In his article
Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!, originally published in 1995, in
Le Monde Diplomatique, Paul Virilio, an urbanist and militant, best known as the protagonist of “dromology”; the science of and study of speed, sees immediacy and instantaneity as presenting problems to contemporary society. He has many studies on the importance and place of speed, which has a nonstop and changing structure in history. The author divides this article into three parts: giving a general introduction to the issue, and two subtitles; “
A Fundamental Loss of Orientation” and “
Narco-Capitalism of the Wired World”, he warns public about not being so passive against the accelerated pace of technological progress in a globalized world.
Virilio complains about the velocity of
globalization and he claims that speed is the main source of threat. Today real time is superseding both real space and the geosphere. He asserts that the two physical barriers, heat and sound are altered by the new technological developments, but it is hard to cross the third barrier; light, and it is this barrier that confronts the history in the present day. When we have reached the light, geopolitics, geostrategy, also
democracy will be affected. Virilio states that we are doomed to experience a kind of global accident in an information bomb age and the site of the global accident would be the cyberspace.
Furthermore, Virilio claims that the construction of information superhighways causes a loss of orientation among people therefore this will cause a deep crisis which affects society, and hence democracy. He explains that we are deemed to live in a “one-time-system”, because the only thing effectively globalized by instantaneity is time. History has taken place within local times, local frames, local regions and nations so far, but now for the first time it will unfold in global time. Distances and surfaces are not relevant anymore. He suggests there is no need to separate the terms as “global” and “
glocal”, because together with the multimedia and cyberspace,
global time is dominating locality, so they are much more integrated now. Trying to attract our attention to the dangers of unlimited information and the fast progress of technology, he states that modern science is evolving into techno science and bringing many losses with it. He claims that no information exists without disinformation and now we are face to face with a new type of disinformation that has to do with some kind of choking of the senses and poses a major risk for humanity stemming from multimedia and computers. He predicts a generalized accident after the globalization of telecommunications and believes that globalization is a way of directing to tyranny with the potential of computer communication. Virilio concludes that a computer-communication narco-economy is building up fast and new communication techniques could be useful for democracy if we are critical, otherwise we are addicts to the game, nothing more.
Virilio`s article serves as a caution because there are many arguments in the article warning us on the perils of velocity of globalization but there are not much supporting examples to make them clear. Virilio presents the topics in a very fluent way due to his expertise in the area, but the weak point is the scarcity of empirical data. He is right in determining that heat barrier is penetrated by the rockets taking human beings outside the earth, and sound barrier also has been cut across by the super and hyper-sonic aircraft. But there is no possibility to slow the globalization process. He also does not accept the word “globalization”, but prefers “virtualization”, but while saying there is no such thing as globalization, he already accepts that it exists. Complaining that cyber-democracy is altering the virtual democracy now, he gives Berlusconi`s media coup of 1994 as an example of loss of orientation in politics, which confirms his determination. He claims that nothing is ever obtained without a loss of something else, but the benefits could also be more. There is no need to oppose the idea that the whole world is globalizing and information technology is growing faster. Virilio is right in giving the example of Pentagon in United States that is talking in terms of “revolution in the military” along with a “war of knowledge” might supersede the war of movement. Because he confirms that in 1961, as military-industrial complex was seen as a threat to democracy, by 1995 military-informational complex is taking shape among American leaders.
In sum, the whole article is a warning about the dangers of speed and information age that we live in and Virilio`s main suggestion is that we need to be critical against the process. It is possible to agree with him in this sense but also, there are many benefits of globalization process so there is no need to be so pessimistic about the situation.
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