SPCM 3900 – The Rhetoric of Cyberculture
Dr. Laura Sells
Spring 05

Lab I – The Matrix

To receive full credit for each question, your answer needed to include reference to the following:

1. Jackson argues that “New media is a force of both liberation and oppression.” What does this statement mean? Do you agree or disagree? Use an example from The Matrix to illustrate.

Jackson says that we are both oppressors and oppressed, that new media turns us into producers as well as consumers which makes us complicit with our own oppression and the oppression of others. He also says that new media gives us the opportunity to rupture oppression and also to impose new forms of oppression.

2. Poster argues that the “information super highway” is a misleading term because it focuses on exchange of information and not on places on the internet where the transmission of information becomes places of communicative relation (Part I). What does this statement mean? How is this statement illustrated in The Matrix?

The super highway metaphor emphasizes the exchange of information, but it ignores the way that community develops on the internet in meeting places, or as a place of relations. Like the telephone we are both producers and produced, this gives us new political opportunities.

3. In “The Performance of Cyberspace,” Barbatsis and Hansen define several ways to understand space. How is “The Matrix” “space”?

At least one type of space needs to be defined and applied: metaphor, textual structure, ideational reality, discursive, liminal.

4. In “At the Heart of It All” Lombard and Ditton define and explain presence and discuss multiple causes and effects of presence. What role does presence play in The Matrix? Identify one example from the film that demonstrates some of the causes and effects of presence.

Presence is the illusion of non-mediation. Presence is caused by technologies that affect our perception and give us the ability to interact. At least one type of presence needs to be defined and applied: social richness, realism, transportation, immersion, actor w/in medium, social actor.

5. In audiovisual culture Rodowick writes three final points about our fears of technological domination, which he calls “Murphy’s Law”: 1. technology fails, and the probability of technology failing increases relative to its complexity; 2. successful commodification requires the prior existence or creation of a compelling desire or need; 3. there is a corollary to Murphy's law that provides an instructive counterweight to fears of technological domination. For every new strategy of power that emerges, there also always emerges a countervailing culture of subversion. What do these laws mean and how do they apply to The Matrix?

1. The bigger they are, the harder they fall; The matrix is very complicated so it will likely break down.
2. Technology manufactures "needs"; Who needed cell phones until we all had cell phones.
3. Any successful act of oppression invites an act of resistance; We shouldn't be afraid of technological domination because there will always be hackers.