Digital Media, Artificial Life, and Postclassical Cinema: Condition, Symptom, or a Rhetoric of Funding?

Technological determinism would argue that the popular cinema is driven by new technologies (especially digital media) in a very straightforward way. Digital imaging, for example, has produced special effects and animations that were unimaginable before computer technology, and audiences are attracted to intellectually empty blockbuster films to experience the thrilling spectacle of new technology. Moreover, the organization of the industry from camera control to box office has also been transformed by computer control systems. The author proceeds from an acknowledgment of the way technological change has altered films and the structure of the industry but argues that there is also a relationship between the way that mainstream cinema organizes its narratives and the methods of science and technology. As our understanding of these changes, so does the internal logic of cause and effect in stories that we see. However, the author uses a nondeterminist historical approach to show the complexity of this interaction, and especially to emphasize that it is not simply a one-way traffic. On the contrary, the extent to which science, technology, and entertainment track the same trajectory throughout the century is apparent in the ways scientists have approached the problem of artificial intelligence. The paper concludes by posing this question: If digital technology is changing culture, why is it that its closest cousins—radio and television—are creatively less responsive to it than its antique ancestor—the cinema?