Media Technology-'Retina of the minds eye
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This blog will critique the idea of a digital future, a world in which machines will become a central part of our lives, This blog will convey, through examples from 'Videodrome' and from Baudrillard, that digital technology can confuse the way in which we see the world and its reality.
In Negropantes book, 'Being Digital', he see's a future where machines will respond directly to our needs and will be sensitive to our emotional states. He see's technology as a 'universal panacea', a remedy for all difficulties, and believes that the digital will bring us together as a species and that we will all become equal in cyberspace. This idea of a direct interaction of human beings with technology can be seen by some to be a controversial subject, as with the growing rates in which technology seems to be expanding, it could be thought that it can be taking over the human bodies mind.
The 1982 film 'Videodrome' by Cronenberg looks at this subject, in which the protagonist, after watching a video called 'videodrome' finds it almost impossible to distinguish whether he is living in a 'real' space or a 'simulated' space, a space in which everything around him is not real but is an imitation, for example, similar to the rides we have in which you feel as though you are travelling in a different space. In this film it is as if whatever the protagonist see's on the screen is real, as if it is 'the retina of the minds eye'. By this i mean,
"The television screen is the retina of the minds eye. Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever happens in the televsion screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore televsion is reality, and reality is less than television" ( http://home.swipnet.se/~w-37337/Iodg3/videodrome.htm ).
His tone of hallucinations throughout the film come from the tone of the video. 
It is as if it is creating a tumor, which is caused by the massive doses of coded signals that are hidden in the transmissions. This is a controversial area of thought, as if this is what the media could be doing to us everyday it is a worrying thought that it can distort our own reality. In the film his tumour becomes a new organ, controlled by the television company. It could be thought that all technology is actually an outgrowth of the brain, feeding us new ideas and taking us to places we havnt been before, providing us with a different reality. Like the video in this film, technology can play us like a video recorder, with the reality in which we think we inhabit actually being no longer there.
In our society today, we often compare ourselves to the ways in which the technology has presented us. John Baudrillard (1987) helps us to understand this explaining that our lives are now nothing more than a parody of what is projected on to the screens around us. He believes that due to the extent of technologies surrounding us, the image is all that remains. We have no recollection of what is 'real' and what is not. Baudrillard thinks apocolypsic, only interested in the obscene. His idea that the image is all that remains, can be followed through to the west, a culture in which alll reality seems to be gone. We dont see it, as we are so tied up in the fiction, no longer knowing where it ends. This can be conveyed by the fact that we often read articles on people such as soap actors, in which they reveal that people often shout out the name of their characters name on the street, many a time giving abuse towards them if their character has been portrayed in a bad way. This emphasises the fine line that lies between the idea of the real and simulated space. People are so caught up in the fiction that they find it hard to remember that the person they are shouting at in the street is not the same person that technology has portrayed them to be.
This blog has shown the powerful effect that media technology can have on society. Viedodrome, although to many may seem very far fetched and to enjoy it you may need to suspend your disbelief, I believe it may be, in a way, an accurate portrayal of how media technology can effect us. Media technology is a powerful medium, and one that is often underlooked.
