More interesting to me than such geographic miscues, however, was the way that the film consistently ignored the difference between virtual reality and "real" reality. Sure, it's a story about cyber-terrorism. But does that mean that characters should be magically transported from one location to another many miles away as rapidly as if they'd been teleporting through the Star Trek universe? Live Free or Die Hard is a film about how vulnerable we are to computer attack that imagines a world in which the distinction between cyberspace and "meat space" collapses. Given the retro aura of Bruce Willis's lead, this is a curious phenomenon. Even as the picture wants to insist on the continuing relevance of his old-school approach to fighting the bad guys, it confuses his actions with the movement of data on the internet. Maybe that's the film's underlying message -- it began life as a Dot Com-era story in Wired magazine, after all -- but it's one that would seem to render the heroism it represents on its surface an anachronism. Stay tuned for further thoughts on this topic. . .
Conflation Nation
More interesting to me than such geographic miscues, however, was the way that the film consistently ignored the difference between virtual reality and "real" reality. Sure, it's a story about cyber-terrorism. But does that mean that characters should be magically transported from one location to another many miles away as rapidly as if they'd been teleporting through the Star Trek universe? Live Free or Die Hard is a film about how vulnerable we are to computer attack that imagines a world in which the distinction between cyberspace and "meat space" collapses. Given the retro aura of Bruce Willis's lead, this is a curious phenomenon. Even as the picture wants to insist on the continuing relevance of his old-school approach to fighting the bad guys, it confuses his actions with the movement of data on the internet. Maybe that's the film's underlying message -- it began life as a Dot Com-era story in Wired magazine, after all -- but it's one that would seem to render the heroism it represents on its surface an anachronism. Stay tuned for further thoughts on this topic. . .
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Weekend Update
I frequently feel like writing something longer and sometimes writing it here. Unfortunately, my windows of opportunity these days are five minutes…
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Blade Runner Redux
I was trying to figure out why my photos aren't showing up here and decided to see whether entries from when I was posting regularly were still…
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Beauty Is Suffering
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