Conceiving Ada

I have to say, I think this is my favorite film so far. I first encountered Tilda Swinton last semester when we watched parts of the film Orlando in the Woolf/Faulkner course. Somehow, she’s no less weird in this movie even though she’s not changing gender.

Unfortunately, I have more questions than answers about this film, specifically because I had a hard time understanding the technology being used. I understood that Ada had written the codes (right word) for what is considered the modern computer, but I don’t understand how Tilda Swinton was able to go back and time and talk to her through the computer screen. I especially don’t understand how her unborn child’s DNA was used, although I do understand that the memories and knowledge of Ada were somehow transplanted into the baby, to be discovered bit by bit as she grows up.
I also didn’t understand a couple sentences from the Kinder reading. She says, “Although Conceiving Ada and Teknolust are digital movies projected on a screen rather than interactive works, whose structure can be altered by users, they still help us conceptualize what is possible for new media technologies particularly concerning the gendering of agency” (171). Which type of media have its structure altered by users? Digital movies projected on screen, is that what we’re used to seeing? That is a typical movie? And what the heck does she mean by “gendering of agency?” That completely threw me.

As a woman I empathized and understood Ada’s feelings of being driven and feeling trapped. As a Lit student, the fact that she was Lord Byron’s illegitimate child only made things more interesting.

Can't believe how bad that movie was

In his essay, “Plato’s Pharmacy,” the deconstructionist Derrida breaks down the binaries surrounding Plato’s use of the Greek word Pharmakon. Derrida points out the slipperiness of language by illustrating how in The Phaedrus, Plato uses the word pharmakon to mean both “poison” and “remedy.” It is, perhaps, not by coincidence that in the film Johnny Mnemonic, the Asian company, responsible for so much of the society’s ills, is called Pharmakon. In the film, technology is the pharmakon: it is both the poison and the remedy. As we learn later in the film, the cure for the disease that plagued the people was always there, the company just realized that there was more money to be made treated people for the disease once they had it, instead of vaccinating them before they managed to get it. The dual nature of technology being illustrated is that while technology can kill, it can also heal.

The terrible acting in this film was fairly distracting, but one can see the opposing uses of technology at work through the film techniques. The concept of being able to use the human memory in the same way one uses a jump drive is fascinating. Yet, Johnny’s LSD-like flashes and his fear of imploding from carrying too much data are indicative of the Promethean dangers of technology. The lack of light, the futuristic costumes, the clean lines of Johnny’s appearance, all suggest a world taken over by technology and one that is very streamlined, very programmed, and very sterile.