I made this.

Tron Is Smarter Than You Think

Aymar Jean Christian

No, really; it is. Grade: B+

Brainy blockbusters are rare. For every Inception there is a Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The most we hope for in our big-budget spectacles is some decent writing and a couple of big bangs. Usually, we don’t even get that.

Critics have put Tron Legacy in the Sorcerer’s camp. Both Disney films have been branded “empty,” “cheesy” and “silly” by various writers.  But I’m here to defend Tron: it’s smarter than it seems.

First, the basics. The story about a young boy, Sam, whose father, Kevin, disappeared when he was a child, Tron Legacy follows Sam’s story as he reenters his father’s game of the same name to find him and save the network from a fascist program, Clu, hell-bent on control and perfection. In the real world, Kevin’s company, Encom, has turned into Microsoft, a monopolizing behemoth releasing secure operating systems in the style of Windows.

What’s so special about this film? Like most blockbusters, there’s a whole lot of non-special aspects: the storyline’s a pastiche of other ones (Fifth Element, Pocahontas, and The Matrix, for starters); the plot is all over the place, but vaguely about fathers and sons and corporations versus the people; and of course our lead is a boy who needs to find his purpose, a conceit seen in every other big budget feature made in Hollywood. Yes, the visuals are amazing (I’m telling you, it’s gorgeous!) but there’s a lot of retreading in Tron.

But Tron sharpens the social critique of the first installment: more so than many other dystopic sci-fi thrillers, Tron is a clear cautionary tale of the state of the current digital economy. Our current debates over net neutrality, Facebook, Apple and the continued diversity of the web are all wrapped up in Tron’s allegories.

The first Tron was one among a long line of seventies and eighties films about fears over technology, fascism and government and corporate control over society and media (Videodrome, Brazil, Blade Runner, V, 1984, War Games, Network, etc.). Steeped in rather ridiculous concerns about the loss of the “real” and the end of the Cold War, these films are great but feel a bit dated today, a bit too “postmodern.” Their critique of society was soft.

With the growth of the web, however, some of these fears started to seem justified: corporations really do have access to vast stores of information about people and they are cementing their power (by lobbying, for instance, against net neutrality). While the first Tron had vague concerns about the “user” and master control, when Tron Legacy’s Tron yells at the end “I fight for the user!” it means something more.

How does the new Tron participate in these debates over the future of the digital?

Tron Legacy’s script was probably written about four to five years ago, back when the big rivalry in tech circles was Google versus Microsoft. Google championed openness, allowing the user some degree of control. Google was releasing its “Docs” for free as a challenge to monopolistic, controlling Microsoft, charging ridiculous fees for Windows and Office.

The opening scenes of Tron mimic this debate. Sam, who owns Encom (read: Microsoft) but doesn’t control it, hacks into the company’s mainframe and releases their OS for free on the web. The company was releasing its twelfth version of the system, charging more money for essentially the same program (read: Windows).

Then, Tron Legacy takes the debate to fantasy land, inside the game, where Clu (played by a CGI’ed Jeff Birdges), a program meant to create a utopian virtual world, has turned into a controlling fascist, wiping out communities and creating an army to control society. Clu is the virtual Encom. Sam is the user, the hacker, the idealist whose job it is create diversity, embodied in Quorra (Olivia Wilde), a digital mutation unwelcome in Clu’s dream of monopolized perfection.

Tron Legacy’s dark aesthetics (we only see the sun in the end) reflects growing concerns over the death of the digital utopia. We see the same concerns in this year’s Social Network, a similarly cynical and dim feature about the fading promise of the digital revolution, its retreat into the same corporate monopolies of the 20^th century.

Why is this smart? Tron Legacy plays the cards right. Bringing back the aging hippie in Jeff Bridges reminds us the first digital prophets of the sixties and seventies were counterculture idealists who believed in openness and freedom. Bridges’ Kevin in the film is zen pacifist, a caricature but a true one. The counterculture ideology has always been at the heart of digital culture (see the book From Counterculture to Cyberculture) but it’s one that’s dying, perhaps already dead.

The leading tech companies today are led by huge cultural figures, many of whom have spoken, at one point or another, about the democratic potentials of new media: Steve Jobs (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Bill Gates (Microsoft), Sergey Brin and Larry Page (Google).

Like the CEO of Tron’s Encom, though, the now-billionaires have realized idealism isn’t too profitable. Apple is essentially a closed network (Clu’s virtual world). Facebook controls how profiles are made and, at times, what information gets shared. Scholars are writing how Google actually facilitates inequalities online (see the book, The Myth of the Digital Democracy), and of course caused a stir this year by seeming to waffle on its net neutrality promises. We all know about Microsoft.

Tron tells us these companies aren’t “evil,” they’re just companies. It offers no solutions except to start fresh, which isn’t possible, of course. Yet it also offers the fantasy of a younger generation who’ll attempt to keep the digital as open, non-hierarchical, diverse and user-friendly as possible.

Other glowingly reviewed blockbusters, chief among them Avatar and Inception, were so lost in their own hall of Freudian mirrors they completely bailed on their corporate intrigue plotlines (which wereactually really interesting!); and Avatar’s environmentalist theme was about as inventive as the one in The Day the Earth Stood Still, perhaps less so.

Is Tron Legacy a work of genius? No way. But it is a rare example of a big budget feature intimately in conversation with cultural, political and technological history.

http://www.splicetoday.com/moving-pictures/tron-is-smarter-than-you-think

© Splice Today, LLC

People say the story is shallow, but I totally disagreed. But that’s because people don’t understand the message, or don’t take it seriously – at least some people do.

I came up with a variation of this randomly when I found out a mouse was eating out of a box of lazagna. I didn’t think it’d work, but it totally did. It scared the shit out of me when it happened. I wasn’t sure if he was in the box, but when I picked it up, he was still in it.

The full weight of the U.S. government is being brought down upon Wikileaks, and mainstream media outlets have predictably been repeating the misinformation campaigns of those in power.

Here are the top 5 myths and lies we’re being told:

“Wikileaks is recklessly publishing documents without thinking of the consequences.”

This is a flat-out lie. Wikileaks displays quite clearly on its website that only about 1,000 of the 250,000 diplomatic cables in its possession have been released. Nearly all of those 1,000 documents were first released to mainstream news organizations, and Wikileaks published the ones the news outlets requested. On top of that, the documents were redacted as journalists deemed appropriate. If you want to blame Wikileaks for “recklessly” releasing government secrets, blame the news organizations for “recklessly” deeming them newsworthy.

“Wikileaks is a criminal organization.”

Wikileaks has not been charged with any crime. Not one. There has been tough talk from politicians calling Wikileaks a terrorist organization, and urging prosecution under the Espionage Act, but it has been only talk. In fact, a report by the Congressional Research Service, the independent investigative arm of Congress, has said that such prosecution would legally and politically unwise.

Instead, Wikileaks is being “prosecuted” outside of the courts, outside of the law, by public relations smear campaigns.

“This is not about freedom of the press. Wikileaks is not journalism.”

In addition to publishing documents supplied by whistleblowers, the staff of Wikileaks also reviews this information, provides commentary, and facilitates the flow of this information to news organizations. Wikileaks is not a conventional, old-guard media outlet. But that doesn’t matter. It is applying the methodology and spirit of journalism to a digital age. Wikileaks is providing checks and balances on government power.

“Full transparency as envisioned by Wikileaks would jeopardize government operations and make all of us less safe.”

There are a lot of lies and half-truths built into this line of reasoning. First among them is the notion that 1) Wikileaks exists to make all government secrets public and 2) that Wikileaks CAN make all government secrets public. The fact is that the Obama administration has trumpeted “transparency” while the government has grown more secretive than ever before. Even if Wikileakers had the desire (which there has been no indication that they do), it is simple not possible to republish and analyze all of these documents. This is not about “full-transparency,” it is not about us monitoring every single thing that every single government official does. It is about the freedom of news organizations to decide which of these documents are of the public interest.

“Wikileaks is sabotaging diplomatic relations and making it harder for governments to do their jobs.”

This final theme is not so much a myth as it is a total bastardization of the purpose of journalism. Yes, news that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton authorized UN spying has probably made it harder for her to maintain positive relationships with some countries. Yes, news that U.S. contractors hired young boys to entertain Afghan police put another black mark on the image of the U.S. But you know what? It should.

Journalists should make it harder for politicians to do their jobs. This is about checks and balances on government power. Journalists who say the organization has “gone too far” are operating from a tepid notion of the craft: that journalists should speak truth to power only up until the point that truth doesn’t make people in power look too bad.

To be clear, Wikileaks is not a perfect organization. It has flaws. Plenty of them. And so do the people involved. However, it is putting forward a radical new model of journalism. And the attacks on Wikileaks have prompted a proportionate response. A group of hackers, or “hacktivists,” calling themselves “Anonymous” have launched an attack against those who threaten freedoms of the press. They started by taking down Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal. Now, as the image above indicates, they’re calling for a new, more radical tactic: journalism.

They are encouraging people to review the Wikileaks documents, find news of corruption, write about it, and inform others. Appropriately, “Anonymous” has used Orwell as its rallying cry:

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

Tags: First Amendment, Journalism, Operation Payback, Wikileaks

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