Here’s an article about Henry-Alex Rubin’s interview about his first fiction film Disconnect. During this interview, Rubin talks about his experience about preparing and making this film. He also details his thoughts about this film’s theme and this digital era.
I find this review on the Guardian which talks about Disconnect. It describes this movie as “Finally Hollywood has found a way to explain how the internet is responsible for all the love-cheating, gun/grammar crimes and innapropriate photographs in the world.” And also, this article examines how the Internet ruins people’s lives by analyzing this film’s trailer.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/mar/06/disconnect-not-really-plugged-in
This popped up on my Facebook news feed and it immediately brought to mind the conversation we had about how websites like Amazon and others will try and guess what you would want to buy. Facebook has my name and here they have tried to get my interest with this sweatshirt that has my name featured on it. It goes to show how consumer culture has developed and now things are being customized for you without making any effort to do so myself.
The film Disconnect was really eye opening and showed this world saturated in technology. We all have multiple screens open often as I do right now, with my computer in front of me and my iPhone to my left. The part in the film about multitasking was interesting to me because it has become the norm for students to multitask when getting work done. In addition, the part where the students were discussing their writing papers and how each paragraph would be choppy was notable. It applies to me for certain and I think that all the distractions that exist today increase this occurrence.
I think the film Disconnect does a great job of highlighting some of the current issues we face with social media and digital technology. One of the quotes from the film really sticks out to me is “everything you do, someone out there can see”. When I first heard this, I got the chills. Internet privacy has been an issue at the forefront of society since Edward Snowden became a whistle-blower. People, myself included, constantly forget that every single message we send, every picture we upload and everything we do online is recorded and never goes away. This is one of the most pressing issues facing technology today. In the film, Ben’s parents were able to track his social media to see what lead to his attempted suicide. The kids who were bullying him, were not able to hide behind the screen for very long and were tracked down. Issues like these, cyber-bullying and technology privacy have become taboo issues in our society. People do not want to think about what they have done online and what has been recorded of them. This is an issue that makes people uneasy, and as a result, their is a lack of discussion going on. I think Disconnect does a great job of showing these problems and trying to open the dialogue about them.
A film I recently watched and really enjoyed is Nightcrawler, starring Jake Gyllenhaal. I recommend this film to everyone, especially everyone in our class as it is a critique on modern day ethics in news and journalism. The storyline is that a man desperate for cash begins filming sensational events (car crashes, crime and violence) to sell to news stations. After doing this for a bit, Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) becomes full entrenched in his new career and begins to cross the line of ethical journalism and filming. Gyllenhaal does a great job of portraying a psychopathic, weird and determined character who puts his footage above everything else. The film is still in theaters now. Here is the trailer below.
This is one of my favorite movies of all time, even more so now that I finally noticed the greatest irony of the film (that the ad man got taken in by an ad himself) thanks to this class. I bullied my friends into watching it last weekend, and they were all glad I did once they got past their anti-black and white film bias. It’s a very funny movie. They were surprised by how wry and witty it was, and by how contemporary the plot was (of course there is antiquated dialogue and some problematic gender and race stuff, because it’s a product of its time, but it doesn’t detract from the film for me). Below are two great scenes. I hope you’ll consider watching it! I think the more recent film The Money it was a remake of this, but for the love of god, do not watch that.
Take it easy, Mac. Take it easy! The Republicans ain’t in yet, ya know!
I came across this “Death by Information Overload” article in the Harvard Business Review from back in 2009. It’s worth the read. Here is a graphic from the article.
https://hbr.org/2009/09/death-by-information-overload
I thought this was a great film that explored a lot of interesting advances and problems with technology. One thing I really liked that the movie covered was the changes in education do to computers and technology. Technology has allowed education to change very dramatically. I have been able to witness this change first hand; moving from writing papers on a notepad to using a blog like this for class. The change has been very positive and allows students to learn in a different, modern way. But, technology has still created many different problems and challenges we must face. The studies discussed in the film show that computers can actually be a distraction for students and impair their learning ability in some cases. In addition to that, there has been a massive group of people who have become addicted to technology, whether it be there phone or gaming. I think that the film takes the correct approach in discussing technology, believing in the saying “three steps forward, two steps back”.
http://techliberation.com/2010/02/03/som-thoughts-on-pbs-digital-nation-documentary/
I came across this blog that is primarily set up to keep politicians away from the internet and tech culture. Adam Thierer had some interesting things to say about Digital Nation.
He begins by laying out the difference between tech pessimists and tech optimists and how each are portrayed in the documentary.
What I am most interested in are his own personal opinions on these issues.
This man argues that humans have gone through revolutions before, many more jarring than the digital one, and we have always learned to adapt.
He claims that we are now in an age of informational power, not poverty. He sees his children’s exploration of the world through a computer screen as a good and something he wishes he had when he grew up.
These opinions are obviously controversial, and my question is: what makes the digital revolution so different, so scary when compared to our past revolutions that have come and gone without bringing down civilization?
Just as its title implies, we are a digital nation now. Or even to be more specific, we are a digital world now. I found this documentary film is such a great project that actually recording down those details that us ourselves might not even realize yet. It’s so true that we see digital devices everywhere and all the time. No matter where you and what you are doing, you always can see many people around you are using cell phones, ipads, and laptops. This film was made to ask us the question, “What do those technologies mean to you”?
When internet first came out, people all admire how it works, considering it as the world most useful inventing. However, now when you ask about it again, some people might hesitate, it’s just that it is so powerful that it changed our way of living. It became a necessary item in our daily life, just like oxygen and water. But is it really good for us in this way? I do not like to totally negate what Internet has brought us, I think that is just too absolute and unwise. We should have the more objective perspective to consider it. Internet is helpful and with it, it has made our living so much easier and much more convenient. However, when it eventually took the main part of our lives and started blocking the real interaction between us and others, then it became a problem.
However, I believe this is a self-choice thing. Internet is a tool, the one makes the decision to use the tool is us. I think to fix this social phenomenon, we should start with ourselves.