Virilio's Open Sky

Reading Paul Virilio's Open Sky was a grounding and thought-provoking experience.  Much like reading Turkle earlier in the semester, Virilio prompts us to question our use, reliance and development of technology and how it effects our lives.  There is a sharp deviation though, in the tone of Turkle and Virilio respectively, along with the ways in which they explore our world.  Turkle's tone is balanced in between the benefits of technological advances and the worry or need to be aware of the ways in which those technological advances impact the way we live.  The tone is relatively subdued, and her mode of investigation is more psychological and/or sociological. Virilio, on the other hand, writes a bleak outlook of the future- still warning of the ways in which telecommunication in particular affects us, but the warning is particularly more dire (and it seemed to me as though no real alternatives were proposed.)  It was almost as if he was writing from the perspective that this future that awaits us, the general disaster, etc. is inevitable (or else already here.)  He investigates the ways in which our perceptions of time and space have changed, from a more scientific and theoretical perspective.  The ultimate idea is that technological progress and the "tyranny of real time" are leading towards a generalized accident, where there is a perpetual present that exists globally and intensely, breaking down the way that mankind relates to one another and his surroundings, to past-present-future, and the way he understands himself.
 

Virilio's exploration of the conditions that are leading to this "general accident" is what interests me the most.  His exploration of these conditions mainly revolve around the "intervals" of time and space.  He explores the ways that time has always been conceived: as past, present and future- as a linear and continual process that shapes human memory and history.  He additionally talks about the traditional conception of space, centering around the ideas of "here" and "there," or "not here."  He then explores the progression of human society (propagated by technological advances) from nomadic - centering on and defined by movement and the journey, to the urban- more localized but defined by relations between subject and object.

He talks about the industrial revolution and how advances in transportation technologies contributed to the de-emphasis on the journey, in favor of departure and arrival.  Space was still important, but for different reasons.  Along with the increasing efficiency in transportation came leisure and de-localized work.  Man could work "elsewhere," and could also NOT work.  He thus became less mobile, yet was able to cover greater distances and go just about anywhere.  Man moved from "mobilized" to "motorized."  Finally, in the revolution of telecommunications, man is able to be present from a distance and act indirectly...  With all of our modern conveniences, we may still be "motorized," but we are- according to Virilio- increasingly "motile" and sedentary.  Probably the creepiest illustration of our increasingly sedentary nature is when Virilio encourages us to contrast the "well-equipped" handicapped with the physically-fit man.  Increasingly, there is less and less distinction between the two.  Yikes!  With this sedentary-ness, and with the ability to be "telepresent," our perceptions and even existence inside of traditional notions of space are being challenged.

Further than the break down of space though, Virilio is equally concerned with changing perceptions in time.  Going back to the improved telecommunication technologies, our traditional ways of existing in time (or understanding time) have changed dramatically.  This is where Virilio puts a great deal of emphasis.  The traditional notion of time has changed just as much as space with the advent of instant telecommunication technologies: teletechnologies.  Virilio talks about our traditional perception of time, as I stated before, as a linear progression of past, present and future.  What is occurring now though is the promotion of the present above any past and extending into the future:  the perpetual present.  This is visible in the various "real time" technologies that exist today.  Not only are we intensely existing in the present, but the present is extended beyond geographical borders to the extent that there exists a sort of global present.

 The collapsing of the intervals of space and time onto one another indicates what Virilio calls the third interval: the interval of light or light-speed.  This is an interval where our understandings of the world are defined not by the passing of time or the here-there of space, but by the instantaneous transmission of what Virilio calls the grand-scale optic.  Virilio argues that this interval "mutates" the way man relates to his surroundings, to space and to time.  Duration is no longer defined by old understandings of time, but of "real time," with no real beginning or end to its duration.  Extension is now paradoxically both hyper-extended across great distances, and also inconceivable/nonexistant because it dwells in the virtual.  This mutation, he says, leads to the "accident of the present": a remote telepresence where our "sole entry into duration is the present."

One of the greatest effects that these changes are having immediately on mankind is in what Virilio calls "terminal sedentarization."  On pg 25, he argues that this movement toward sedentary life is intensifying due to our ability to communicate, interact, even live remotely.  He describes this sedentarization and its effects where man dwells in a "transparent horizon spawned by telecommunications, that opens up the incredible possibility of a 'civilization of forgetting', a live (live-coverage) society that has no future and no past, since it has no extension and no duration, a society intensely present here and there at once - in other words, telepresent to the whole world.

Through this telepresence and sedentary life that Virilio perceives, I begin to see some of the danger of his vision of our future.  Life where we are instantaneously connected with "neighbors" at a distant, at the expense of proximate neighbors; life where we intensely exist in the present because "real time" is all that there is, neglecting both past and future; life where mankind is almost exclusively sedentary, living by proxy (as he is already communicating often) rather than living in reality- this is the picture of the world that Virilio paints.  In essence, as he says on pg 43: "the very notion of physical proximity is in danger of finding itself radically changed."  It seems to go without saying that this change would be to the negative.

He situates us in the world of large scale optics where there is innovation and also disaster/accident.  The innovation is the ability to perceive that which is remote.  Virilio neglects to really talk about the "good" side of this innovation, likely because it goes without saying that it is a "good" thing to be able to talk/see a loved one who is miles away.  However, as he says every innovation also invents a disaster, and the disaster of the innovation of "large scale optics" is in the invalidation of that which is physically present.  This is where I connect him with Turkle:  whereas Turkle might agree that there is a certain invalidation of the physically present occurring (and interestingly Turkle wrote after Virilio,) she would likely say that there is a remedy in being aware of the ways technology works on you and making a conscious effort not to lose one's grip of that need for physical presence.  On the other hand, Virilio says no such thing, rather he paints a picture of a world that is evolving into one big "global city", not a geographical/political city but a metacity, one that occurs in the frontier of the virtual- outside (arguably) of the realm of politics.

What we get in the end is this picture of society as global metacity, mankind as physically distant and inert, but visually and temporally ever-present.  The danger in this sort of harsh/sharp form of existence is that mankind- caught up in perceiving, communicating, relating and acting at a distance- is at great risk to lose his place in the world.  He is in the process of trading in relations to physical space, to the past, to the future, to the proximate other; for relations that occur in the non-existent world of telepresence.  He is in the process of reaching an escape velocity from the limitations that have always "suppressed" human progress, thus transcending space and time and coming to what Virilio calls "the end of the world."


Questions:

1) Virilio wrote this book in the 1990s:  do you think his outlook would change at all if he wrote this book today, with all the advances of the past decade and the evolution of these technologies?

2) Virilio obviously is very interested in our mutating relationship with "time."  Do you feel that our modern society exists in the tyranny of "real time" as he says?  Do we still relate to the past and the future, and is there a possibility that telecommunication technologies and particularly the great databasing capabilities of the internet enable us to still exist in relation to the past in particular?



Image Links:

http://ak1.ostkcdn.com/images/products/49/571/P12930469.jpg

http://www.theodora.com/maps/new9/world_climate_map-large.jpg

http://www.destination360.com/north-america/us/nevada/las-vegas/images/s/las-vegas-sky-diving.jpg

Ulmer's Justice, Conductive Reasoning and Y-Wishing

In the closing section of Ulmer's "Electronic Monuments," he goes further into depth on the idea and concept (?) of conductive reasoning, along with giving demonstrations for the practice of intuitive reasoning, mystory mapping across the discourses of the popcycle, and documenting a very insightful MEmorialization practice done by one of his UF colleagues in the wake of 9/11.

Chapter 7 on the Justice Miranda really made the differences between the literate and the electrate, as well as their differing modes of reasoning stand out.  Ulmer uses the literate concept of justice as the starting point, building an electrate concetto in the process to demonstrate what an electrate process of "knowing" might look like.  The crux of this process is to find connections between independent entities, identify the gaps/connections that exist and to fill those gaps using inferential logic.  In the search for an electrate concetto of justice, Ulmer draws on a comparison between logical and literate modes of investigation (interrogation) to an intuitive mode of reasoning.  In electracy, thinking/knowing relies on intuition the way dancing or boxing relies on it.  It does not (just) apply analytical rules, but uses past experiences and patterns as a sort of guiding "memory" - as the Dreyfi say, it is more of "acquiring a skill rather than solving a problem."

What skill then, is to be applied?  It is the drawing of connections across the transversal of the various discourses of the popcycle, creating a cognitive map across which one can jump.  I thought Ulmer was artistic in his drawing of metaphors- between learning/interrogation/3rd degree and their relations to the concept of justice in the literate apparatus, and intuition/dance/3rd (obtuse) meanings/samba as a mode of reasoning/thinking in the electrate.  Perhaps most pertinent was the way he tied together the Miranda rights (concerning interrogation, justice, etc.) to Carmen Miranda, a famous Brazilian samba dancer.  The turning to a "Miranda" in the popular culture highlights what Ulmer has to say about conduction:  that it "is based on this tuning of discourse to culture, using these lucky finds as points of departure for further elaboration and development."  In his connections between and organization of Miranda Rights, justice, the Turing test, Samba, Carmen Miranda, and Ludwig Wittgenstein (chiefly) into a coherent pattern, Ulmer sets up an opposition that is tied together in the field of justice.  The ends of the scene/chora/pattern he builds is different from the logical ends of literacy.  As he says, "it is not about the literal dance, but the figurative one, changing our cultural style of information into knowledge.  It is not the dance but what is felt."  Essentially, the literate information-to-knowledge is all about the essence of what is, what happened, etc.  However, Ulmer is making an argument that a different apparatus demands a different way of creating knowledge, and that mood (and not essence) is what creates knowledge in this new way of thinking.

"Miranda" then, by way of its connections to the literate concept of justice becomes an electrate chora all its own, tying together a united mood surrounding the idea of "justice" across the popcycle of family, community, culture, career.  It is within this popcycle that Ulmer highlights the "Soft Wishing Y," a MEmorial project/process that Ulmer collaborated on with colleague Will Pappenheimer.  In Chapter 8, Ulmer displays the MEmorialization process through the documentation of Pappenheimer's thought processes, his personal mystory across the popcycle, the situation of his own personal "burning question" within the disaster of 9/11 and the ways in which he forms and utilizes connections to trace both his peripheral (the Y of pom poms, converging at a park dedicated to the man who is considered to have laid the groundwork for the skyscraper; set to the periphery of Ground Zero) and his testimonial (the website on which people could write their wishes/questions, forming a sort of collective testimony.)  Ulmer introduces a couple of new concepts in this chapter.

First, the idea of Choramancy- an idea of divination applied to cognitive mapping.  The idea is that in certain cultures (oral/magical?) a person with a problem or question would consult a diviner, who would use some uncanny or intuitive ability (chance procedure, as Ulmer calls the electrate practice) to connect one's individual problem to the larger collective community.  This obviously nails the idea/hope of choragraphy and the EmerAgency itself: to recognize the problem in us and to situate ourselves in relation to the greater, collective disaster.  When we see our part in the disaster, we are immune to compassion fatigue (or so is the hope.)  The second new concept is the idea of the wish.  Pappenheimer harkens back to Ulmer's "Y," and the idea of the wishbone.  While we are prone to explore all of the reasons "why" in culture, the one that we tend not to explore is the one that is represented both by the wishbone, the wish and the why:  the dimension of human desire.  Wishes represent this human desire, and as Ulmer says, a way to commemorate one's wish as a part of life.  Connected with choramancy, the wish functions as a question to a diviner and in the process of MEmorialization it helps to situate the individual within the field of collective history.

Overall, the biggest things I took from these sections were the importance of mapping connections through the various discourses of life, the importance of recognizing one's place among the collective history, and then the different mode of reasoning which takes place in electracy, rather than literacy.  Electracy is all about capturing a mood through mapping connections that must happen by chance or by intuition.  Image category replaces logical category.  Concepts become concetto.  Fact becomes mood.

Questions for Ulmer:

1) You use a great deal of metaphor to explore electracy and many of the ideas in this book.  What is it about metaphor that makes it such a great vessel to explore and elaborate on your ideas?
2) What is it about pop culture that makes it so conducive to electrate thinking/reasoning?
3)  On pg 199, you mention the samba as a relay for the formation of image category based on mood.  If we are forming image categories based on mood, does this not limit the possibilities of classification (there are fewer "moods" than "concepts") or am I still thinking of mood from a literate perspective?