From Jarvis’ review of The Social Network

I’ve met Zuckerberg four or five times, most lately interviewing him for Public Parts. I don’t know him. Maybe nobody does. But I can testify at least that he has charm. He does smile. He tells jokes. And he has a vision.

The antisocial movie « BuzzMachine

I can see the grounds for  irritation at how Zuckerberg is portrayed.  From the human side,  and since I don’t know him,  I especially see the point about the lack of articulation of vision in the movie.  The character played by Eisenberg rarely speaks of the WHY of what motivates him.  The two clues we are  given are being jilted by a girl,  and jealousy at his friend’s acceptance into an exclusive club.   So,  in this sense,  the tile of the movie is really misleading.  The movie is the battle for the rights and the credit,  and basically nothing about what makes for a good “Social Network”.

Jarvis also points out something to which  the movie totally seems totally oblivious (ie. clueless).  The “cheating” on his art exam.  What Zuckerberg ACTUALLY did was create a collaboration that helped EVERYONE in the class.  The teacher reported that the whole class did better.  What we have here is the difference between collaboration and interdependency and the old-style, individualistic rote memory approach to measuring performance.  New media education vs old-school.  Apparently Sorkin is old school on this,  or ,  as he admits,  isn’t all that up on new technology.

Aside from all this,  and as Jarvis also recognizes,  the movie is well-crafted and well done,  and makes a good story if you’re not aware or even care about its distance from reality.   I heard Jeff talk about the movie Wednesday on This Week in  Google,  and it sounded like I too might dislike the movie,  but I didn’t.  I still enjoyed it.  But it could have been a better movie (especially to have seen some of the “vision” thing that would cross over into my own ). Oh well.