Sorry for all the old news in the last post and in this one. I recently returned from a trip and I'm still catching up. While I was away, I had the chance to see The Social Network. Can I just ask how talented writers like Aaron Sorkin could end up with a title that bad? I know I'm one to talk (my dissertation, with a sexy title of Understanding the Digital Music Commodity) but really. It's like calling a movie about TV "The Box You Watch From The Couch" or naming a film about cell phones "The Moving Calling Devices".
Not that the movie is as bad as the title. It's full of good dialogue, well shot scenes and a solid soundtrack. Still it shows how hard it is to make a movie about computers. There are way too many "exciting" shots of people typing away furiously at their keyboards, or refreshing their homepages. The computer has become such a regular part of many of our everyday work and play lives, the sight of it on film isn't really as novel as it needs to be for any kind of dramatic tension. We know people can code crazy things on computers. But showing that process is like watching a painter watch paint dry.
The overall story falls apart a bit towards the end too, since there's no real point. The driving hook of the movie is that Zuckerberg is getting sued since he "stole" the idea from classmates and cheated an early partner out of his fair share. But the cases are settled out of court, and there's no admission of right or wrong doing by anyone. It's the equivalent of a draw. Not that the movie needs winners or losers. Viewers can make up their own mind. But the narrative is so focused on the lawsuits that once they dissolve, we're left wondering whether we just witnessed a two-hour long status update.
I wasn't going to write about the movie. But then I saw this. It's an article about the film, praising not how accurate it is - it's highly fictionalized - but how "the Social Network is more than just a movie about Facebook. It’s the first movie about Silicon Valley." I wish this were the case. Having just finished a dissertation largely about software companies, I would have welcomed a movie about Silicon Valley. Instead, the film is about Harvard. About frat parties and being socially awkward. About nerds and jocks and pining for girls. About class and Class. But the closest it gets to Silicon Valley is a few scenes with Justin Timberlake at a swanky club and in a shiny new office.
If the film is to be praised, it's for how it blows up the single creator myth that's so prevalent in the re-telling of technology/innovation stories. These narratives typically depend on one person who holed himself (it's usually a him) up and got to work birthing a beautiful fresh new original idea. Case after case shows how this just isn't true. For every Shawn Fanning, Justin Frankel and Mark Zuckerberg, there are equally as many supporting or bit players. This is the movie's real lesson and the typical state of affairs in start-ups in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.
Ideas are not solitary affairs. They're social ones. The Social Network does a good job of showing that, if not exploring it as fully as it could.
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