Presidential Politics and the Anthropotechnical Interface

America's biggest media events, the Superbowl and the presidential election, are not simply mediated events but, centrally, events of mediation: showcases for new media technologies. This is a wonderful example. If I didn't have a dissertation to write, I'd be writing an article about CNN's Virtual View (which is self-consciously placed "in the tradition of Princess Leia"). Watch them navigate between an ostensible story and a heightened awareness of the state-of-the-art special-effects. This is sci-fi, and not just because the "hologram" looks like something from Star Wars or because it seems to "beam" the correspondent in the style of Star Trek. This is sci-fi in a richer sense, because it perfectly utilizes the sci-fi film's basic self-reflexive appeal to the technologies used to mediate its highly conventionalized story about technology.

Of course, the appearance of CNN's holograph is not an isolated phenomenon. It partakes of a larger science-fiction context. The report of astronauts voting is a good example. Not only is outer space the traditional setting, the astronaut an established character, and the spaceship a central iconographic element in sci-fi; more importantly, the report provokes the question, as I asked last evening, how exactly did they cast their votes? With what kind of apparatus, via what channel of communication, and with what security measures in place? These are the same questions that one can ask about one's local voting station: how do these new voting machines work, how do they communicate with one another, and are they trustworthy? The astronauts casting their votes are not interesting in themselves. Instead, they are an invitation to regard the apparently more mundane situation of earthbound voting from a technophilic, science-fiction perspective.

Meanwhile, the other networks foregrounded gigantic touchscreens, double ticker text lines, made for HDTV special features, and parallel online supplements in their bids to captivate viewers (see here for more). Since I couldn't stay awake for it, I'll be loading Obama's victory speech (and maybe McCain's concession of defeat while I'm at it) onto my iPod. Watching it there will in some way consummate the message of the medium, and I anticipate that it will also speak to a level at which consummation is eternally deferred: Now if I only had an iPhone or an iPod touch to match the tactile response, if not the scale, of those giant touchscreens. Isn't that what this election was all about?