#digitalembodiment

There’s something different about the most advanced mesh bodies in Second Life — when muscles aren’t frozen in place but flex in real time, training feels slower, heavier, and more intentional.

By Cassie, Emily, Larissa, Kendra, Grace

Minority Report (2002) aligns with hard technological essentialism meaning that humans don’t have free will. In the movie the role that technology and media play emphasized the lack of free will by humans in everyday situations, events, and lives in general. In the movie every aspect of life was primarily revolved around people's dependency on technology such as propaganda, the justice system and the culture. With these dependencies in society and personal lives the movie matches that of hard technological essentialism portraying the lack of free will by people.

Social Shaping is the idea that technology operates and is operated on and innovations are shaped by culture, in the movie Minority Report (2002) John Anderton played by Tom Cruise uses technology advanced beyond our era to see murders that are to happen in the future in order to stop them. He uses and relies on this technology to determine the outcome. This works off of the way in which new digital media appropriates or is domesticated into everyday routines or practices as said by Hartmann (2013). Technology has made its way into our everyday lives to the extent that we would be lost without it; however, it tends to be shaped by the cultures we are surrounded by.

The theme of desire and determinism in the Minority Report (2002) helps illustrate the ideas within the Social Shaping of Digital Embodiment. As stated above the “domestication” or “appropriated” use of media in our everyday lives was caused by a culture who has become accustomed to using media in order to achieve their needs or express themselves. Furthermore the idea of relying on technology to meet our needs can be seen in use of designer drugs, the creation of virtual worlds, and online personas/communities.    

Digital embodiment can be seen aligned in the movie “Minority Report” through the cognitives. The society in the movie relied on technology to prevent future murders. Their reliance on technology led them to believe that anything that the cognitives saw would be the ultimate truth; they did not take human error into consideration. Precrime replaced the traditional way of discovering a crime after it has occurred. Their society’s reliance on technology led to the confinement of innocent people who were instantly believed to be guilty upon watching the visions provided by the precogs.

Bibliography:

Hartmann. 2013. “Theorising digital society.” Anonymous. Retrieved January 11, 2016.

Technological Determinism in Minority Report 

By Cassie, Emily, Larissa, Kendra, Grace, and Calli

Minority Report (2002) aligns with hard technological essentialism meaning that humans don’t have free will. In the movie the role that technology and media play emphasized the lack of free will by humans in everyday situations, events, and lives in general. In the movie every aspect of life was primarily revolved around people's dependency on technology such as propaganda, the justice system and the culture. With these dependencies in society and personal lives the movie matches that of hard technological essentialism portraying the lack of free will by people.

Social Shaping is the idea that technology operates and is operated on and innovations are shaped by culture, in the movie Minority Report (2002) John Anderton played by Tom Cruise uses technology advanced beyond our era to see murders that are to happen in the future in order to stop them. He uses and relies on this technology to determine the outcome. This works off of the way in which new digital media appropriates or is domesticated into everyday routines or practices as said by Hartmann (2013). Technology has made its way into our everyday lives to the extent that we would be lost without it; however, it tends to be shaped by the cultures we are surrounded by.

The theme of desire and determinism in the Minority Report (2002) helps illustrate the ideas within the Social Shaping of Digital Embodiment. As stated above the “domestication” or “appropriated” use of media in our everyday lives was caused by a culture who has become accustomed to using media in order to achieve their needs or express themselves. Furthermore the idea of relying on technology to meet our needs can be seen in use of designer drugs, the creation of virtual worlds, and online personas/communities.