Technology and mythic narrative:<i>The matrix</i>as technological hero‐quest

Stroud, Scott R.

doi:10.1080/10570310109374719

Cited by 12 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Control imperatives-originating with total dependence on a singular energy vectorand the monomaniacal ambitions such impulses give rise to form the driving ontological framework of the film story, from which we discover that the battle between Smith and Neo is in fact one between alter egos (Stroud, 2001). This epic struggle between protagonist and antagonist unfolds with oedipal contours: A prophecy is foretold, pitting Neo against a fate he is compelled to avoid but cannot.…”

Section: Reversals: Life (And Policy?) Imitating Artmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…The leading supporting character of the film story, Morpheus (Greek God of Dreams, Son of Sleep), "awakens" to consciousness Neo (The One), who possesses extraordinary cyberkinetic powers capable of beating the lone wolf Agent Smith, whose malevolence stems from a transmogrified mania for controlling the AI system of which he is progeny. Control imperatives-originating with total dependence on a singular energy vectorand the monomaniacal ambitions such impulses give rise to form the driving ontological framework of the film story, from which we discover that the battle between Smith and Neo is in fact one between alter egos (Stroud, 2001). This epic struggle between protagonist and antagonist unfolds with oedipal contours: A prophecy is foretold, pitting Neo against a fate he is compelled to avoid but cannot.…”

Section: Reversals: Life (And Policy?) Imitating Artmentioning

confidence: 91%

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Conjuring the Holographic State

Witt

deHaven‐Smith

2008

Administration & Society

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No current policy paradigm, however interdisciplinary, provides an adequate and coherent account of post-9/11 security doctrine for "a war with no clear end or scope." Like the hologram, the image of the terrorist constructed by PATRIOT and kindred legislation appears vivid while defying a definitive grasp, just as the holographic image dematerializes on the hand reaching to touch it. This article sketches etiology for a new policy analytic paradigm that is coined here, the Holographic State, and explores its suitability for policy and administrative sense making under conditions where the epistemological and ontological foundations of policy inquiry have been made profoundly unstable.We believe the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management. It is therefore crucial to find a way of routinizing, even bureaucratizing, the exercise of imagination.

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Section: Reversals: Life (And Policy?) Imitating Artmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: Reversals: Life (And Policy?) Imitating Artmentioning

confidence: 91%

Conjuring the Holographic State

Witt

deHaven‐Smith

2008

Administration & Society

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“…Add to this concerns about the further balkanization of academic disciplines (e.g., history of presidential rhetoric being read only by those who do that sort of rhetorical scholarship), and one has a legitimate concern over whether a given act of criticism reaches any of the parties actually motivating this scholarship. This is not a conscious fault of those doing such work-even this author has had his research channeled by disciplinary habits in rhetorical criticism (i.e., Schamber & Stroud, 2001;Stroud, 2001). The pragmatist recognizes such critical activity as valuable, but as not exhausting the meliorative value of rhetorical activity.…”

Section: Pragmatism Meliorism and Methods In Rhetorical Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Does Pragmatic Meliorism Mean for Rhetoric?

Stroud

2010

Western Journal of Communication

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This article considers how rhetorical scholarship might proceed if it were to take the charge of pragmatic meliorism seriously. After discussing the notion of meliorism as employed by John Dewey, I argue that it would involve a radical reshaping of method in rhetorical theory, criticism, and pedagogy. Not all research must be meliorative, but research that is meliorative is characterized by an engagement with lived experience. With this characteristic in mind, I conclude by proposing four maxims that can guide melioristic work in rhetoric.It is a truism to say that the field of rhetoric attempts to study language and its myriad uses in a way that matters for lived experience. No less a proponent of rhetoric as Wayne Booth (2004) asserts this life-changing value of rhetoric (and presumably its study) in his final book:The quality of our lives, especially the ethical and communal quality, depends to an astonishing degree on the quality of our rhetoric . . .. Unless we pay more attention to improving our communication at all levels of life, unless we study more carefully the rhetorical strategies we all depend on, consciously, unconsciously, or subconsciously, we will continue to succumb to unnecessary violence, to loss of potential friends, and to the decay of community. (p. xii)

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“…A related line of exploration here suggests that the loss of ontological certainty is not merely the concern of scholars, but has become a substantive issue outside the academy (Cohen & Metzger, 1998), one that we suggest underlies much of the cultural politics of the time. Investigations along these lines have suggested that contemporary media texts such as the television series The X-Files (Bellon, 1999) and the film The Matrix (Stroud, 2001) explicitly grapple with questions of ontology, opening popular spaces within which to reconsider traditional assumptions.…”

Section: Philosophy Of Communication: Part 2 -Philosophic Issues In Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Philosophies and Philosophic Issues in Communication, 1995–2004

Anderson

Baym

2004

Journal of Communication

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The term philosophy of communication is a doubly articulated concept that refers both to the undergirding tenets and system of beliefs that justify a set of professional and pragmatic practices and to the study of those tenets and beliefs. Given the over 100 divisions and interest groups of our four major associations (ICA, NCA, AEJMC, BEA 1 ), one can say without irony that communication is philosophically rich. One could also say that, like the storied Platte River, we are a mile wide and an inch deep with no center channel.As a field of study, philosophy of communication asks the questions that are prior to and foundational for any topical or disciplinary issue. As the parent organization of this journal puts it: "Philosophy of Communication is broadly concerned with theoretical, analytical, and political issues that cut across the various boundaries that are often taken for granted within the study of communication." 2 Definitions of this sort create fields of endeavor without visible boundaries and literature reviews that could include nearly everything. Clearly, no matter how much space is allocated, any effort to write "the state of philosophy of communication" is doomed to the banal "there's a lot of it" or a careful examination of some small part of it. We've chosen the latter. Philosophy of Communication Review: Part 1-Philosophies of the DisciplineTo direct that examination we opted to use the traditional, encompassing set of four issues-existence, knowledge, knowledge practices, and value, or, more technically, ontology, epistemology, praxeology, and axiology-adopted by a number of communication theorists

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Technology and mythic narrative:The matrixas technological hero‐quest

Cited by 12 publications

References 22 publications

Conjuring the Holographic State

Conjuring the Holographic State

What Does Pragmatic Meliorism Mean for Rhetoric?

Philosophies and Philosophic Issues in Communication, 1995–2004

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