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. nessed a continuous involution of social and convivial space in As the effect of a new slogan now replaces in-depth knowl­ the world of labor, of human and familial relations as well as of . edge, we are witnessing a discreet subordination of KNOWING politics, with the obvious result being a generalized nuclearization of to SEEING, which leads to the rather unique emotion known as the so-called developed societies. EYE LUST. The MARKETING of multimedia and of virtual communica­ As consumer society gives way to the fabled communica­ tion, which daims to replace all by itself the omnipotence of tions society, a new way of overtaking the old ADVERTISING is human societies and groups that are in danger of disappearing, underway. Initially, in the 19th century, there were advertising is located preCisely in this new incapacity of the majority of indi­ campaigns for the sale of industrial products. In the 20th centu­ viduals to identify with the others. ry, ADVERTISEMENTS aimed at generating a need or desire to If one is not convinced of this, it is enough to listen to the consume appeared; the promotional system of the multimedia of speeches of the new merchants of the temple, such as Michael the next century is about to move beyond its own "psycho­ Heim, the guru of the West Coast "transhumans": "All signs of commercial" limits once again, in order to insert itself into our social and political decline must be interpreted positively as

worldview and our relation to others - witness the spectacular signs of the coming of the CYBER. It is true that we run the risk development of the TELETH ON, for example. The goal of this of leaVing a part of the population behind by entering into

SOCIAL CYBERNETICS about which we hear so often from the CYBERSPACE, but techno-culture is our destiny." It takes some proponents of acting at a distance is indeed to generate emotion or courage to announce the metamorphosis of the Welfare State into some sexual, cultural, or political coveting. the State of Destiny! Such action has little to do with tele-audition (the radio or Tu rning elsewhere, we findJohn Perry Barlow, president of

the phone) or even television but rather with TELEACTION the Electronic Frontier Foundation, indicating that in his view, (televised purchasing, televised labor) or, in another terminology, "Cybernetic space must reflect the society of individuals, and in no the instantaneous interaction between the beings and the sites of a case can it become the plaything of nation-states," and Nicholas planet reduced to the dimensions experienced by Antoine de

CyberneticSand Society 8 9 PAUL VIRILIO

' Negroponte, director of MIT s MediaLab, declaring on February televisions, their computers, and their cellular phones, occasion­ 15, 1996, in Cannes that, "W ith the Internet we have entered ally consenting to meet with the man or woman who is nothing into the digital era of a universal network headed by no one!" more than the vague "partner" in a play of love or chance. (For These various experts are opposed to Congress passing the evidence of this, witness the married couples living separately in two dif­ Communications Decency Act, which would impose moral ferent apartments [8 million people in"unstable relationships"]). restrictions on the use of the network. The same holds for the children lost in the virtuality of elec­ We are witnessing the annihilation of the social fabric from tronic games or in the more realistic virtuality of the new "role­ all sides, as techno-liberalism fulfills the old dreams of 1970S playing" games. It also applies to the tragic acts of terrorism, anarcho-capitalism. which ultimately have no other goal than to erase the physical This is the last round of a technological struggle like the one presence, the body of others; known or unknown, guilty or

between the chess champion Kasparov and the computer DEEP innocent, they no longer make a difference. BLUE, in which the screens are supposed to grant the winner of the duel the attributes of divinity and turn the individual into a * * * super powerful being. However, we might note that in an obvious advertising strat­ But let us return to the speed of liberation from the constraints of

egy for the promotion of CYBER CULTURE the term POWER, space and time, which is the basis of teletechnologies. With the which gives too vivid an expression to the totalitarian threat, has relative speed of the TGV, for example, we do not travel; we are

been replaced with the more modest term VIRTUAL, although traveled or rather sent.With the absolute speed of TV or MULTI­ this comes from the Latin virtus, force, allthat is potential, literally, all MEDIA, we are not so much informed as conditioned. that is at stake! One will easily notice that the relative speed of transportation Divorces, bankruptcies, abandoned children, structural is relatively unpenalized, whereas the absolute speed of transmissions unemployment ...society is emptying and clearing itself out, is absolutely nonpenalized, since by virtue of its extraterritoriality, it rather than running wild. Couples are separating because they prevents any law from being applied! Witness the difficulties are no longer able to COHABIT, even when they claim to love pertaining to the legal control of the INTERNET. As Heraclitus each other. The real and permanent presence of the body of the once warned, "We must put out the excess rather than the fire." As I have . other is disturbing because it is ultimately an obstacle to the shown, whether we like it or not, we are moving into an era of expression of the individual's own virtual superpower. They hubris (demesure) that is not only systematic but systemic, in which claim that daily life is monotonous, lacking in surprises, and that we shall all live with the threat of social conditioning.

if destroys their past harmony. How will FREE MEN react tomorrow? Those who can afford to do so prefer to live alone with their Like followers of an anonymous society of individuals freed Cyberneticsand Society I 0 I I PAUL VIRILIO

from all constraints (including those of the law), will they want after neighborhood, in urban regions where there is indeed only to participate in a simulacrum of the "mystical body," namely, one law: the law of the fittest, where the heroes, popularized by tele­ the networks of virtual reality, or will they have to fight against vision or video games, are RAMBOS or ROBOC OPS, sup�rmen the return of BABEL, the mental and spiritual confusion that threat­ without much of a brain, speaking in onomatopoeia, but hyper� ens us today? muscular, and above all, overarmed since childhood. In fact, the emergent digital era is the lure of technological fun­ These Babel-like zones are home to communities that cannot damentalism, with the obvious disparity between the mere typing communicate among one another. They are hit harder than the on a keyboard and the Babel-like dimensions of global networks. others by pauperization; the younger ones can no longer even

CYBERCULTURE is not human but infrahuman. Due to its very imagine what the word WORK means. Meanwhile a few miles automatism, it tends to satisfy the isolated individual's classic away, outside the historical cities, one finds the neighborhood fantasy of having total control over his destiny; in other words, a fortresses, privileged residential zones like hyperprotected out­ fantasy of forgetting one's own weakness and powerlessness, posts, lost in a territory henceforth perceived as hostile. which, I might point out, is generally suicidal. These private cities sometimes demand independence from Therefore, what the networks offer today to the new individual­ the United States' federal government.2 This is a return to the ists is less communication than a kind of"emergency exit" that city-state of its colonial origins, which completes the process allows them to free themselves from their real dimensions. of disintegration. This transgression of physical laws is a delirium, known in psy­ In this disastrous context the technologies of acting at a distance

chiatry as "total performance syndrome," in other words, delu­ arise, this increasingly generalized INT ERAC TIVITY that rein­ sions of grandeur! forces this distancing of the other, the "neighbor" who is so often This outlaw world of networks, this"headless society" is not perceived as a threat while the one who is far-off is sought after the nice"global village" imagined 30 years ago by McLuhan, the and perceived as beneficial because hel she is well-behaved, piC­

Jean-Jacques Rousseau of the digital era - a mythical village that, ture-perfect, and above all because one can ZAP him or her at any as befits its name, promises to return to a primitive conviviality moment, cutting offthe virtual presence, unlike the bothersome by means of audiovisual techniques and computer engineering. neighbor or family member, who is a burden you are stuck with.

No, this CYBERWORLD of the pseudo-social avant-garde Grant me that this comes about in unfortunate coincidence should rather be located in those "lawless zones" in which each with the progress of telecommunication technologies! individual can let his madness for power run rampant, without Lastly, I call attention to an unnoticed phenomenon: 20-odd any controls and almost no restrictions. These zones are already years ago, it was already estimated that the populations of the more than suburbs or even ghettos, and they are spreading like developed countries only produced one percent of the energy an oil slick in the large cities of the United States, neighborhood consumed;3 with the correlative disappearance of the proletariat,

Cyberneticsand Society I 2 13 PAUL VIRILIO

mass unemployment, etc., 99 percent of strictly human energy Notes

would be unemployed, thanks to the progress of robotics, com­ I Gilles Deleuze, Critique et cJinique (Paris: Editions de Minuit, (993), 40; English

puter technology, and atomic energy. translation in Gilles Deleuze, Kant's Critical Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and

This was a social revolution without any precedent, since Barbara Habberjam (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, (984).

until the mid-20th century all individual energy had been tied to 2 LeMondeDiplomatique (March (996): 12, 13.

the power and energy of evermore numerous human groups; in 3 At the beginning of the century, 94 percent of allmechanical energy produced and

other words, all individual energy was in some way also social (from consumed on Earth derived from the muscular power of humans and animals. the Latin socius) and connected to companionship (from cum panus, hel she who shares the bread): brother, cousin, then citizen.

Thus, in the course of a few millennia, the identification of Translated from the French by ChariesT. Wo lfe each individual moved from the pastoral family to the agrarian family, from tribal groupings to the city-state, and finally, most recently, to the nation-state. On the other hand, once 99 percent of human energy is vir­ tually unemployed, the rational foundation of life in society is undermined: no given member of society can identify his or her own potential with that of a higher group and integrate into it anymore. The consequence is the fragmentation of social and

familial wholes and the great phenomenon of E X C L U SION. To conclude these rather disenchanted remarks - which are

solidly, resolutely REALISTIC, and not VIRTUALISTIC , as the media craze of the moment would have it -let us recall the fable ofAesop, the slave ofXanthos, in the 6th century B.C.: The best of all things is language, in other words, INFORMATION, the organ of

truth and KNOWL EDGE. But information is also the worst of all things, the language which no one can remember for long, the source of division, the organ of error and calumny, whose damage is irreversi ble.

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