Invasive Species: Telecommunications Exponential Growth

Telecommunications, as Virilio points out in Open Sky, is a rapidly growing field. He argues that it will take over the most sacred and fundamental parts of our lives if we continue to let it expand at its current pace. Technological advances seem to be coming at an exponential rate. In a sense, telecommunications has been come like an invasive species- taking over in new places and difficult to keep in check.

Eye Lust
In Part III, Virilio begins his discussion with the advances that medicine is making in terms of "-scope" surgeries, surgeries that use a little camera to see inside the body without having to make an invasive cut and open the patient to many more potential risks. Doctors have a whole perspective on how they are viewing the body and how they can perform surgeries. This is also happening in the field of digital communications as the world's speed is increasing. There is a new global view that is being projected upon everyone. Cars have allowed us to move faster and thus view trees differently. As Virilio says, they are not stationary objects anymore with distinct leaves emerging from winding branches, but rather they are blurs of green that fly by on the side of the road.

Trees were a relatable example for me. When I was in third grade, I realized that I was having trouble reading the board in school. I'm sure you can guess what comes next. I needed glasses like everyone else who has that problem. It was a whole new world when I put those glasses on; everything was crisp and clear. There were clear boundaries that separated one object from the next. No longer was the table and chair one big amorphous blob, but rather it was a distinct dinner table from which the chair could be separated. Anyway, the trees had the biggest impact on me.

Before glasses they kind of looked like this:

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But afterwards I saw them as this:

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There were LEAVES. I had NO idea that everyone could actually see individual leaves. I just assumed they were blobs until you got close enough. My entire perspective changed due to technology that was able to fix my eyesight.

I believe this what Virilio is arguing. Our perspectives are changing yet again. Inventions such as IMAX offer a greater view of the world. But the world's daily pace is also much faster. So I ask, as the world progresses, will we miss more of the world because of the pace or will we see more the world because there is a medium for that? Virilio seems to think that our perspective will be manipulated and skewed if the changes are left unchecked. He thinks that ethics will be called into question. 

Cybersex

This was a section where I once again disagreed with the broad, vague claims that Virilio put out there. He seems to insinuate throughout this chapter that cybersex, or sexual encounters facilitated by digital media, will replace physical sexual encounters. I don't think that will ever be the case purely because that's how sex was designed to work. However, I would agree that digital media has opened up an entire new division of sexual opportunities. Therefore, his claims that sexual harassment complaints have increased would be valid. Also, others are using digital media in new ways to find sexual pleasure, so this market is definitely growing. However, I don't believe that "virtual pleasure" is a substitute for "real pleasure" or that "love experienced at a distance" will replace love experienced in proximity of one another. Is digital media challenging the previous ideas of sexual encounters and how so?

Escape Velocity

This chapter seemed to reiterate a lot of the same topics that Virilio had already brought up such as the law of proximity, the accident theory, etc. However, it focused more on the relationship of time and space than other chapters had. This abstract, philosophical embodiment of time is confusing for me since I still tend to view time as chronologically very linear. Virilio seems to suggest otherwise. I do agree that the space around has shrinking boundaries due to digital media yet expanding boundaries since so much more of the world is accessible.

Law of Proximity: A Little Closer to Your Non-Neighbor

I am a very science-minded person (since I am also a biology major), so this book, Open Sky, has been very interesting for me to read. In order to explain very philosophical concepts, Virilio uses concrete, tangible examples from science. This I am able to wrap my head around, more so than just trying to grasp abstract ideas. So as I was working through Part II of this book, I was able to start pulling examples from my own experiences to back up what Virilio was claiming.

Miniaturization
The first idea that Virilio introduced was this idea of miniaturization, that everything is consistently being reduced in size. Ultimately, he claims, we will be able to embed technology inside of our body that is small enough to navigate our smallest vessels. I, too, believe that this is true because medical technology is constantly advancing and is one of the problems that doctors have. They learn one new, innovative technique and then another better advance is made. 

Virilio says that miniaturization defines what he calls the Law of Proximity: less is more. This was the overarching theme of Part II. Technology innovation is constantly trying to reduce its material space. The example in Open Sky was moving from a messenger to a letter to an electronic impulse message. I also thought of cell phones that moved from thick telephone size to flip phones to thin, touch screens that fit easily into one's pocket. 

As the Law of Proximity is applied globally, Virilio points out that technology is insistent in reducing the geophysical space between people- think of Skype- and the time differences- think of live streaming capabilities. The boundaries of "here and there," "inside and outside," "high and low" are all being broken and downsized. What does this greater access to the world mean for society? Virilio claims that it has very negative consequences due to the "adoption of a sedentary life [which] become(s) final, absolute, since the functions traditionally distributed within the real space of the town are now exclusively taken over by the real time of the wiring of the human body." 

I beg to differ with this negativity, and maybe that is because I am simply an optimistic person. However, I still enjoy writing and receiving letters even when I have the disposal of the Internet at my hands. It holds a personal element that cannot be found simply through electronic text. Handwriting is an individual's unique mark, an identifying characteristic. I believe that the technological innovation of "the last 'territory'" is a positive thing. We can better understand ourselves, better take care of ourselves, but that by no means indicates that there is a tragedy occurring. We are just able to be closer to our "non-neighbors." 

Grey Ecology
In this chapter, Virilio introduces a need for scientists to explore more than direct ecological ties with the physical environment and to look at technological impacts on the people. This "grey" ecology would study that of the urban ecology. I definitely agree with him that this is a need of our scientific community. While we have looked at the effects of pollution (a consequence of technological innovation) and the "urban heat bubble," we have failed to explore exactly how breaking down temporal and spatial barriers is truly affecting a city's citizens. Science has focused on the objective and has lost a whole field of study in the subjective. Granted, there are the soft sciences such as sociology and psychology that help to quantify the qualitative, but they rarely look at the environment. Typically these areas focus on people. What kind of scientist would this new "grey ecologist" have to be? 

Virilio defines this overlooked area of study as one of relativity. 

"...[W]e cannot long completely go on ingrnoing the damage done by progress in an area ecologists have completely overlooked: the area of relativity, that is of a new relationship to the places and time distances created by the broadcasting revolution, with the recent implementation of the absolute speed of electromagnetic radiation."

This was definitely food for thought.  

World-City

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The world-city is an idea of all the cities worldwide reaching a point of such interconnectedness that they can be viewed as one city, ignoring the geo-physical space between them. This, says Virilio, is the metropolization that we should be concerned with rather than population numbers. Such concentration of an infosphere sets us up for an accident.


Until class the other day I did not truly understand what Virilio meant by implying an impending accident. But it was then described as the idea that we couldn't have had plane crashes without the invention of the plane. In the same way, we couldn't have information crashes without the creation of this infosphere. We most definitely have already had unintended accidents from this growing digital sphere: identification theft, cyberbullying, stalking, etc. But Virilio seems to think that the biggest one has yet to happen. I do agree with this pessimistic thought. As humans messing with finicky techonology, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Therefore, we do have a global information crash as a very real possibility in the future. This thought reminded me of the movie Live Free Or Die Hard, one of my all-time favorites. It talks of a fire sail: an attack in which communication, utilities, and power are all shut down. They are shut down through technology. While this portrays only an American accident, I believe that it could be applied worldwide. 

Teletopia: Focusing on a Technological World

Open Sky

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This week we started reading a new book, Open Sky, by Paul Virilio that focuses on mass media, how it is affecting our society, where it is coming from and where it is going. In order to accomplish this, Virilio takes an almost scientific philosophical approach to examining how technology is becoming an ever greater part of society. This book is a lot to wade through though I do believe that he presents many societal trends for new means of communication. On the other hand, I believe that sometimes he takes his claims of how technology will affect our future a bit too far. He makes wide, sweeping claims that are not nearly supported enough. 

Teletopia
The first major concept that Virilio brought up was "teletopia." From my understanding, I took this to be a world where the focus was around technology/telecommunications. Teletopia is a place where all of society focuses around growing communications technology and nothing else. Virilio presents our society as one trending towards "real time" which allows us to be both here and "there." He presents this as a reach across the globe. I view this as technological globalization because soon most people will have access to other countries fairly easily. At the end of chapter 1, Virilio makes a really big claim though that I don't necessarily agree with or see enough support to back it up. 

"At the end of the century, there will not be much left of the expanse of a planet that is not only polluted but also shrunk, reduced to nothing, by the teletechnologies of generalized interactivity." 

This I don't necessarily see as true. I think that the planet will be more interconnected as he points out, but are our future prospects for the state of our planet/society so grim? This claim just seems very negatively focused. I believe that interconnectivity will be a benefit for us because we can communicate more efficiently and quickly, but I do not believe that the world will be "polluted" per say. 

Real Time
I had a difficult time trying to define real time as Virilio intended it to be. So here is a list of working definitions that I came up with or inferred from the reading.
Real time:

• the immediate communication of information
• communication of the present or current happenings around the world
• a focus only on the here and now without perspective/context (without looking forward or backwards)

What definition best fits his intention for the word since he doesn't provide a clear, concise definition of what he means? Or does the word have an evolving definition as Virilio works through what it means for a world facing teletopia?

Being Sedentary
As I stated before, I believe that some of the claims made take trends too far. For example, Virilio pointed out that society was headed toward sedentariness where it is never necessary for one to get up and communicate and walk around. I don't believe activity will ever truly be abandoned. Technically I shouldn't have to get up now to talk to my roommates or go to class. I could text or call the roomies. Or I could Skype into class to hear the lecture. Yet, we still do physically go to class or speak directly to each other. There is something special about direct human interaction. The personal quality makes it important and necessary to our emotional development and maturity. Also, I cannot see giving up exercise even if my health was taken care of because it just makes me feel good. It releases those endorphins. 

The only example I could think of for the world that I feel like Virilio is portraying is that from Wall-E, the Pixar movie. In this scene, humans are featured as sedentary creatures who have totally trashed planet Earth and now live in space, never needing to leave their chairs. Just a bit extreme.

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Virilio does make a good point that a lot of what we do now does lead to sedentariness such as desk jobs or driving to work, which will soon be a technology due to the Google car. Therefore, I agree with his claim that technology will and does touch all aspects of our lives, but I don't think that it will control it.

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