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Cybernetics & Society PAU L VIRILIO Cybernetics & Society Architecture New York I SHALL SPEAK as an art critic of technology.Wh y ? Only because About the author this seems to be prohibited by the self-promoting excesses of PaulVirilio is an urbanist who teaches at the the MULTIMEDIA. Ecole Speciale d' Architecture in Paris. Pierre de Beaumarchais warned that "without the freedom to His books include Speed and Politics, Esthethique de la reproach, there is no flattering praise," but without the freedom disparition, l'Inertie polaire, and I'Ecran de desert. to criticize technology, there is no technological progress either, only a conditioning . and when this conditioning becomes CYBERNETICS, as is the case today with the new technologies, the threat is substantial. The teletechnologies of information in real time are technolo­ gies of the networking of human relations, and as such they obviously convey the distant perspective of humankind united but also the risk of a uniform mankind ... Indeed, following Pascal, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and the technological globalization underway today with current teletechnologies is greater than the sum of the imperi­ alisms we once knew. We are no longer in the 19th century but at the end of the 20th, and the debate on mass MULTIMEDIA does not seem to include all of the ideologies of progress that we have experienced during this century. In the 19th century, one could still be rela­ tively naIve about technical, scientific, or even social progress. A trend of thought could still be legitimately forgiven for not tak­ ing into account the totalitarian dimension of technological inventions, their negative use, and the pollution, both ecological and psy chological, caused by industrialization. Cyberneticsand Society 2 3 PAUL VIRILIO At the dawning of the 21 st century, it is time to identify the makes no reference to the LOCAL TIME of human history. lesson of the negativity of a progress that, to be sure, is still Indeed, the capacities of instantaneous interaction between MATERIAL PROGRESS but that is no longer an all-powerful the various global networks open onto the possibility of a single progress over the collective imagination, a progress idealized by time, a temporality that would only refer to the"universartime�' a thinking that I would describe as lacking any distance from the hid­ of astronomy. This is an event unlike any other: following· den side of positivism. Epicurus, it is an ACCIDENT TO END ALL ACCIDENTS. From now on, we must try to discern what is fundamentally Whereas the entire history of nations and societies was con­ negative within that which initially seems positive.As Pierre MacOrlan tained in time, in the localspace-time of diurnal/ nocturnalalternation wrote, Our remorse must be preventive. or of time zones, the history that is now beginning will belong As we well know, we only make headway, we only progress more to the "newsworthy," "mediated" instantaneousness of a with a particular technology by taking a firm stand against its single time than to the time of calendars. accidental components, its hidden violence. To day the new tech­ This is probably a pOSitive event for the future unity of nologies of instantaneous communication convey a new type of mankind, but it is also an event laden with negative potentiali­ accident, an accident that is no longer LOCAL, precisely located, ties that must be avoided at any cost; I say this because I am a like the sinking of the Titanic or the derailing of a train, but child of the 20th century, whichAlbert Camus described as"this GLOBAL, an accident that immediately concerns the near totality merciless century." of the world. But let us return to the notion of an accident in philosophy. We are told, for instance, that one of the goals of the Internet Substance is absolute and necessary, and the accident relative and contingent. is a globalization of exchanges. This is obvious, but the potential Thus the accident is that which befalls the substance in an inop­ accident of this system, or of the future"information highways," portune fashion - the substance, the product, or the recently is the emergence of a general accident, or even an INTEGRAL acci­ invented technological object. It is, for example, the "original dent. Now, there is no precedence for this threat - witness the accident" of the Challenger space shuttle 10 years ago. legal extraterritoriality of the World Wide Web. Aside from the The accident, the catastrophe (direct or indirect), is hence stock market crash of 1987, we have never experienced an acci­ that which scientists and technicians must avoid at all costs. dent that involved the entire world at the same moment. Every year the Renault company deliberately generates 400 Thus, when teletechnologies establish the REAL TIME of CRASH TESTS in a center devoted to improving the security of its instantaneousness, this is tantamount to establishing a new time vehicles. Since no SUBSTANCE can exist without an ACCIDENT, for humanity, a technological temporality without any relation no technological object can be developed without in turn gener­ to historical time, regardless of whether this was considered ating its speCific accident: boat = shipwreck, train = railway dis­ desirable. In other words, it is the advent of a GLOBAL TIME that aster, plane = crash, etc. Thus the accident is the hidden side of Cybernetics and Society 4 5 PAUL VIRILIO technological progress, and the original accident is to the human "The time is out of jOint": this phrase from Shakespeare's Hamlet sciences what original sin is to human nature. is a wonderful comment on the GLOBAL TIME of "real time" But we must take into account here an important element: telecommunications. As the late lamented Gilles Deleuze explained the dominant role of speed in the magnitude and gravity of the accidents which so well, "Hamlet is the first hero who really needs time in order take place, from which it follows that there are speed limits on to act," whereas previous heroes experienced time as the conse­ roads and trials for" speeding." The revolution in transportation of the quence of originary motion (Aeschylus) or an aberrant act previous century produced a new acceleration, due to which the (Sophocles). For the Northern prince, "Time is no longer the cosmic number of accidents has suddenly grown, and sophisticated time of originary heavenlymotion, or the rural time of derivative mete­ procedures for controlling air, railway, and highway traffic have orological time, it has become the time of the city and nothing had to be implemented urgently. else, the pure order of time." I But with the present revolution of TELEMA TIC transmissions, accel­ At present, this urban time is becoming the time of the eration has reached its physical limit, with the implementation world-city, a virtual "city to end all cities," which does not of the speed of electromagnetic waves. This no longer takes place belong to the calendar and land registry of a region in the real on a national or regional scale but on a global scale. space of the world; rather, it belongs solely to the real time of the Hence the danger is no longer a particular accident but indeed a emission and instantaneous reception of an information Signal, general accident that might not reach the planet as a whole but to the extent that WORLD-TIME replaces the earlier WORLD­ would certainly befall the majority of those who are involved in SPACE in practical (economic, political, etc.) importance. these teletechnologies, to say the least - witness, once again, the It is difficult to discuss the question of MULTIMEDIA without crash of 1987, which resulted from the implementation of"pro­ speaking of RELATIVITY, the retroactive feedback of televisual gram trading," the automatic share quoting system of Wall and computer systems, the instantaneous distancing of action as Street, which ultimately required the installation of circuit breakers. well as reaction - in other words, the sudden temporal compression of From the above, one major requirement follows: that we global communication that reduces the distances and geophysical anticipate this kind of catastrophe, so that we can effectively con­ dimensions of our living environment to nothing. trol the worldwide IN T ERAC T I V I T Y of telecommunications; In fact, TELEMATICS wins out in cultural and social impor­ without such control, this interactivity would soon reproduce tance over COMPUTER SCIENCE, but no one seems to worry the damage of an improperly controlled RADIOACTIVITY, as about this, since as far back as one can remember, increased was unfortunately the case in Chernobyl. speed has been perceived as continuous progress, a beneficial progreSSion toward the best of all possible worlds. * * * In television, for instance, the initial violence is not the con­ tent of its hyperviolent or pornographiC programs; it is firstof all the Cybernetics and. Society 6 7 PAUL VIRILIO initial acceleration of the ME D I UM. This became apparent five years ago Saint-Exupery's Little Prince on his tiny planet. during the Gulf War, the first war ever to be shown in real time. The real social choice of tomorrow will probably be between Hence the "message" is not exactly the MEDIUM, as Marshall a real presence and a virtual telepresence; the being who is present McLuhan claimed, but above all the ultimate SPEED of its propa­ here and now will have to resist the attractions, the lust for the gation.A speed that has reached its limit in the realms of hearing, absence of flesh, of the telepresent being, phantom or clone of vision, and interaction reduces both the extension of the space the alter ego. of the world and the duration of any serious reflection in favor of a For the last quarter of a century, approximately, we have wit­ genuine conditioned reflex.
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