SUPERUSERS ...

Apologies to my group for being behind this week ... hopefully my first, last, and only offense


When reading pages 123-125 of Digitizing Race, Nakamura discusses how the white males (Mr. Anderson and Detective Anderton) in both Minority report and the Matrix Trilogy are able to interact with technology at a higher level than their non-white comrades.

In the 2003 movie Paycheck, Ben Affleck plays a role where he is skilled in reverse engineering. This White male’s job involves taking current technology and improving it giving him some sort of empowerment and authority in the area of technology. During the movie he is depicted using a transparent technology to disassemble and reassemble the product that he is working with.

Like Mr. Anderson (Neo) and Detective Anderton, Michael Jennings (Ben Affleck) is a “superuser”. He is able to interface with technology in a way that not everyone can. Jennings is called out to do a job because he is skilled in reverse technology giving him an advantage over others. Nakamura talks about how Mr. Anderson and Detective Anderton, like Mr. Jennings interface at a higher level while their counterparts interface with technology as lesser users requiring analog interface via things such as keyboards or other hard-wired communication devices.

Paycheck also depicts the lack of non-whites as technological authorities in the vast number of technologically advanced peoples portrayed in the movie and the lack of appearance of non-whites. This shows that the whites are technologically superior to non-whites whether they are physically present or not. There is a non-white agent in the movie Paycheck, Agent Dodge. Agent Dodge is portrayed as a working class male trying to understand and get to the bottom of what Jennings has done, but doesn’t have the technological advantage that Jennings has, putting him at a obvious disadvantage. This correlates to the natural disadvantages of Link and Jad in the Matrix Trilogy and Minority Report.