Flip the switch: virtue, programming, and the prospect of automatic agency in WALL•E

• Autores: Adam J. Gaffey
• Localización: Southern communication journal, ISSN 1041-794X, Vol. 83, nº 1, 2018, págs. 41-56
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Critiques of the Internet age often place technological change in contest with social virtues. This essay analyzes the 2008 Pixar film WALL•E to better understand how the interplay of these positions is presented in popular form. I argue the film reconciles this tension by framing virtues as both integral to living well with technology, and as a necessary ability of human beings. I refer to this framing as automatic agency. An agentic reading of WALL•E offers two points of interest for rhetorical critics. It highlights the drawbacks to narratives that rely on the agent-act ratio as public pedagogy, and draws attention to the tendency of framing virtues through the lens of mechanized technology rather than techne.