Explorations and Provocations I
"Noah: A Short Film"
Noah is short, 17 minute film that takes place entirely within the frame of the desktop of an Ontarian high school senior's laptop. Moreover, all of the dialog and "action" unfolds "according" to the socio-technical affordances offered by the different programs and social media apps such iTunes, Facebook, Facetime, chatroulette, PornHub and so on. Please watch the film at least once before coming to class tomorrow, where we will watch it again.
In terms of posting about the film, see if you can come up with some ways in which the story exemplifies, amplifies or resonates with some of the conceptual and analytical issues raised in the readings this week, such as:
- How does the film embody and perform the concepts of "assemblage and articulation"? (Slack and Wise)
- What "materialities and affordances" can see made manifest in the film? (Lievroux)
- What are the "mediums"of "transduction" that are evident in Noah's digital activity (Hansen)
- Along what lines does the film represent the different dimensions of "materializing communication" (Wiley and Crofts)
- Where is "power" located in Noah's digital space? Is it the property of people or networks? (Castells)
Please note that these are just examples. You can riff on them, mash them up, or come up with your own. But I want to see something from each one of you this week on this topic.
In responding to Andrew’s question about analyzing the film “Noah” according to Castells’ notion of power, we need to first define what Castells means by power and networks. Castells broadly defines power as “the relational capacity that enables a social actor to influence asymmetrically the decisions of other social actor(s) in ways that favor the empowered actor’s will, interests, and values” (p. 10). Castells claims that power operates in networks, which are composed of nodes (any part of a network) and process flows (information streams between nodes). For Castells, the most important type of power in a network is network-making power, which depends on two mechanisms: (1) the capacity to (re)program networks according to goals assigned to the network, and (2) the capacity to connect certain networks and ensure their cooperation not only by sharing goals and resources, but also by fending off competition from other networks.
ReplyDeleteIn the film “Noah”, power is the property of networks. This should not come as a surprise since Castells himself argues that, in many cases, “the power holders are networks themselves” (p. 45). While networks are, among other nodes (e.g. Facebook Inc.) and flows (e.g. information streams between Noah and Amy), composed of people (e.g. Noah, Amy, Kanye, Dylan, etc.), networks “are not single actors (individuals, groups… political leaders)” (p. 45). Instead, in networks, power “requires a complex set of joint action that goes beyond alliances to become a new form of subject…” (p. 45). In the film, Noah ‘hacks’ into Amy’s Facebook account, which seems to indicate Noah has power over Amy in a way that advances his own interests (e.g. to see if she is cheating on him, to break up with her, etc.). While Noah has power over Amy in a certain sense, to end our analysis here would be a gross oversimplification of how power operates in “Noah”.
Power is the property of networks. In order for Noah to ‘hack’ into Amy’s Facebook account, several other events had to take place: Amy and Noah had to create a Facebook accounts, someone had to create Facebook, Amy and Noah had to have access to the internet, etc. In Castells’ language, while Noah “reprogrammed” Amy’s Facebook account to display her relationship status as single, Noah’s actions, among many other things, depended on programmers at Facebook creating a relationship status display in the first place. In addition, we can see Amy performing the second kind of network-making power in that she initially shared her password (an information resources) with Noah, but later blocked him from accessing her profile, thus cutting off Noah’s access from her network. However, given that Amy and Noah have mutual Facebook friends (e.g. Kanye), Noah is not completely cut off from those who are part of Amy’s (online) network. Furthermore, while Amy enacts the second form of network-making power (in a limited sense), her ability to do so is tied to other instantiations of this kind of power; for instance, in most cases, in order to gain access to networks on Facebook, one has to accept Facebook’s terms and conditions. In sum, while individuals, such as Noah and Amy, can exercise power in certain cases, their use of power requires a complex set of collective actions in a given network.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete