Final Project (Dalia Hatalova)

I was deciding between two topics for my final paper and decided to extend the work I had done for my presentation. However, I had some initial struggles in centering my analysis so that it would form a coherent research paper. Eventually, focusing on Inside Out through the lens of digital studies became the core of my work, as I explored the concept of technologization that I find to be the reverse of anthropomorphism. As interlocutors, Wendy Chun's and Jonathan Beller's respective research were the most useful, as my work discusses the changing of human self-perception with contemporary technology. Below is my project summary in the form of an abstract. 

In the information economy, garnering data from users requires discrete forms of information that are computable, leading to the abstraction of human processes to be algorithmically readable. Artificial intelligence technology is developed to resemble and be responsive to humans, but simultaneously contemporary media attempts to reconstitute human emotions and cognition. Disney Pixar's Inside Out visually technologizes internal human functioning through the medium of animation as highly discrete and industrialized. The quotidian world of Inside Out's protagonist, Riley, is intercut with the representation of her cognition. As these images simplify the complex neurological functioning of the brain into personable characters, they simultaneously require interrogation in view of the proliferation of digital technology in the twenty-first century. This article examines Inside Out's internal world construction by utilizing research on artificial intelligence, algorithms, digital infrastructures, and information capitalism.