Page 229 - Cyberculture and New Media

220 Technology on Screen
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– rather they make varying and specific contributions to the nature of that
reality.
This essay explores the extent to which film can be viewed as a
discursive practice and as such the extent to which it can be seen as an
element central to the essence of ‘technology’ when the concept is more
carefully defined using the work of Martin Heidegger. Our analysis of
recurring visual and narrative motifs and metaphors around the representation
of technology in specific films will consider how these representations are
part of wider discursive practices concerned with conceptualising technology.
Film is a form of language that makes visible things that are (in this case
technology), and in doing so contributes to the bringing forth of that which is
not yet. In doing so it contributes to what technology is. Film is therefore
immanent to technology and is implicated in its development, adoption and
ultimate utilisation – its Heideggerian essence. The way in which it does this
is complex.
Because of media convergence film is no longer a single medium,
yet the cinematic apparatus still presumes and asserts modes of distribution
and consumption whose commercial dominance is challenged by new media
platforms. This paper will demonstrate the extent to which mainstream
Hollywood, as situated aesthetic and industrial practice, produces
representations of technology and viewing experiences which are marked by
anxiety around the crisis facing the cinematic apparatus in the new media
landscape.
In The Question Concerning Technology Heidegger sets out a
framework for thinking about technology in a contemporary setting that urges
the quest for essence. It is a framework that is still of use to us and is
employed here to assess the importance of certain specific films’ contribution
to the contemporary technological landscape. In the essay Heidegger
dismisses instrumental and anthropological assessments of technology as by
themselves being insufficient in revealing this essence. He pushes us beyond
simple means/ends ways of thinking and invites us to consider a more
complex model where cause is itself a complex contrivance of factors. The
essence of technology, it is suggested, might be better arrived at through an
examination of the ‘four causes’ as traditionally employed in western
3
philosophy For Heidegger the most significant of these, causa finalis –
ironically the one that in contemporary terms is the most overlooked -
involves circumscription and setting bounds. It is claimed here that film
contributes significantly to this process of circumscription in so far as it
contributes to a discourse on technology, which in turn has a significant
impact on our relationship to it. Heidegger tackles this relationship
specifically when he moves his analysis on to consider the way in which we
engage as humans with instrumental means within the context of the ‘four
causes’. In doing so he introduces the concepts of poiesis and enframing. The