So last night I finally had a chance to go see Tron: Legacy (Joseph Kosinski, 2010), and not only was it one of the most aesthetically tight science fiction (SF) films I’ve seen recently and have a killer Daft Punk soundtrack, much of the film appears as if it was taken straight out of the pages of Protocol. Between the fight for “information to be free” against the centralized, hierarchical system, and the emergent “isomorphs” (or “isos”)[1]—clearly a kind of aestheticized matter-become-life[2]—the film really explores what it means to narrativize and aestheticize the dialectical tension b/t TCP/IP and DNS. Fantastic film, and I urge you either to go see it or comment further here if you’ve already seen it. Also, here’s the trailer:
[1] Remember “isomorphic” is a term Galloway often uses to talk about just the kind of phenomena this term designates in the film.
[2] I won’t totally spoil the ending (which you can’t really do w/ a film like this anyway—i.e. you know what’s gonna happen), but it fits very well w/ Galloway’s discussion of Marx.
Hello Professor,
I too have seen the movie Tron before starting this class and while having the discussion on protocol i found that i was relating most of the concepts within the book to this movie. Concepts such as having an artificial intelligence evolving and trying to get within the actual world, and relating players as “users”. It is a really good movie as it pertains to our topic on Protocol and i suggest that people see the movie as well. If anybody wants to see the movie from a live stream, please do so and check out this site solarmovie.com which has it uploaded in HD.