interprets the influence
of technology on the people, thus it is not other women who exclude the one who
chooses to carry on with her ways and eats ice-cream despite the technology-enforced
and commonly-accepted movement towards slimming down – it is technology that
kicks the woman out brutally. Furthermore, the last piece of technology
featured in the film appears on the scene all by its own – it simply falls of
the sky by its own will (as if it makes own decision when the time is right for
the next development), in contrast to the previous ones which were “delivered”
by people. Yet, even in those cases when people “pursued” technology, they were
not given any choice of pieces and had to accept the one offered by the “technology
mountain”. All those points suggest that people had hardly any choice in
relation to their technology from the very beginning, and even less of that, if
any, by the time when technology developed extremely.
What are the
characteristics of various technologies as portrayed in this film?
As far as I can observe, the film creator’s view on social
development is close to that of techno-evolutionary theorists, which
defines progress and development in terms of successive stages of technological
development, thus 4 technological “revolutions” are drawn in the movie, leading
to historical “eras” defined by each particular technology.
The first piece of technology, presented in a form of a bull
with some type of speech-features, most likely stands for radio. It is not
interactive and hardy intervenes in the social organisation of the little
community, yet it still attracts many people and affects their values and
life-style turning them into the faithful followers and sacrifices.
The second piece features audio and video facilities and can
be recognised as television technology. It is more developing and spreading
rapidly, entering and affecting dramatically each and every field of people’s
lives.
The next piece of technology can be associated with a robot
or a computer – it is grater, multifunctional (comprising the features of
previous technologies and featuring a great number of other as well), it is much
more interactive and can be operated by a human. Nevertheless, it is so massive
that, once failing to perform, leads to unfortunate consequences, such as
crushing many people.
The last piece of technology is hard to identify. It is all
and nothing in one; it performs a number of different noises and motions, and
their purpose and outcome are not straightforward. Does it symbolise the
network which combines all the previous technological achievements? Nevertheless,
it is so huge that is capable of destroying the entire society and that is
exactly what it leads to.
Conclusion
Whatever the stage of technological development, from the
least to the most advanced, each piece of technology is presented as giant (more
significant and powerful) and therefore dominating tiny-sized (less valued and
fragile) humans. On one side, it “enlightens” people, appearing as the only
bright light in the darkness of the life of the society. On the other side, the
video creator draws a picture of technology dominating people to the extent
when they are treated as prisoners, and only some of humans can escape, yet
just to return with another piece of technology.
The video leaves no hope for better or brighter future whatsoever!
Once people have let technology into their lives and got obsessed with it, they
are destined to witness technological development and domination – and get
inevitably destroyed by technology.
What a sad perspective… Even though there are some points in
the video which I can hardly argue (as the evidence is rather strong), yet I
personally prefer to think that the author’s vision is somewhat overemphasized
and that future of relationship between people and technology cannot be that
extremely dystopian.
References
The terminology used above refers to that explored in Daniel Chandler's web essay "Technological or Media Determinism" and briefly noted down in one of my previous posts "Brief notes on Daniel Chandler's "Technological or Media Determinism" #edcmooc".
Behind the scene
Reviewing the video from a cetain theoretical perspective was an interesting experience. It's quite impressive how much one can notice once switcing attention onto the presence or absence of certain features and analysing them!
Reflecting on the result, I am not quite happy with the size and style of my analysis. I think a digital artefact (the EDC MOOC assignment) should be ways shorter and perhaps less academic. It will probably be worth trying to practice limiting my further posts to somwthing like 500 words (which would be three times shorter than this post) and attempting at adopting less formal style.
As for experiencing a range of digital tools, I would not give myself credits either. I practiced embedding YouTube videos in a number of FaceBook posts, therefore it was an easy task to embed one in this blog-post.
Anyways, I have by all means enjoyed the activity and benifited from self-reflection and identifying next steps for development. So, I believe, it is time for a well-deserved little break!
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