Technique K
Neg
Ellul 1NC
The aff attempts to limit our social use of [____] technology to avoid
its negative effects—this focus on a single construct obscures the
larger picture of technological control and oppression—attempts to
limit specific technologies are undermined by the larger system of
technological thought and technique which adapts us to the tech
instead of adapting tech to us
ELLUL 1989 (Jacques, French sociologist and philosopher but not like totally mainstream like the other ones, What I Believe,
Trans. Bromiley, http://www.jesusradicals.com/wp-content/uploads/what.pdf)
Thus one of the great themes today is technological culture.
We are supposedly adding technological
knowledge to our humanist legacy. At least this is not an attempt to raise technology to the rank of a true culture, to
find in it a source of values, intelligence, a critical spirit, a universalism. A technological culture is in fact
impossible, for technology is the negation of culture. We find a similar desire to show that technology
becomes social inasmuch as it simplifies and amplifies social actions, or that it creates a new art. This is merely playing with words; there is
no substance to it. The art created by painters, sculptors, and musicians imitates what technology alone proposes and permits and has
People are
always talking about humanizing technology, but this talk has no effect whatever
on its development. All questioning of technology on basic grounds (e.g, by ecology and the ecological
movement in its early days) has either been ruthlessly dismissed or integrated into the
technological world. This world sometimes seems capable of producing a
counterforce, for in the period of transition from one environment to another susceptibilities have to be taken into account.
Thus we find the concern for human relations in the 1950s and the movement of technology assessment
today. But these simply serve to allay disquiet and thus to make development
easier.
The second result of the domination of this environment is that human beings have
to adapt to it and accept total change. At issue here is not just a slight modification or adaptation but
an essential transformation. A first aspect of this radical adaptation concerns the relation between human beings and
machines. If machines have to be perfectly adapted to us, the reverse is unavoidable.
We have to be exactly what is useful for machines, their perfect complement. Human
nothing in common with what has been produced as art, and called such up to about 1930, since Prehistoric times.2
life is no longer merely a matter of muscle and reflex. We now have to have our gadgets. We can see the mutation very clearly and decisively
The humanities are now disparaged. Traditional culture is valueless
relative to machines. At the beginning of the 20th century, and again in 1930, people in the industrial and commercial world
in the academic world.
began to ask what good such studies as history and Greek are. How can they help us to make money or to forge ahead economically?
Today we are putting much the same question, but in a new way: How do they
serve the technological world? How do they make us a proper complement for
machines? This is why there is such an incredible stress on information in our
schools. The important thing is to prepare young people to enter the world of
information, able to handle computers, but knowing only the reasoning, the
language, the combinations, and the connections between computers. This
movement is invading the whole intellectual domain and also that of conscience.
But this is not the only feature. Part of the human mutation is the appearance and
consecration of the human guinea pig in furtherance of science and technology.
Since science and technology are plainly dominant, we have to test their effects
and usefulness on people. Experiments are becoming ever more numerous and varied. I was horrified many years ago to
learn that in the United States, for scientific reasons (to study the evolution of the embryo), pregnant women were being paid to have an
abortion at a given stage, and we have gone much further than that today. Remedies, pharmaceutical products, are being tested on people
We are growing used to the
idea that people are simply guinea pigs upon whom it is quite legitimate to
conduct scientific experiments. "Humanity is our most precious resource" is a slogan
that has been taken up in many forms the last few years. But let us remember that if humanity is only a resource,
this implies that we may treat humanity as simply a factor in economic
production. Leases are taken out on resources. In the genetic field there seems to be no limit to what can be done (implants, testfor pay. There is experimentation in the field of what is everywhere called genetic makeup.
tube babies, surrogate mothers, etc.). The imagination has free rein. But genetic manipulation is designed to produce exactly the type of
people that we need. Much has been made of the book 1984, but what is in prospect is really Huxley's Brave New World. From birth
They are to be so perfectly adapted
physiologically that there will be no maladjustment, no revolt, no looking
elsewhere. The combination of genetic makeup and educational specialization
will make people adequate to fulfill their technological functions.
individuals are to be adapted specially to perform various services in society.
Beyond that, American experiments directly on the brain have shown that the implantation of minute electrodes (with the consent of the
subject) might induce specific impressions, desires, and pleasures, and effect obedience to orders no matter who gives them and with no
need for speech. At an experimental stage this has caused no scandal. But is it not apparent that this new form of intervention in human
nature will finally suppress human freedom altogether, will bring about complete obedience without choice, and will result in the perfect
The more perfect technology
becomes, the more refined and complex and subtle and swift its processes, the more human conduct has to
be perfect. We can no longer dream or forget or have other centers of interest. An
instrument panel in an automated factory is no place for the recalling of poetry.
The technological environment demands a radical transformation of humanity.
adaptation that technology needs? People will no longer be a hindrance to proper conduct.
Previously human adaptation followed the slow rhythm of evolution from generation to generation. Only over centuries did people become
social, political, and urban. No one decided for them that they had to follow this pattern. Today the technological environment is coming
Technology develops with ever increasing speed
upon us very quickly.
. In every sector and in all
directions the new environment is being formed explosively. Hence human adaptation to it cannot be extended over many centuries. We
have to adjust rapidly.
Examination of the last thirty years will be enough to demonstrate this incredible rapidity. Technology cannot wait, for it soon becomes
unusable. Everything has to be done in a single generation. Nor can the adaptation be spontaneous, following our physiological and
To move quickly, we have to move by act of will. We cannot wait for
progressive and cumulative adaptations. We have to create at once the kind of
people that machines demand. Human language has already been modified to
become that of the computer. Some numbers and letters have been modified so as to correspond exactly to the form
intellectual rhythm.
that the computer gives them. This is an almost unrecognizable occurrence, yet it is of major importance.
For a long time those who have been genetically manipulated so as to conform to
the technological model will be a small minority. Most people will still be at the social stage or even the
natural stage. What will be the relations between these groups? They will certainly not
understand one another. There will be no more in common between them than in the transition from the first to the
second stage there was between nomadic brigands and the first city merchants five thousand years ago. On the one hand there will
be a kind of aristocracy marked off by its total and infallible adaptation to
technical gadgets and the technological system, and on the other hand there will
be a vast number of people who are outdated, who cannot use the technology,
who are powerless, who are still at the social stage but who live in a technological
environment for which they are totally unadapted.
A problem arises, however.
In this respect I must make a final observation. When I talk about adaptation, readers might think that I mean adjustment to various minor
differences in environment. Thus people in hot countries adjust their clothes and habits and customs accordingly. But the changes of
environment that I have in mind demand a total and fundamental mutation, so that I am inclined to say that the Prehistoric people of the
natural environment had nothing in common with the historical people of the social environment, and that we are now witnessing a
mutation of the same order. We have only to think how alien the bushmen or aborigines of Australia were to all that the 19th century
regarded as human nature. By a change of environment what is regarded as human nature in one epoch is transformed and a new model of
humanity emerges. It might be argued that I am exaggerating and that the environment cannot have this impact on human nature. But that
argument is a mere hypothesis based on the conviction that there is such a thing as an inalienable and basically identical human nature. For
my part, I am not so sure. Furthermore, no one has ever been able to say clearly what this human nature really is.
Nevertheless, I have still to answer a question of my own. Why have I given this sketch of the development of three environments in a book
entitled What I Believe? It is true that at a first glance all that I have written here seems to have nothing to do with my fundamental beliefs,
with what is fundamentally existential for me. Yet at root what I have presented is not a scientific theory. I cannot prove the impact of the
environment or the relation of human beings to it. I do not pretend to be able to give strict answers to the many questions that. confront
anthropologists, ethnologists, and historians. I have put forward a simple hypothesis. But all hypotheses include a great deal of intuition
and belief. Conversely, all beliefs finally express themselves in hypotheses which will be more or less strict and more or less daring, but
which we have to take into account if we are to get the complete picture of an epoch. I would say in fact that this relation of human beings to
their environment and these changes of environment do form part of what I believe. And if some disappointed readers are tempted to say:
at issue here is evaluating the danger of
what might happen to our humanity in the present half-century, and distinguishing between
what we want to keep and what we are ready to lose, between what we can
welcome as legitimate human development and what we should reject with our
last ounce of strength as dehumanization. I cannot think that choices of this kind are unimportant. What I
believe with this theory of three environments has to do very definitely with the need to
formulate what kind of humanity we want and what kind we repudiate. The relevance of
"And is this all that Jacques Ellul believes?" I would reply that what is
this aspect of what I believe is by no means negligible.
This unexamined primacy of technique turns the case and causes
extinction—the aff helps assuage the symptoms of technological
society which makes the ultimate cause that much more dangerous
WILKINSON 1964 (John, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, forward to The Technological Society by
Jacques Ellul)
It should not be imagined, however, that the universal concentration camp which Ellus thinks
is coming into being in all technical societies without exception will be felt as
harsh or restrictive by its inmates. Hitler’s concentration camps of hobnailed boots were symptoms of a deficient political
technique. The denizen of the technological state of the future will have everything his
heart ever desired, except, of course, his freedom. Admittedly, modern man, forced by technique to become in reality and without
residue the imaginary producer-consumer of the classical economists, shows disconcertingly little regard for his lost freedom; but,
there are ominous signs that human spontaneity, which in the rational
and ordered technical society has no expression except madness, is only too
capable of outbreaks of irrational suicidal destructiveness.
according to Ellul,
The escape valves of modern literature and art, which technique has contrived, may or may not turn out to be adequate to the harmless
Technique, which can in principle only
oppose technical and quantitative solutions to technical problems, must, in such a case,
seek out other technical safety valves. It could, for example, convince men that they were happy and contented by
means of drugs, even though they were visibly suffering from the worst kind of spiritual and material privation. It is obvious that all
such ultimate technical measures must cause the last meager “idealistic” motifs
of the whole technical enterprise to disappear. Ellul does not specifically say so, but it seems that he must
hold that the technological society, like everything else, bears within itself the seeds of its own
destruction.
It must not be imagined that the autonomous technique envisioned by Ellul is a kind of
“technological determinism,” to use a phrase of Veblen. It may sometimes seem so, but only because all human
release of the pent-up “ecstatic” energies of the human being.
institutions, like the motions of all physical bodies, have a certain permanence, or vis inertiae, which makes it highly probably that the near
future of statistical aggregations will see them continue more or less in the path of the immediate past.
Things could have
eventuated in the technological society otherwise than they have.
Technique, to Ellul, is a “blind” force, but one which unfortunately seems to be more perspicacious than the best discernible human
intelligences.
There are other ways out, Ellul maintains, but nobody wants any part of them.
Ellul’s insistence that the technical phenomenon is not a determinism is not weakened by the enumeration (in the second chapter) of five
conditions which are said to be “necessary and sufficient” for its outburst in the recent past, since the sufficient conditions for the conditions
(for example, the causes of the population explosion) are not ascertainable.
inertia of the technical phenomenon guarantees not only the continued
refinement and production of relatively beneficial articles such as flush toilets and wonder drugs, but
also the emergence of those unpredictable secondary effects which are always the
result of ecological meddling and which today are of such magnitude and
acceleration that they can scarcely be reconciled with even semistable
equilibrium conditions of society. Nuclear explosions and population explosions
capture the public’s imagination; but I have argued that Ellul’s analysis demands that all indices of
modern technological culture are exploding, too, and are potentially just as
dangerous to the continued well-being of society, if by well-being we understand social equilibrium.
The
Voting negative is an assertion of freedom against the determinism of
technique—legal rights are just another technology we should refuse
in favor of radical individual freedom
ELLUL 1964 (Jacques, French sociologist and philosopher but not like totally mainstream like the other ones, The
Technological Society, trans John Wilkinson )
this must not lead the reader to say to himself: “All right, here is some information on the problem, and
other sociologists, economists, philosophers, and theologians will carry on the work, so I have
simply got to wait.” This will not do, for the challenge is not to scholars and
university professors, but to all of us. At stake is our very life, and we shall need all the energy,
But
inventiveness, imagination, goodness, and strength we can muster to triumph in our predicament. While waiting for the specialists to get on
each of us, in his own life, must seek ways of resisting and
transcending technological determinants. Each man must make this effort in every
area of life, in his profession and in his social, religious, and family relationships.
In my conception, freedom is not an immutable fact graven in nature and on the heart of man. It is not
inherent in man or in society, and it is meaningless to write it into law. The mathematical, physical,
with their work on behalf of society,
biological, sociological, and psychological sciences reveal nothing but necessities and determinisms on all sides. As a matter of fact, reality is
itself a combination of determinisms, and
freedom consists in overcoming and transcending these
determinisms. Freedom is completely without meaning unless it is related to necessity, unless it represents victory over necessity.
To say that freedom is graven in the nature of man, is to say that man is free because he obeys his nature, or, to put it another way, because
he is conditioned by his nature. This is nonsense. We must not think of the problem in terms of a choice between being determined and
man is indeed determined, but that it is open to
him to oversome necessity, and that this act is freedom. Freedom is not static but
dynamic; not a vested interest, but a prize continually to be won. The moment
man stops and resigns himself, he becomes subject to determinism. He is most
enslaved when he thinks he is comfortably settled in freedom.
In the modern world, the most dangerous form of determinism is the technological
phenomenon. It is not a question of getting rid of it, but, by an act of freedom, of
transcending it. How is this to be done? I do not yet know. That is why this book is an appeal to the individual’s sense of
responsibility. The first step in the quest, the first act of freedom, is to become aware of
the necessity. The very fact that man can see, measure, and analyze the determinisms that
press on him means that he can face them and, by so doing, act as a free man. If man
being free. We must look at it dialectically, and say that
were to say “These are not necessities; I am free because of technique, or despite technique,” this would prove that he is totally determined.
However,
by grasping the real nature of the technological phenomenon, and the
extent to which it is robbing him of freedom, he confronts the blind mechanisms
as a conscious being.
At the beginning of this foreword I stated that this book has a purpose. That purpose is to arouse the reader to an awareness of technological
necessity and what it means.
It is a call to the sleeper to awake.
Link - Generic
Focus on specific surveillance technologies forecloses an analysis of
the technological society as a whole – makes the absolute erosion of
privacy inevitable
Mitchener Nissen ’14 (Timothy Mitchener Nisser, Teaching Fellow in
Sociology of Technology @ ULondon, “Failure to collectively assess surveillanceoriented security technologies will inevitably lead to an absolute surveillance
society”, 2014, wcp)
5. How the individual assessment of SOSTs eventually abolishes privacy As stated
in the introduction, I posit that when assessing new SOSTs which impact upon
privacy, we need to do so by examining the combined effect of all such security
technologies currently employed within the society we are examining. Failing to
adopt this collective approach will inevitably lead to a society where surveillance
is absolute and privacy is extinguished. This argument is informed by the
preceding discussions on the nature of privacy and security, the act of balancing,
the pressure to produce new SOSTs, and the current individually-focused
assessment methodologies. By drawing together the various elements of these
discussions I justify my conclusions using the following arguments: Two
assumptions underlie my position. The first is that the assessment of whether
individual SOSTs are appropriate for deployment often entails a judgement of
whether any loss in privacy is legitimised by a justifiable increase in security;
representing the ubiquitous balancing metaphor. As discussed in detail earlier,
the concept of balancing is unavoidable as it pervades our political and legal
systems. It is also invaluable in that it forces decision makers to acknowledge the
presence and weight of rights concomitant to security, and opens up their
decision making processes to a measure of scrutiny. However, balancing is also
beset with flaws; it is arbitrary and subjective, lacking in meta-rules, and
purports to successfully compare objects (such as privacy and security) which
possess different intrinsic characteristics. Focusing and expanding upon this final
point, one of the fundamental differences between privacy and security is that
only one of them has two attainable end-states. Privacy (P) exists as a finite
resource on a quantifiable spectrum with two attainable end-states; that being
absolute privacy (P=1) at one end through to the absolute absence of privacy
(P=0) at the other. Whereas security (S) also exists as a finite resource but on a
quantifiable spectrum with only one attainable end-state; that being the absolute
absence of security (S=0). However, as discussed earlier, absolute security (S=1)
can never be achieved and therefore must exist as a desirable yet ultimately
unobtainable goal always equating to something less than 100 per cent (S=<1);
hence the absence of a second attainable end-state. The second assertion, which
follows from and builds upon the first, holds that one consequence of absolute
security being unobtainable yet desirable is that new SOSTs will
continuously be developed in a futile search for this unobtainable
goal. These technologies each potentially trade a small measure of privacy for a
small rise in security. This production process is driven by a variety of internal
and external sources beyond the conflicting internal characteristics of security
and privacy. These include; the nature of fear and risk, pressure by politicians
and police, the availability of funding, push by the security industry, and public
support for these technologies. These factors operate together to ensure a fertile
environment exists for the research and development processes of the security
industry to thrive. To be afforded legitimacy, ensure legal compliance, and to
minimise negative social responses, each new technology needs to be assessed
before deployment. Predominantly this entails use of the balancing metaphor.
Current assessment methodologies focus on the benefits and impacts of
the individual technology that is being proposed. When examined
individually, each of these surveillance technologies may legitimately
justify any related privacy/security trade-offs. Assuming the validity of
the first assertion regarding the different natures of security and privacy, this
second assertion holds that as more and more individually assessed
SOSTs are introduced to operate simultaneously within an environment in
the quest for ever greater security, privacy will ultimately be reduced to
zero. This is one of the unforeseen consequences of balancing security against
privacy when privacy is finite and absolute security is unobtainable. A potentially
infinite number of SOSTs can be developed, each producing a measure of
additional security while entailing the sacrifice of a commensurate measure of
privacy. Yet as absolute security will never be obtained, the motivation to produce
ever more technologies will remain. Meanwhile at some point the cumulative
sacrificing of privacy will reduce its quantum to zero despite the still
present security risk.
Technology users are complicit in technological production
Castells 14 – Wallis Annenberg Chair Professor of Communication Technology
and Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He is also
Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley; director
of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Open University of Catalonia
(UOC); director of the Network Society Chair at the Collège d’études mondiales in
Paris, and director of research in the Department of Sociology at the University of
Cambridge. He is académico numerario of the Spanish Royal Academy of
Economics and Finance, fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, fellow of the British Academy, and fellow of the Academia Europea
(Manuel, “The Impact of the Internet on Society: A Global Perspective,” BBVA
Open Mind, September 8th, 2014,
https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/article/the-impact-of-the-internet-onsociety-a-global-perspective/?fullscreen=true)BC
In order to fully understand the effects of the Internet on society, we should
remember that technology is material culture. It is produced in a social process in
a given institutional environment on the basis of the ideas, values, interests, and
knowledge of their producers, both their early producers and their subsequent
producers. In this process we must include the users of the technology, who
appropriate and adapt the technology rather than adopting it, and by so doing
they modify it and produce it in an endless process of interaction between
technological production and social use. So, to assess the relevance of Internet in
society we must recall the specific characteristics of Internet as a technology.
Then we must place it in the context of the transformation of the overall social
structure, as well as in relationship to the culture characteristic of this social
structure. Indeed, we live in a new social structure, the global network society,
characterized by the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy.
Modern surveillance constitutes an assemblage – An ever-evolving
apparatus of capture designed to observe and codify deviant flows –
Restrictions of a particular technology ignores the larger regimes of
bodily coding surrounding it
Haggerty and Ericson 2K Kevin D. Haggerty, Department of Sociology, University of
Alberta and Richard V. Ericson, Principal of Green College Professor of Law and Sociology,
University of British Columbia. “The surveillant assemblage”. Pgs. 609 – 614. PWoods.
Deleuze and Guattari introduce a radical notion of multiplicity into phenomena
which we traditionally approach as being discretely bounded, structured and
stable. ‘Assemblages’ consist of a ‘multiplicity of heterogeneous objects, whose
unity comes solely from the fact that these items function together, that they “work”
together as a functional entity’ (Patton 1994: 158). They comprise discrete flows of an essentially
limitless range of other phenomena such as people, signs, chemicals, knowledge
and institutions. To dig beneath the surface stability of any entity is to encounter a host of different phenomena
and processes working in concert. The radical nature of this vision becomes more apparent when one realizes how any
particular assemblage is itself composed of different discrete assemblages which are themselves multiple.
Assemblages, for Deleuze and Guattari, are part of the state form. However, this notion of
the state form should not be confused with those traditional apparatuses of
governmental rule studied by political scientists. Instead, the state form is
distinguished by virtue of its own characteristic set of operations; the tendency to
create bounded physical and cognitive spaces, and introduce processes designed
to capture flows. The state seeks to ‘striate the space over which it reigns’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 385), a
process which involves introducing breaks and divisions into otherwise free-flowing
phenomena. To do so requires the creation of both spaces of comparison where
flows can be rendered alike and centres of appropriation where these flows can be
captured. Flows exist prior to any particular assemblage, and are fixed temporarily and spatially by the assemblage. In
this distinction between flows and assemblages, Deleuze and Guattari also articulate a distinction between forces and
power. Forces consist of more primary and fluid phenomena, and it is from such phenomena that power derives as it
captures and striates such flows. These processes coalesce into systems of domination when otherwise fluid and mobile
states become fixed into more or less stable and asymmetrical arrangements which allow for some to direct or govern the
actions of others (Patton 1994: 161). The remainder of this paper documents attributes of the surveillant assemblage.
Some caution is needed, however, at this point. To
speak of the surveillant assemblage risks
fostering the impression that we are concerned with a stable entity with its own
fixed boundaries. In contrast, to the extent that the surveillant assemblage exists,
it does so as a potentiality, one that resides at the intersections of various media that can be connected for
diverse purposes. Such linkages can themselves be differentiated according to the degree to which they are ad hoc or
institutionalized. By accentuating the emergent and unstable characteristic of the surveillant assemblage we
also
draw attention to the limitations of traditional political strategies that seek to
confront the quantitative increase in surveillance. As it is multiple, unstable and
lacks discernible boundaries or responsible governmental departments, the
surveilant assemblage cannot be dismantled by prohibiting a particularly
unpalatable technology. Nor can it be attacked by focusing criticism on a single
bureaucracy or institution. In the face of multiple connections across myriad
technologies and practices, struggles against particular manifestations of
surveillance, as important as they might be, are akin to efforts to keep the ocean’s tide back
with a broom – a frantic focus on a particular unpalatable technology or practice
while the general tide of surveillance washes over us all. The surveillant assemblage
does not approach the body in the first instance as a single entity to be molded,
punished, or controlled. First it must be known, and to do so it is broken down
into a series of discrete signifying flows. Surveillance commences with the creation of a space of
comparison and the introduction of breaks in the flows that emanate from, or circulate within, the human body. For
example, drug
testing striates flows of chemicals, photography captures flows of
reflected lightwaves, and lie detectors align and compare assorted flows of
respiration, pulse and electricity. The body is itself, then, an assemblage
comprised of myriad component parts and processes which are broken-down for
purposes of observation. Patton (1994: 158) suggests that the concept of assemblage ‘may be regarded as no
more than an abstract conception of bodies of all kinds, one which does not discriminate between animate and inanimate
bodies, individual or collective bodies, biological or social bodies’. Likewise, the
surveillant assemblage
standardizes the capture of flesh/information flows of the human body. It is not so
much immediately concerned with the direct physical relocation of the human body (although this may be an ultimate
consequence), but with transforming the body into pure information, such that it can be rendered more mobile and
comparable. Such
processes are put into operation from a host of scattered centres of
calculation (Latour 1987) where ruptures are coordinated and toward which the
subsequent information is directed. Such centres of calculation can include
forensic laboratories, statistical institutions, police stations, financial institutions,
and corporate and military headquarters. In these sites the information derived from flows of the
surveillant assemblage are reassembled and scrutinized in the hope of developing strategies of governance, commerce and
control. For Orwell, surveillance
was a means to maintain a form of hierarchical social
control. Foucault proposed that panoptic surveillance targeted the soul, disciplining the masses
into a form of self-monitoring that was in harmony with the requirements of the
developing factory system. However, Bauman (1992: 51) argues that panopticism in contemporary society has
been reduced in importance as a mechanism of social inte- gration. Instead of being subject to disciplinary surveillance or
simple repression, the population is increasingly constituted as consumers and seduced into the market economy. While
surveillance is used to construct and monitor consumption patterns, such efforts
usually lack the normalized soul training which is so characteristic of
panopticism. Instead, monitoring for market consumption is more concerned with attempts to limit access to places
and information, or to allow for the production of consumer profiles through the ex post facto reconstructions of a
person’s behaviour, habits and actions. In those situations where individuals
monitor their behaviour
in light of the thresholds established by such surveillance systems, they are often
involved in efforts to maintain or augment various social perks such as
preferential credit ratings, computer services, or rapid movement through
customs. Foucault’s larger body of work displays an appreciation for the multiple uses and targets of surveillance.
Most discussions of surveilance fixate on his analysis of the panopticon, with its individualized disciplinary form of bodily
scrutiny. However, Foucault also analysed aggregate forms of surveillance. Institutions are involved in the production and
distribution of knowledge about diverse populations for the purpose of managing their behaviour from a distance
(Foucault 1991). In this way, surveillance also serves as a vital component of positive population management strategies.
Technology mutates humanity, not the other way around – obsession
with technological solutions like the aff triggers oppression, the
erasure of culture, and dehumanization
Ellul, ’89 (Jacques, French sociologist and philosopher, What I Believe, Trans.
Bromiley, http://www.jesusradicals.com/wp-content/uploads/what.pdf) //GY
Thus one of the great themes today is technological culture. We are supposedly
adding technological knowledge to our humanist legacy. At least this is not an
attempt to raise technology to the rank of a true culture, to find in it a source of
values, intelligence, a critical spirit, a universalism. A technological culture is in
fact impossible, for technology is the negation of culture. We find a similar desire
to show that technology becomes social inasmuch as it simplifies and amplifies
social actions, or that it creates a new art. This is merely playing with words;
there is no substance to it. The art created by painters, sculptors, and musicians
imitates what technology alone proposes and permits and has nothing in
common with what has been produced as art, and called such up to about 1930,
since Prehistoric times.2 People are always talking about humanizing technology,
but this talk has no effect whatever on its development. All questioning of
technology on basic grounds (e.g, by ecology and the ecological movement in its
early days) has either been ruthlessly dismissed or integrated into the
technological world. This world sometimes seems capable of producing a
counterforce, for in the period of transition from one environment to another
susceptibilities have to be taken into account. Thus we find the concern for
human relations in the 1950s and the movement of technology assessment today.
But these simply serve to allay disquiet and thus to make development easier.
The second result of the domination of this environment is that human beings
have to adapt to it and accept total change. At issue here is not just a slight
modification or adaptation but an essential transformation. A first aspect of this
radical adaptation concerns the relation between human beings and machines. If
machines have to be perfectly adapted to us, the reverse is unavoidable. We have
to be exactly what is useful for machines, their perfect complement. Human life is
no longer merely a matter of muscle and reflex. We now have to have our gadgets.
We can see the mutation very clearly and decisively in the academic world. The
humanities are now disparaged. Traditional culture is valueless relative to
machines. At the beginning of the 20th century, and again in 1930, people in the
industrial and commercial world began to ask what good such studies as history
and Greek are. How can they help us to make money or to forge ahead
economically? Today we are putting much the same question, but in a new way:
How do they serve the technological world? How do they make us a proper
complement for machines? This is why there is such an incredible stress on
information in our schools. The important thing is to prepare young people to
enter the world of information, able to handle computers, but knowing only the
reasoning, the language, the combinations, and the connections between
computers. This movement is invading the whole intellectual domain and also
that of conscience.
But this is not the only feature. Part of the human mutation is the appearance and
consecration of the human guinea pig in furtherance of science and technology.
Since science and technology are plainly dominant, we have to test their effects
and usefulness on people. Experiments are becoming ever more numerous and
varied. I was horrified many years ago to learn that in the United States, for
scientific reasons (to study the evolution of the embryo), pregnant women were
being paid to have an abortion at a given stage, and we have gone much further
than that today. Remedies, pharmaceutical products, are being tested on people
for pay. There is experimentation in the field of what is everywhere called genetic
makeup. We are growing used to the idea that people are simply guinea pigs upon
whom it is quite legitimate to conduct scientific experiments. "Humanity is our
most precious resource" is a slogan that has been taken up in many forms the last
few years. But let us remember that if humanity is only a resource, this implies
that we may treat humanity as simply a factor in economic production. Leases are
taken out on resources. In the genetic field there seems to be no limit to what can
be done (implants, test-tube babies, surrogate mothers, etc.). The imagination
has free rein. But genetic manipulation is designed to produce exactly the type of
people that we need. Much has been made of the book 1984, but what is in
prospect is really Huxley's Brave New World. From birth individuals are to be
adapted specially to perform various services in society. They are to be so
perfectly adapted physiologically that there will be no maladjustment, no revolt,
no looking elsewhere. The combination of genetic makeup and educational
specialization will make people adequate to fulfill their technological functions.
Beyond that, American experiments directly on the brain have shown that the
implantation of minute electrodes (with the consent of the subject) might induce
specific impressions, desires, and pleasures, and effect obedience to orders no
matter who gives them and with no need for speech. At an experimental stage
this has caused no scandal. But is it not apparent that this new form of
intervention in human nature will finally suppress human freedom altogether,
will bring about complete obedience without choice, and will result in the perfect
adaptation that technology needs? People will no longer be a hindrance to proper
conduct. The more perfect technology becomes, the more refined and complex
and subtle and swift its processes, the more human conduct has to be perfect. We
can no longer dream or forget or have other centers of interest. An instrument
panel in an automated factory is no place for the recalling of poetry. The
technological environment demands a radical transformation of humanity.
Previously human adaptation followed the slow rhythm of evolution from
generation to generation. Only over centuries did people become social, political,
and urban. No one decided for them that they had to follow this pattern. Today
the technological environment is coming upon us very quickly. Technology
develops with ever increasing speed. In every sector and in all directions the new
environment is being formed explosively. Hence human adaptation to it cannot
be extended over many centuries. We have to adjust rapidly.
Examination of the last thirty years will be enough to demonstrate this incredible
rapidity. Technology cannot wait, for it soon becomes unusable. Everything has
to be done in a single generation. Nor can the adaptation be spontaneous,
following our physiological and intellectual rhythm. To move quickly, we have to
move by act of will. We cannot wait for progressive and cumulative adaptations.
We have to create at once the kind of people that machines demand. Human
language has already been modified to become that of the computer. Some
numbers and letters have been modified so as to correspond exactly to the form
that the computer gives them. This is an almost unrecognizable occurrence, yet it
is of major importance.
A problem arises, however. For a long time those who have been genetically
manipulated so as to conform to the technological model will be a small minority.
Most people will still be at the social stage or even the natural stage. What will be
the relations between these groups? They will certainly not understand one
another. There will be no more in common between them than in the transition
from the first to the second stage there was between nomadic brigands and the
first city merchants five thousand years ago. On the one hand there will be a kind
of aristocracy marked off by its total and infallible adaptation to technical gadgets
and the technological system, and on the other hand there will be a vast number
of people who are outdated, who cannot use the technology, who are powerless,
who are still at the social stage but who live in a technological environment for
which they are totally unadapted.
In this respect I must make a final observation. When I talk about adaptation,
readers might think that I mean adjustment to various minor differences in
environment. Thus people in hot countries adjust their clothes and habits and
customs accordingly. But the changes of environment that I have in mind
demand a total and fundamental mutation, so that I am inclined to say that the
Prehistoric people of the natural environment had nothing in common with the
historical people of the social environment, and that we are now witnessing a
mutation of the same order. We have only to think how alien the bushmen or
aborigines of Australia were to all that the 19th century regarded as human
nature. By a change of environment what is regarded as human nature in one
epoch is transformed and a new model of humanity emerges. It might be argued
that I am exaggerating and that the environment cannot have this impact on
human nature. But that argument is a mere hypothesis based on the conviction
that there is such a thing as an inalienable and basically identical human nature.
For my part, I am not so sure. Furthermore, no one has ever been able to say
clearly what this human nature really is.
Nevertheless, I have still to answer a question of my own. Why have I given this
sketch of the development of three environments in a book entitled What I
Believe? It is true that at a first glance all that I have written here seems to have
nothing to do with my fundamental beliefs, with what is fundamentally
existential for me. Yet at root what I have presented is not a scientific theory. I
cannot prove the impact of the environment or the relation of human beings to it.
I do not pretend to be able to give strict answers to the many questions that.
confront anthropologists, ethnologists, and historians. I have put forward a
simple hypothesis. But all hypotheses include a great deal of intuition and belief.
Conversely, all beliefs finally express themselves in hypotheses which will be
more or less strict and more or less daring, but which we have to take into
account if we are to get the complete picture of an epoch. I would say in fact that
this relation of human beings to their environment and these changes of
environment do form part of what I believe. And if some disappointed readers are
tempted to say: "And is this all that Jacques Ellul believes?" I would reply that
what is at issue here is evaluating the danger of what might happen to our
humanity in the present half-century, and distinguishing between what we want
to keep and what we are ready to lose, between what we can welcome as
legitimate human development and what we should reject with our last ounce of
strength as dehumanization. I cannot think that choices of this kind are
unimportant. What I believe with this theory of three environments has to do
very definitely with the need to formulate what kind of humanity we want and
what kind we repudiate. The relevance of this aspect of what I believe is by no
means negligible.
Technology is a reflection of our desire to have power over and
control everything – their perception of it as a neutral object is wrong
Robins & Webster, ’99 (Kevin Robins, Frank Webster – professor at the
University of Glasgow, Head of the Department of Sociology at City University
London “Times of the Technoculture: From the Information Society to the Virtual
Life” Psychology Press, 1999, https://books.google.com/books?id=6EHkovxxzcC&source=gbs_navlinks_s) //GY
We think that society has been seduced by ‘a collective fantasy of technological
power’, such that ‘whatever the question, technology has typically been the everready… answer’. Technology has become second nature, a given and
unquestionable part of the order of things. Such is the standing of technology
that ‘there is an appearance of arrogance when one attempts a moral examination
of the technological enterprise’. Technology contains the ‘promise of liberation
and enrichment, and to refuse the promise would be to choose confinement,
misery, and poverty… technology has the tendency to disappear from the
occasion of decision by insinuating itself as the basis of the occasion’. Technology
has become both means and ends, the instrument of progress but also its
fulfillment. As Langdon Winner observes, ‘in our times people are often willing
to make drastic changes in the way they live to accommodate technological
innovation while at the same time resisting similar kinds of changes justified on
political grounds’. Technology has become the myth of our times. Modern
society is fixated by the idea of progress, growth and development without end,
and by the power of instrumental reason to achieve this dream. The ‘hidden
motor’ of this technological development is, according to Cornelius Castoriadis,
the idea of ‘total mastery’, ‘the fantasy of total control, of our will or desire for
mastering all objects and all circumstance’. The fundamental myth of our time is
that of control, omnipotence, domination, and its power lies in the fact that it
appears to be a purely neutral phenomenon, an expression of reason and
rationality that is incontestable. This, argues Castoriadis, is the myth which,
more even than money or weapons, constitutes the most formidable obstacle in
the way of any reconstruction of human society. The culture of technology is one
of normalized and routinized control. ‘The delusion that underlies the present
system’, argued Christopher Lasch, ‘the delusion that we can make ourselves
lords of the universe… is the heart and soul of modern technology’. What it
represents, according to Arnold Gehlen, is a separation of the intellectual from
the moral impulses of Enlightenment rationality, a separation in which the latter
‘are now reduced to the unhappy role of seeking in vain to hold back the advance
of the efficient, the functional, the technologically possible’. As Leo Marx
reminds us, “The initial Enlightenment belief in progress perceived science and
technology to be in the service of liberation from political oppression. Over time
that conception was transformed… by the now familiar view that innovations in
science-based technologies are in themselves a sufficient and reliable basis for
progress.”
Technology is not neutral – it is the drive to control and coerce
Robins & Webster, ’99 (Kevin Robins, Frank Webster – professor at the
University of Glasgow, Head of the Department of Sociology at City University
London “Times of the Technoculture: From the Information Society to the Virtual
Life” Psychology Press, 1999, https://books.google.com/books?id=6EHkovxxzcC&source=gbs_navlinks_s) //GY
In our society technique has become central both to our relationship to the
external world and to our self-image. ‘This is what is happening today’, writes
Arnold Gehlen, ‘when for instance we look at cybernetics, to the theory of
techniques of regulation, for clues to the working of our own brains and nervous
systems’. At the heart of technique is the drive to control both external and
internal worlds. The tendency towards control and domination is not, then,
external to the technological project. It is not the abuse or misuse of a
fundamentally neutral, and even benign, technological system. Rather, it is a
constitutive and integral factor. In our view the clearest expression of this will to
power is to be found in military technologies. Its most refined expression comes
in the form of nuclear weapons. These, argues Joel Kovel, are ‘not just an
aberration but the logical result of an entire attitude toward the world’. Military
technologies are the most perfected expressions of the compulsion to command
and control. Yet, within social theory, the military tends to be treated as an
exceptional and atypical variant of the technological project: ‘neither the
expanded role of surveillance, nor the altered nature of military power with the
development of the means of waging war have been made central formulations of
social theory’. ‘The impact of war in the twentieth century’, Anthony Giddens
continues, ‘upon generalized patterns of change has been so profound that it is
little short of absurd to interpret such patterns without systematic reference to it’.
We want to argue that military developments are central, rather than marginal, to
the technological project. As the purest expressions of ‘rational’ command and
control, military technologies are axial to our understanding of broader relations
of control and coercion.
Surveillance technology is a weapon used to construct threats –
violence is used to protect ‘national interests’
Robins & Webster, ’99 (Kevin Robins, Frank Webster – professor at the
University of Glasgow, Head of the Department of Sociology at City University
London “Times of the Technoculture: From the Information Society to the Virtual
Life” Psychology Press, 1999, https://books.google.com/books?id=6EHkovxxzcC&source=gbs_navlinks_s) //GY
The modern state, Joel Kovel argues, operates through surveillance: “The
technocrat peers out of his tower, sends killer-satellites into orbit, arms his CIA,
monitors the Other, and waits to get before he is gotten’. The state today is, he
maintains, ‘characterised by the emergence of the technology of surveillance…
Computerised electronic surveillance has ushered in a whole new phase of
domination’. Surveillance and intelligence procedures become increasingly
central to the state, and it is in military command and control activities that this
has found its purest expression. As we have said, information is crucial to
military and control agencies. There is an insatiable hunger for data,
information, knowledge and intelligence about any factors affecting ‘national’
interests. The consequence has been the construction of a massive system of
interlinked technologies to routinely and continuously monitor and inspect
events and activites – military and civilian – around the globe. Thus, the
United States National Security Agency (NSA), which employs some
70,000 persons, monitors communications signals throughout the world. It
achieves this through an extensive grid of listening and watching posts, and
through ‘what are believed to be the largest and most advanced computers now
available to any bureaucracy on earth’. On this side of the Atlantic, Britain’s
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham has some
5,000 staff and close links with the NSA. Alongside computers, satellites have
become a linchpin of surveillance activities. According to two commentators, it is
getting to the point where the military ‘would be struck deaf, dumb, and blind
should their satellites be destroyed’. Necessarily these systems are hidden from
public view, secrecy being essential to ensure security from the enemy. Thus is
constructed an anonymous and unexaminable, national and world-wide, web of
surveillance and transmission of messages between defence agencies. As William
E. Burrows observed: “the system that does all of this watching and listening is so
pervasively secret – so black – that no individual… knows all of its hidden parts,
the products they collect, or the real extent of the widely dispersed and deeply
buried budget that keeps the entire operation functioning.” The security
services assume themselves to be continually under attack from
enemies and malcontents. Constantly wary of the spy, they come easily to be
pervaded by suspicion and fear of disclosure, characteristics which reinforce their
impenetrability, distance them from public accountability, and serve to corrode
democratic values and open government.
Link - Law
The abstract rationality of the law excludes any political discourse
that challenges its technological foundations
Bora ’10 (Alfons Bora, Professor of Sociology @ UBielefeld, “Technoscientific
Normativity and the ‘Iron Cage’ of Law”, January 2010, Sage, wcp)
Exclusion of Politics and the “Iron Cage” of Law Technoscientific normativity has
strong political effects. GMOs are— according to a particular scientific
perspective—constituted as harmless objects under certain conditions. Thus, they
are removed from legal political discourse. They cannot be treated as risky or
potentially harmful objects in this context, because law and science have
prestructured the field of argumentation. In this way, technoscientific
normativity creates strong barriers for many forms of discourse,
particularly for political communication about the objects and discourses in
question. The “apolitical” vacuum can be political only in a meta-sense, on this
argument—thus the comparison to Kafka. Although one could argue that the
triangle law-science-politics creates asymmetries, whenever two of the three
discourses are coupled, nevertheless only one of the constellations creates a
real dilemma. To demonstrate this point, I briefly review the possible
constellations. A. Law and politics exclude science, which could be the case in
legal policy, in the organization of justice (e.g., the court system), and in legal
advice to political institutions. Such forms of exclusion of science occur regularly.
Nevertheless, they will usually not cause difficulties with respect to participatory
governance. They will not be observed as cases of relevant exclusion, because
science will be included wherever factual issues (cognitive knowledge) become
relevant for the communication. B. Science and politics exclude the law, which
could be the case in science policy and scientific advice in policy making. Such
exclusion of legal discourse is possible and common. However, the general
coupling of political institutions (state) with the legal system—for instance via the
national or EU constitutions in the continental system—compensates for it.
Moreover, it is rarely relevant in case-related decision-making procedures.
Finally, it will not cause difficulties with participatory governance. C. In the third
case, however, our constellation typically fosters conflict. Law and science
exclude politics. Because of the constitutive role of facts and truth on both
sides, they build a particularly strong coupling. Both speak about truth, even if
they do so in a quite opposite direction, as for instance Latour (2002, 242) shows.
In the case of participatory decision-making, science is performing the role
of a servant to the law. It helps to close the factual debate by providing
normatively interpretable facts. Politics is thereby excluded by predetermined
concepts of risk, nature, citizen, public, and so on. This constellation is especially
relevant in case-related decision making. Here, legal discourse is dealing with the
application of norms. For this purpose, it collaborates with science to fix the
relevant facts and thereby also stabilizes normative expectations. In the
course of this collaboration, all attempts to introduce norm-building immediately
draw attention to the law’s blind spot and are therefore rejected in the course of
structure maintenance operations. The exclusion of politics only works if
and only if the situation as a whole is defined by legal discourse. This
condition is fulfilled in all cases of legal administrative decision making (Bora
1999). Such situations may be regarded as examples of what Max Weber (1922)
called the “iron cage” of law. On one hand, Weber, who understood social theory
as a theory of rationalization, painted a rather optimistic picture of modem
society. On the other hand, he was highly sensitive toward the dark side of
modem rationality, particularly the rationality of formal law. In Wirtschaft und
Gesellschaft (p. 835), he very clearly argued that bureaucratic organization in
cooperation with “dead” (i.e., technological) machinery produces the iron
cage, in which human beings are forced, when a rational administrative
bureaucracy is the only value governing their affairs. With the notion of
bureaucratic administration, Weber points at the rationality of formal law (p.
503-13) in collaboration with material culture, especially with modern
technology. Against this background, the “iron cage” is a metaphor for the
irrational effects of rationality in general and of formal legal rationality in
particular. Weber, who was primarily engaged in a sociological theory of societal
rationalization (particularly in his sociology of law) did not systematically treat
these irrational effects. Newer theoretical approaches, however, do allow for a
closer view of the ambivalence of rationalization. Deconstructivist and systems
theoretical perspectives focus on the blind spots of communication systems on
the “dark side” of the binary distinctions that are used in societal communication.
In this essay, I have—mainly implicitly—made use of systems theory. However,
irrespective of the particular starting point, Weber, deconstructivism, and
systems theory, each address the consequences of functional differentiation in
modem society namely—in Weber’s terms—the impossibility of a single
Wertsphare (value sphere) or—in Luhmann’s terms—of a functional system to
completely observe and describe the unity of its system-environment
differentiation. If one accepts such a differentiation-theoretical approach, one
can summarize the current analysis as follows: given an elaborated legal
framework, participatory decision making on scientific and technological issues
tends to evoke a collusive coupling between law and science that
excludes political discourses, insofar as they threaten the blind spot of legal
discourse. Structure maintenance operations under these conditions
stabilize technoscientific normativity. From this theoretical perspective, it
is not necessary to introduce irrational mechanisms in the theoretical
explanation, no pathology, and no deficit of whatever kind. All operations
observed in the field are precisely rational with respect to their respective realm:
law, science, and politics. Under given conditions, they drift into a “differend”
(Lyotard 1988) that thwarts the political intentions of democratizing expertise
connected with participatory science and technology governance. This might well
be called irrational in its effects.
Link - Internet
The Western spread of free Internet is a coercive power that
eliminates cultural difference
Albirini, ’08 (Abdulkafi Albirini, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
USA, Associate Professor of Linguistics and Arabic, “The Internet in developing
countries: A medium of economic, cultural and political domination” ¶
International Journal of Education and Development using ICT, Vol. 4, No. 1,
2008, http://ijedict.dec.uwi.edu/viewarticle.php?id=360&layout=html) //GY
As the above overview demonstrates, the spread of the Internet in developing
countries has been neither economically productive nor socio-politically relevant.
From an economic perspective, the introduction of ICT into many developing
countries has put more strain over their economies in terms of outflow of foreign
exchange and job creation. In addition, the Internet has been characterized by its
cultural and language bias as well as its uneven distribution and representation
among different communities. Given its predominantly Western design and
content, the Internet facilitates the proliferation of Western cultural patterns at
the expense of the social experiences of the local cultures.¶ Politically speaking,
the Internet has reinforced the current political divisions worldwide and locally
in developing countries. On a global level, the internet has allowed the politically
dominant powers to track different nonconformist groups beyond national
borders. On a local level, the Internet has been used primarily as a propaganda
channel to augment the political power of many Third World governments.
Contrastingly, the various constraints on Internet usage seem to curtail the
populace’s political participation opportunities in cyberspace and further alienate
them from important decisions, political or otherwise, that have direct impact on
their daily lives. Thus, instead of being a tool for free circulation of information,
the Internet has become another tool of political domination.¶ The main challenge
for progressive developing countries is less about how to bridge the “digital gap”
with technologically advanced countries, and more about how the Internet and
other network technologies contribute to enhancing development. Therefore,
before increasing the number of Internet hosts or users, policy-makers in
developing countries should consider how the new media can fit within and serve
the development goals. It should be remembered that network technologies may
not necessarily bring about economic advantages to developing countries similar
to those attained by industrialized societies. As Ingelhart and Baker (2000, p.22)
note, different societies follow different development paths, even when they
implement the same strategies of economic growth because situation-specific
factors shape how a particular society develops. This means that developing
countries need to create their own models of development and find some formula
to put network technologies in service of their own needs, purposes and
circumstances.¶ To put the new technologies in service of their economies,
development-oriented governments should devise plans about the possible
applications and benefits of the Internet within their local settings (e.g.,
encouraging independent e-firms to appear, improving social welfare by
providing a means for the transfer of knowledge to rural areas, improving health
care delivery through telemedicine, facilitating citizen-state affairs, etc.).
Internet-driven development initiatives should initially focus less on individual
access to the Internet and more on creating business and commerce
opportunities through the Internet. For example, policy-makers can initiate
national intranets that allow local e-markets to emerge, using local resources,
technical expertise, and languages. Such national portals may provide incentives
for local businesses to avail the new media, and simultaneously facilitate the
growth of small e-firms away from the global corporate competition. Countryspecific regulations can then be implemented to link these national portals to the
global Internet.¶ Internet initiatives in developing countries should include a
cultural component that focus on ways of protecting the local cultures without
necessarily blocking non-harmful “alien” material. Moreover, developing
countries need to develop Internet hardware, software, and content that are
congruent with the local identity, values, and customs. Part of the funds spent on
importing foreign technologies should be allocated for the creation of Internet
applications that are pertinent to the local population. It is widely accepted that a
prerequisite for transferring any new technology is its “cultural suitability,” that
is, how well the proposed innovation fits within the importing culture (see
Thomas, 1987). The transfer of ready-made products and content into developing
countries irrespective of the notable differences in cultural context, history,
tradition, needs, and infrastructure may prove culturally “inauthentic” (Freire,
1992, p. 121). Even if developing countries are not technically capable of
producing local technologies, they should at least be culturally prepared to
indigenize these tools.¶ Lastly, since the political problems of the developing
societies are not related to information shortage, access to the online information
may not by itself bring favorable democratic changes to these societies. Third
World populations have to go beyond online information-sharing and create the
physical conditions that make the transition toward political reform possible. In
other words, online political communication should not be an end in itself but
rather a means toward attaining some real-life political gains.
Link – Commercialization
The idea of commercial development and production reflects the
dominance of technique – their belief in the improvement of
technologies guarantees failure and turns case
Winner, ’89 (Prof of Poli Sci at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, The Whale and
the Reactor)
Papanek and Hennessey's guiding maxim-"Let's invent a different answer"echoes a familiar apothegm usually attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson
(although it is not certain that he said exactly these words): "If a man can write a
better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his
neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods the world will make a path to
his door." 30 This is, ofcourse, the traditional American notion about how
inventions change the world. A good idea or improved tool is bound to catch on.
In fact, as Emerson evidently wished to say, if one's scheme is attractive enough,
there will be no stopping it. Ingenuity creates its own demand.
As scholars Arthur Bestor and Dolores Hayden have observed, nineteenthcentury American utopians held much the same conviction about how their
experiments might eventually transform society. The utopians believed their
technical inventions and social innovations would have a strong appeal to an age
undergoing rapid change. Communities such as those at New Harmony and
Oneida saw themselves perfecting what Bestor calls "patent office models" of the
good life. 31 In the same way that ordinary people would eagerly accept new
improvements in farm machinery if a convincing demonstration were given
them, so would they be willing to embrace the principles and devices of utopia if a
successful working model could be built and maintained somewhere in the world.
Insofar as they had a coherent idea ofhow their labors would change the world,
the appropriate technologists usually entertained the better mousetrap theory. A
person would build a solar house or put up a windmill, not only because he or she
found it personally agreeable, but because the thing was to serve as a beacon to
the world, a demonstration model to inspire emulation. If enough folks built for
renewable energy, so it was assumed, there would be no need for the nation to
construct a system ofnuclear power plants. People would, in effect, vote on the
shape of the future through their consumer/builder choices. This notion of social
change provided the underlying rationale for the amazing emphasis on do-ityourself manuals, catalogues, demonstration sites, information sharing, and
"networking" that characterized appropriate technology during its heyday. Once
people discovered what was available to them, they would send away for the
blueprints and build the better mousetrap themselves. As successful grass-roots
efforts spread, those involved in similar projects were expected to stay in touch
with each other and begin forming little communities, slowly reshaping society
through a growing aggregation of small-scale social and technical
transformations. Radical social change would catch on like disposable diapers,
Cuisinarts, or some other popular consumer item. 32
The inadequacies of such ideas are obvious. Appropriate technologists were
unwilling to face squarely the facts of organized social and political power.
Fascinated by dreams of a spontaneous, grass-roots revolution, they avoided any
deep-seeking analysis of the institutions that control the direction of
technological and economic development. In this happy self-confidence they did
not bother to devise strategies that might have helped them overcome obvious
sources of resistance. The same judgment that Marx and Engels passed on the
utopians of the nineteenth century apply just as well to the appropriate
technologists of the 1970s: they were lovely visionaries, naive about the forces
that confronted them. 33
Far and away the most grievous weakness in their vision, however, was the lack of
any serious attention to the history of modern technology. Presumably, if the idea
of appropriate technology makes sense, one ought to be able to discover points at
which developments in a given field took an unfortunate turn, points at which the
choices produced an undesirable instrumental regime. One could, for example,
survey the range of discoveries, inventions, industries, and large-scale systems
that have arisen during the past century and notice which paths in modern
technology have been selected. One might then attempt to answer such questions
as, Why did developments proceed as they did? Were there any real alternatives?
Why weren't those alternatives selected at the time? How could any such
alternatives be reclaimed now? In some of their investigations in agriculture and
energy, appropriate technologists began to ask such questions.
But by and large most of those active in the field were willing to proceed as if
history and existing institutional technical realities simply did not matter. That
proved to be a serious shortcoming. It meant that many of their projects were
irrelevant to the technical practices they hoped to challenge.
Link - Econ
Promotion of economic competitiveness organizes life for
authoritarian control and dehumanization
Winner, ’89 (Prof of Poli Sci at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, The Whale and
the Reactor)
According to this view, everything one might desire ofthe relationship between
expanding industrial technology and the building of a good society will happen
automatically. All that is necessary is to make sure the machinery is up to date,
well maintained, and well oiled. The only truly urgent questions that remain are
ones of technical and economic efficiency. For unless a society keeps pace with
the most efficient means available anywhere in the world, it will lag behind its
competitors, a precondition of cultural decline.¶ A fascination with efficiency is a
venerable tradition in American life. It is announced early on, for example, in
Benjamin Franklin's maxims that economizing on time, effort, and money is a
virtue. With the advance of industrialism in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, this concern grew to something of an obsession among the
well-educated in the United States. Understood to be a criterion applicable to
personal and social life as well as to mechanical and economic systems, efficiency
was upheld as a goal supremely valuable in its own right, one strongly linked to
the progress of science, the growth of industry, the rise ofprofessionalism, and
the conservation ofnatural resources. During the Progressive Era the rule of
efficient, well-trained professionals was upheld as a way ofsanitizing government
of the corruption of party machines and eliminating the influence of selfish
interest groups. An eagerness to define important public issues as questions of
efficiency has continued to be a favorite strategy in American politics over many
decades; adherence to this norm has been (and still is) welcomed as the best way
to achieve the ends of democracy without having to deal with democracy as a
living political process. Demonstrat-ing the efficiency of a course of action
conveys an aura of scientific truth, social consensus, and compelling moral
urgency. And Americans do not even worry much about the specific content of
numerators and denominators used in efficiency measurements. As long as they
are getting more for less, all is well. 11¶ The Technical Constitution of Society¶
WITH THE PASSAGE of time the cornucopia of modern industrial production
began to generate some distinctive institutional patterns. Today we can examine
the interconnected systems of manufacturing, communications, transportation,
and the like that have arisen during the past two centuries and appreciate how
they form de facto a constitution of sorts, the constitution of a sociotechnical
order. This way of arranging people and things, of course, did not develop as the
result of the application of any particular plan or political theory. It grew
gradually and in separate increments, invention by invention, industry by
industry, engineering project by engineering project, system by system. From a
contemporary vantage point, nevertheless, one can notice some of its
characteristics and begin to see how they embody answers to age-old political
questions-questions about membership, power, authority, order, freedom, and
justice. Several of the characteristics that matter in this way of seeing thingscharacteristics that would certainly have interested Plato, Rousseau, Madison,
Hamilton, and Jefferson-can be summarized as follows.¶ First is the ability of
technologies of transportation and communication to facilitate control over
events from a single center or small number of centers. Largely' unchecked by
effective countervailing influences, there has been an extraordinary centralization
of social control in large business corporations, bureaucracies, and the military. It
has seemed an expedient, rational way of doing things. Without anyone having
explicitly chosen it, dependency upon highly centralized organizations has
gradually become a dominant social form.¶ Second is a tendency for new devices
and techniques to increase the most efficient or effective size of organized human
associations. Over the past century more and more people have found themselves
living and working within technology-based institutions that previous
generations would have called gigantic. Justified by impressive economies of
scale and, economies or not, always an expression of the power that accrues to
very large organizations, this gigantism has become an accustomed feature in the
material and social settings of everyday life.¶ Third is the way in which the
rational arrangement of sociotechnical systems has tended to produce its own
distinctive forms of hierarchical authority. Legitimized by the felt need to do
things in what seems to be the most efficient, productive way, human roles and
relationships are structured in rule-guided patterns that involve taking orders
and giving orders along an elaborate chain of command. Thus, far from being a
place of democratic freedom, the reality ofthe workplace tends to be
undisguisedly authoritarian. At higher levels in the hierarchy, of course,
professionals claim their special authority and relative freedom by virtue of their
command of scientific and technical expertise. At the point in history in which
forms of hierarchy based on religion and tradition had begun to crumble, the
need to build and maintain technical systems offered a way to restore pyramidal
social relations. It was a godsend for inequality.¶ Fourth is the tendency oflarge,
centralized, hierarchically arranged sociotechnical entities to crowd out and
eliminate other varieties ofhuman activity. Hence, industrial techniques eclipsed
craftwork; technologies of modern agribusiness made smallscale farming all but
impossible; high-speed transportation crowded out slower means ofgetting
about. It is not merely that useful devices and techniques of earlier periods have
been rendered extinct, but also that patterns of social existence and individual
experience that employed these tools have vanished as living realities.¶ Fifth are
the various ways that large sociotechnical organizations exercise power to control
the social and political influences that ostensibly control them. Human needs,
markets, and political institutions that might regulate technology-based systems
are often subject to manipulation by those very systems. Thus, to take one
example, psychologically sophisticated techniques of advertising have become a
customary way ofaltering people's ends to suit the structure of available means, a
practice that now affects political campaigns no less than campaigns to sell
underarm deodorant or Coca-Cola (with similar results).
Link – State
Technology’s control over the state spills over to the media – this
shapes public perception
Moore 98 – assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Boise
State University (Robert Clifton, “Hegemony, Agency, and Dialectical Tension in
Ellul’s Technological Society,” Journal of Communication, Volume 48, Issue 3,
pages 129–144, September 1998, Wiley Online)BC
The state and the media, then, have joined in a relationship through which they
can take advantage of the crystallized nature of the citizen. To reiterate, for Ellul,
the link between the state and the media is a matter of efficiency. The state is
interested in maintaining a semblance of democracy while operating under
the guidance of technique . The media are interested in efficiently gathering,
processing, and disseminating information. Granted, there is a certain degree of
reification in this description, but Ellul’s theory is concerned with the will and
power of institutions. Institutions are a natural outgrowth of the technological
society, especially with its reliance on image over the word, and constantly vie for
power (Ellul, 1985, p. 189). The state, being the most powerful of institutions,
“seeks [emphasis added] to eliminate all groups that try to exercise any
intellectual or psychological influence which contradicts the legitimized
propaganda” (Ellul, 1967, p. 77). Ergo, any other institution must be neutralized.
Given the rational nature of the modern state, Ellul (1967) felt that such action
would be unified and somewhat predictable.
The media are thus seen as part of the state’s orbit, and the state is able to take
advantage of the media to improve its efficiency. Although Ellul suggested that
the state is not driven by public opinion, he did not claim that public opinion
plays no part in the political illusion. Often, the state uses the media to create
public opinion in favor of efficient policies already determined by the state.
Basically, “the government cannot follow public opinion, opinion must follow the
government” (Ellul, 1965, p. 126). Recent work by Bennett and Lawrence (1995)
on news icons might be helpful in understanding this process. These authors
suggest that neither the liberal pluralist nor the critical paradigm can explain
many of the social changes on which the media seem to have an impact.
Clearly, this hints that the state has great power over the media—an idea many in
the media would question—but it also intimates a certain power for the media
themselves. Ellul saw this as fitting neatly within the broader understanding of
the social setting. Though the media might at times seem adversarial toward the
state, they benefit from the state’s reliance on them as propaganda channels.
Being products of the technical age themselves, the media have created a
tremendous superstructure of organizations and technology. Once the
superstructure was in place, it had to be used, thus “the need for information
arose” (Ellul, 1967, p. 54). The state is an efficient source for such information. In
addition, given the state’s desire to deal with pressing issues in the most efficient
manner, which often means diverting the citizen’s attention to other issues, the
public must be entertained with a constant flow of what Ellul (1967) called “the
ephemeral” (p. 49). Such ephemeral information is much easier to disseminate if
omnivorous media channels exist in symbiotic relationship with the state. Given
the metaphor of the media being in the “orbit” of the state, we see that the state
has ultimate power in this relationship. Both bodies have a certain degree of pull,
though. Just as the earth has the moon firmly in its orbit, the state has the media
within its control. Even so, the moon influences the tides of its larger companion.
For the most part, the state and the media function very well together.
Technology controls government action – mass communication
allows politicians to regain control
Moore 98 – assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Boise
State University (Robert Clifton, “Hegemony, Agency, and Dialectical Tension in
Ellul’s Technological Society,” Journal of Communication, Volume 48, Issue 3,
pages 129–144, September 1998, Wiley Online)BC
What he felt no need to correct was the broad portrait he painted. This portrait
showed us that, when citizens begin to see government within the frame of
technique, they give up their human role therein. In the technological society,
government is thus expected to become a smoothly functioning system and takes
on technical form. “Technical advance gradually invades the state, which in turn
is compelled to assume forms and adopt institutions favorable to this advance”
(Ellul, 1964, p. 278). Such institutions are dehumanized by their tendency to see
politics as a system whose ultimate goal is efficiency. Given the ascendancy of
technique, which leads society to elevate means over ends, the state does not
make political decisions, it makes technical decisions. Furthermore, because
technical decisions are in many ways predetermined, there is only one route that
society can take.
If one believes that Ellul’s (1967) general description of modern government is
tenable, the question worth asking is how politicians deal with the fact that the
political system is, in reality, beyond their control (p. 153). A useful metaphor
would be that they are on a runaway train. Even if politicians understand that
they have little control over the direction of the machine, they assume that if they
maintain an image of control, nobody will be the wiser. In Ellul’s view, the only
way for politicians to maintain some semblance of control is through mass
communication.
Link – Biometrics
Biometrics are a public construction
van der Ploeg 3 – Associate Professor of Infonomics & New Media at Zuyd
University (Irma, “Biometrics and Privacy A note on the politics of
theorizing technology,” Information, Communication & Society, Taylor and
Francis Online,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1369118032000068741)BC
In this paper, I will not directly take sides in this dispute, because I am convinced
that, from a point of view of the politics and philosophy of technology, such a
general discussion on biometrics and privacy is both too narrow and too general
to be very fruitful. Instead, I aim to understand how such diverging assessments
of biometrics function in the public construction of biometrics. To that end I
analyse a few examples of opposing views within the debate on their tacit
assumptions regarding the nature of biometric technology, its development and
concomitant practices. I argue that such diverging assessments of biometric
technology involve different conceptualizations and constructions of the
technology in terms of its delineation as a stabilized object. The presumed nature
of the technology varies, first, according to the imagined, assumed, feared, or
hoped-for practical and material configurations of which the technology will
become part, and, second, it varies according to where the boundary is drawn
between the technology as a stabilized object and the contingent environment in
which it is situated.
On a second level, then, my analysis of the debate on biometrics and privacy deals
with the philosophical issue of technological determinism. Technological
determinism exists in many shapes and varieties (Winner 1977), but for current
purposes I rely on its definition as those views oftechnology that involve the
attribution of causality and agency to technology, resulting in a failure to
recognize human agency in technological developments and practices. The
opposition between determinist and voluntarist views of technology is shaped by
an underlying opposition between reification of technology on the one hand, and
a conception of technology and its development as a human practice, informed by
economic, cultural, normative, and social factors on the other. In the first case,
technology is constructed as having a stable and knowable ontological status, and
as being endowed with specific properties and inherent features, that
subsequently exert influence, generate impact, effects and consequences on an
external world.5 In contrast, a non-determinist, non-reifying view conceives of
technology as a (human) practice or process, involving besides technical skills
and knowledge, hardware, software, machinery and instruments, organization
and logistics, the prescribed actions and coordinated work of (usually many)
people. Whereas the determinist view tends toward essentializing ‘technology’,
reifying it and constructing it as a stable object, the latter view would stress
different possible scenarios, contingent uses, and courses of action, avoiding
specific qualifications of a technology that is seen as non-stable and fluid, with
few clearly defined properties yet.
Again, rather than taking sides in the longstanding debate on the question of
whether technological determinism and essentialism are true or false, be it
philosophically or empirically, I want to shift our focus on this question. For the
purposes of the present article, I will consider technological determinism and its
counterpart not as theses to be refuted or corroborated, but instead as rhetorical
devices, and as discursive strategies. Strategic devices, moreover, that constitute
politically and normatively partial moves in the collective, multifactor process of
shaping the technology in question, for public debates on a particular technology
should be considered as part of the very process constituting technology (Van
Dyck 1995). I will show how, by describing biometrics as either having certain
inherent properties, capabilities and potentialities in and of itself, or as a
nonstable entity in the process of being shaped by contingent heterogeneous
factors, specific demarcations between human and non-human agency are made,
that imply particular distributions of responsibility and negotiating space for
human choices and values.
Impact - Generic
That prioritization of technology causes extinction and turns case
Wilkinson, ’64 (John, Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, forward
to The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul) //GY
It should not be imagined, however, that the universal concentration camp which
Ellus thinks is coming into being in all technical societies without exception will
be felt as harsh or restrictive by its inmates. Hitler’s concentration camps of
hobnailed boots were symptoms of a deficient political technique. The denizen of
the technological state of the future will have everything his heart ever desired,
except, of course, his freedom. Admittedly, modern man, forced by technique to
become in reality and without residue the imaginary producer-consumer of the
classical economists, shows disconcertingly little regard for his lost freedom; but,
according to Ellul, there are ominous signs that human spontaneity, which in the
rational and ordered technical society has no expression except madness, is only
too capable of outbreaks of irrational suicidal destructiveness.¶ The escape valves
of modern literature and art, which technique has contrived, may or may not turn
out to be adequate to the harmless release of the pent-up “ecstatic” energies of
the human being. Technique, which can in principle only oppose technical and
quantitative solutions to technical problems, must, in such a case, seek out other
technical safety valves. It could, for example, convince men that they were happy
and contented by means of drugs, even though they were visibly suffering from
the worst kind of spiritual and material privation. It is obvious that all such
ultimate technical measures must cause the last meager “idealistic” motifs of the
whole technical enterprise to disappear. Ellul does not specifically say so, but it
seems that he must hold that the technological society, like everything else,
bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction.¶ It must not be
imagined that the autonomous technique envisioned by Ellul is a kind of
“technological determinism,” to use a phrase of Veblen. It may sometimes seem
so, but only because all human institutions, like the motions of all physical
bodies, have a certain permanence, or vis inertiae, which makes it highly
probably that the near future of statistical aggregations will see them continue
more or less in the path of the immediate past. Things could have eventuated in
the technological society otherwise than they have. ¶ Technique, to Ellul, is a
“blind” force, but one which unfortunately seems to be more perspicacious than
the best discernible human intelligences. There are other ways out, Ellul
maintains, but nobody wants any part of them.¶ Ellul’s insistence that the
technical phenomenon is not a determinism is not weakened by the enumeration
(in the second chapter) of five conditions which are said to be “necessary and
sufficient” for its outburst in the recent past, since the sufficient conditions for
the conditions (for example, the causes of the population explosion) are not
ascertainable.¶ The inertia of the technical phenomenon guarantees not only the
continued refinement and production of relatively beneficial articles such as flush
toilets and wonder drugs, but also the emergence of those unpredictable
secondary effects which are always the result of ecological meddling and which
today are of such magnitude and acceleration that they can scarcely be reconciled
with even semistable equilibrium conditions of society. Nuclear explosions and
population explosions capture the public’s imagination; but I have argued that
Ellul’s analysis demands that all indices of modern technological culture are
exploding, too, and are potentially just as dangerous to the continued well-being
of society, if by well-being we understand social equilibrium.
The cult of technology grants transcendence to the machines,
preventing any meaningful attention to human suffering – eventually
the machines will eclipse their makers, causing extinction.
Noble ‘97 (David, Prof of History @York University in Toronto, “The Religion of
Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention”, wcp)
When people wonder why the new technologies so rarely seem adequately to
meet their human and social needs, they assume it is because of the greed and
lust for power that motivate those who design and deploy them. Certainly, this
has much to do with it. But it is not the whole of the story. On a deeper cultural
level, these technologies have not met basic human needs because, at bottom,
they have never really been about meeting them. They have been aimed rather at
the loftier goal of transcending such mortal concerns altogether. In such
an ideological context, inspired more by prophets than by profits, the needs
neither of mortals nor of the earth they inhabit are of any enduring consequence.
And it is here that the religion of technology can rightly be considered a
menace. (Lynn White, for example, long ago identified the ideological roots of
the ecological crisis in ‘the Christian dogma of man’s transcendence of, and
rightful mastery over, nature”; more recently, the ecologist Philip Regal has
likewise traced current justifications of unregulated bioengineering to their
source in late-medieval natural theology.)— As we have seen, those given to such
imaginings are in the vanguard of technological development, amply endowed
and in every way encouraged to realize their escapist fantasies. Often displaying a
pathological dissatisfaction with, and deprecation of, the human condition, they
are taking flight from the world, pointing us away from the earth, the flesh, the
familiar — ‘offering salvation by technical fix,” in Mary Midgley’s apt
description—all the while making the world over to conform to their vision of
perfection. But it is not the practitioners alone who are so moved. A thousand
years in the making, the religion of technology has become the common
enchantment, not only of the designers of technology but also of those caught up
in, and undone by, their godly designs. The expectation of ultimate salvation
through technology, whatever the immediate human and social costs, has become
the unspoken orthodoxy, reinforced by a market-induced enthusiasm for novelty
and sanctioned by a millenarian yearning for new beginnings. This popular faith,
subliminally indulged and intensified by corporate, government, and media
pitchmen, inspires an awed deference to the practitioners and their promises of
deliverance while diverting attention from more urgent concerns. Thus,
unrestrained technological development is allowed to proceed apace, without
serious scrutiny or oversight—without reason. Pleas for some rationality, for
reflection about pace and purpose, for sober assessment of costs and
benefits— for evidence even of economic value, much less larger social gains—are
dismissed as irrational. From within the faith, any and all criticism appears
irrelevent, and irreverent. But can we any longer afford to abide this system of
blind belief? Ironically, the technological enterprise upon which we now ever
more depend for the preservation and enlargement of our lives betrays a
disdainful disregard for, indeed an impatience with, life itself. If
dreams of technological escape from the burdens of mortality' once translated
into some relief of the human estate, the pursuit of technological transcendence
has now perhaps outdistanced such earthly ends. If the religion of technology
once fostered visions of social renovation, it also fueled fantasies of escaping
society altogether. Today these bolder imaginings have gained sway, according to
which, as one philosopher of technology recently observed, “everything which
exists at present ... is deemed disposable.” The religion of technology, in the end,
“rests on extravagant hopes which are only meaningful in the context of
transcendent belief in a religious God, hopes for a total salvation which
technology cannot fulfill.... By striving for the impossible, [we] run the risk of
destroying the good life that is possible.” Put simply, the technological
pursuit of salvation has become a threat to our survival.— The
thousand-year convergence of technology and transcendence has thus outlived
whatever historical usefulness it might once have had. Indeed, as our
technological enterprise assumes ever more awesome proportions, it becomes all
the more essential to decouple it from its religious foundation. “Transcendence is
a wrong-headed concept,” Cynthia Cockburn has argued. “It means escape from
the earth- bound and the repetitive, climbing above the everyday. It means
putting men on the moon before feeding and housing the world’s poor.... The
revolutionary step would be to bring men [people] down to earth.” But
respite from our transcendent “faith in the religion of the machine,” as Lewis
Mumford long ago insisted, requires that we “alter the ideological basis of the
whole system.” Such an undertaking demands defiance of the divine pretensions
of the few in the interest of securing the mortal necessities of the many, and
presupposes that we disabuse ourselves of our inherited other-worldly
propensities in order to embrace anew our one and onlv earthlv existence.
Impact – Dehumanization
Accepting technique causes dehumanization, anxiety and alienation
Moore 98 – assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Boise
State University (Robert Clifton, “Hegemony, Agency, and Dialectical Tension in
Ellul’s Technological Society,” Journal of Communication, Volume 48, Issue 3,
pages 129–144, September 1998, Wiley Online)BC
This is not to say that all of the blame for the political illusion must be laid at the
feet of the state and the media. Ellul’s orientation suggests the complicity of the
citizens themselves. His theological perspective not only places guilt on social
structure, but also on individuals. The modern citizen is much too willing to
accept the comfortable route of technique , rather than make difficult
choices that would require humanness. Ellul’s (1985) existential character was
revealed in his description of the difficulty citizens face in separating themselves
from the appeasing media image. Such a process of “breaking the image obliges
people to discover themselves faced again with the gaping void that challenges
them” (p. 94).
The citizen is happy to seek an easy alternative to such a condition. The state and
the media are ready and able to provide created images to fill the void. This
allows the citizen to attach himself or herself to the excitement of the political
charade, and to ignore the more complex persistent problems of the local world.
Some would even suggest that those persistent problems cause great irritation, if
the media continue to cover them (Kinnick, Krugman, & Cameron, 1996). To
Ellul, the effects were doubly negative. Citizens not only learn to avoid dealing
with persistent social problems. They also have a tendency to find superficial
replacements for the emotion that would have gone into true human interaction.
The citizen is all too ready to “ abandon himself intensely in the human
spectacle ” (Ellul, 1967, p. 61). This is especially true of an age in which the
media are less concerned with the word—the very human act of true discourse—
and more concerned with the image:
The spectacle-oriented society makes a spectacle of itself, transforming all into
spectacle and paralyzing everything by this means. Such a society forces the
involuntary and unconscious actor into the role of spectator and congeals
through visualization everything that is not technique. It is a society made by, for,
as a function of, and by means of visualization. Everything is subordinated to
visualization, and nothing has meaning outside it. (Ellul, 1985, p. 115)
As negative as Ellul makes this sound, it is a far more pleasant prospect for the
citizen than facing the real problems of the world. The irony is that the individual
is attempting to find comfort from the ravages of technique by seeking solace in
the products of technique. Though speaking of the automobile, Ellul’s (1990)
comments in one of his most recent books might just as appropriately speak of
our attachment to television:
It is a diversion because it prevents us from looking at ourselves or meeting our
neighbors or being content with one-to-one relations or contributing our
personality to everyday life or being responsible at the heart of our community or
on Sunday having an ultimate encounter with God. The refusal to do all of these
things acts as a funnel to send us off in our cars. (p. 375)
In abandoning those elements of our lives that are truly human, then , we sense
an anxiety or sense of loss.
Granted, Ellul’s theology does not allow him to view this as a unique historical
phenomenon. In his existential form of Christianity, Ellul borrowed from
Kierkegaard (1941; Eller, 1981). Like Kierkegaard, Ellul began with the premise
that we have long been alienated from God, the true source of fulfillment. In
Kierkegaardian terms, Ellul (1985) suggested that all humans have been cut off
from “God’s code” and thus experience alienation (p. 196). In previous
generations, humans tried to use nature’s code as a means of escaping such
alienation. Today, we rely on human code. The difficulty is in the vicious cycle
this modern stratagem creates. For Ellul it was a cycle in which the anxiety
produced by the technological world propels us to the world of images (a chief
product of technique), and further abandonment of our humanity .
Technique causes us to make dehumanizing decisions – technology
exhibits control over us
Moore 98 – assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Boise
State University (Robert Clifton, “Hegemony, Agency, and Dialectical Tension in
Ellul’s Technological Society,” Journal of Communication, Volume 48, Issue 3,
pages 129–144, September 1998, Wiley Online)BC
The source of the radical difference of which he speaks is the integral change of
the world brought about by the power of technique. If technique, as noted above,
is the dominant factor in the modern world, then the modern state is under its
power. Yet, this does not lead to a decrease in the power of the state. Others have
posited such a debilitation (e.g., Braman, 1995). In Ellul’s view, as technique
takes hold over the world, sociopolitical trends accelerate. In Ellul’s (1967) words,
this acceleration “favors the establishment of a single political power center” (p.
xix).
It should be noted that Ellul was not suggesting a unified capitalist hegemonic
entity described by Marx’s (1977) vision, or a liberal pluralist political
environment, where competing political entities vie for power. On the first count
he felt that Marxists (and this would include classical Marxist hegemony
theorists) fail to understand that Marx’s theory is adequate for explaining the
19th century, but not the 20th century (Ellul, 1967, p. 9, 1980, p. 71). On the
second count, he was by no means describing an environment of multivocality
and ideological competition. For Ellul, the modern state is authoritarian in that
its ultimate goal is uniformity and efficiency (Real, 1981, p. 120–121; Van Hook,
1981, p.129).
This uniformity and efficiency are not the outcome of some deep-seated
conspiracy on the part of capitalists or dictators. Many scholars have come to the
realization that the modern social milieu does not manifest a clear capitalist–
proletariat dichotomy. Condit (1994), for example, claimed that class is not the
“fundamental common denominator” (p. 209) in modern societies. That is, social
structure cannot be understood in simple terms such as capitalist and proletarian
(an approach she called “economic universalism”). Ellul (1985) warned of a
similar oversimplification—the image of the “big capitalists making shady
calculations in order to alienate further the poor citizenry” (p. 129). Rather than
presenting such a dramatic picture of oppression, Ellul alluded to a manifold
series of decisions modern citizens make that take away their own freedom. What
Ellul saw as an “insidious flow that gums up our thinking” takes place “apart from
anyone’s intent and without any goal in mind” (p. 129).
The image, then, is not of oppression, but of submission by society as a
whole in hopes of a greater good. Proceeding in many ways from a theological
rather than a sociological premise, Ellul (1985) suggested that we have given
up our birthright (i.e., the ability to be fully human ). In our worship of
machineness, we have come to see the machine as the model for all elements of
our environment, even those elements (such as civil government) that gave us
our humanity .
In some ways, this explains an earlier claim that Ellul’s concern is not the precise
characteristics of the modern state. His line of logic is not limited to a specific
variety of state. It applies to the technological state in general. This also explains
why he was able to claim that his analysis applied equally well to capitalistic and
socialistic states. The details are of less importance. Of course, details about the
nature of the state are of great importance to many scholars. As a barometer of
this, we might note that Easton (1981) once counted over 140 definitions of the
state. Braman (1995) provided a detailed account of the many typologies that are
currently being used. Many scholars who adhere vigorously to one of these
specific typologies might have serious disagreements with Ellul’s ensuing ideas.
To some who formed a detailed definition of the state in the 1950s, and have now
changed their definition, the state we encounter in the 1990s might seem so
different that Ellul’s earlier analysis no longer applies.
Yet Ellul, looking at the big picture of the citizen’s relation to state, felt very
comfortable in maintaining the key ideas until the very end. In his work, Anarchy
and Christianity, for example, Ellul (1991) restated his grand themes as if they are
now widely accepted (p. 22). In What I Believe (1989), he attempted to explain
some of his grand themes that have been not yet fully understood (Ellul, 1989).
It has not yet been appreciated that this entry of technology means control over
all the persons involved, all the powers, all the decisions and changes, and that
technology imposes its own law on the different social organizations, disturbing
fundamentally what is thought to be permanent (e.g., the family), and making
politics totally futile. (p. 135)
Impact – Apathy
Focus on the flow of information produces apathy
Moore 98 – assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Boise
State University (Robert Clifton, “Hegemony, Agency, and Dialectical Tension in
Ellul’s Technological Society,” Journal of Communication, Volume 48, Issue 3,
pages 129–144, September 1998, Wiley Online)BC
Such an interpretation is appalling to many living in Western democracies.
People in these cultures have an image of themselves as self-governed entities,
where the free flow of information allows citizens intelligently to take an active
part in the operation of politics. In fact, many of those who perceive problems in
these social environments have argued that it is the restricted flow of information
(i.e., the fact that there is not, in reality, a free flow) that causes problems. Given
this orientation, the logical solution to the problem is to open up more avenues of
communication to the citizenry (e.g., Aufderheide, 1991; Kellner, 1990; Rucinski,
1991). For Ellul, however, the amazing mass of information available is just one
more part of the technological world that overwhelms modern citizens. Speaking
of most modern communication, especially television, Ellul (1985) stated, “These
images do not motivate us toward any action; they do not even get a person up
out of his chair. On the contrary, they sink him deeper into his apathy. We look,
but remain passive because we know that we have no way of grasping the
representation offered us” (p. 144). As Christians (1976) described it, the
information explosion did not create a democratic person, but rather a
“crystallized” (p. 5) person, who eventually can make no well-informed political
decisions.
Impact – Democracy
The technological society overwhelms democratic governance –
democratic politics just becomes an illusion
Moore 98 – assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Boise
State University (Robert Clifton, “Hegemony, Agency, and Dialectical Tension in
Ellul’s Technological Society,” Journal of Communication, Volume 48, Issue 3,
pages 129–144, September 1998, Wiley Online)BC
Technique and the Role of Communication
Such an attempt by politicians to use mass media would be very difficult for
Gramsci to grasp. As noted earlier, Ellul’s notion of the state is very different than
that of Gramsci. Moreover, we live in a world totally saturated with
communication gadgets that Gramsci (1971) could never have imagined. Ellul
watched the growth of those gadgets and was very concerned with how they
might relate to the political operations of a technological society. Writing from
his native France, Ellul attempted to play the role of a prophet, warning of the
impending doom of true democracy, if technique were allowed to spread
unencumbered. He claimed to have been ignored in his homeland and widely
read in the U.S., because his writings helped U.S. readers understand what had
already taken place around them (Ellul, 1990, p. xiv). People in the United States
had witnessed a transformation from a democracy to a technological
society that was artfully maintained through political illusion.
The mingling of technique and politics makes such maintenance necessary. When
the political realm is infiltrated by technique, the state grows in power (Ellul,
1980, p. 56). In the process, many of the state’s features escape human
control. As suggested above, many decisions become nondecisions, because they
are necessitated by efficiency. In the end, politicians turn into “impotent satellites
of the machine, which, with all its parts and techniques, apparently functions as
well without them” (Ellul, 1964, p. 254). Yet, these politicians do not step down
from their positions. Ellul (1967) claimed that there is still a need to maintain an
illusion of politics especially in a world where politics has begun to invade
every aspect of social life (pp. 8–24). In the technological society, almost
everything is political. Citizens put up with this increasing “politicization,”
because they feel they have some control over the political machine.
The point worth noting is that citizens by their nature want two things. First, they
want clear, inevitable choices in political life. Second, they like to retain the
vocabulary of freedom to give the feeling that free and personal choice is involved
in politics (see Ellul, 1967, p. 32). Of course, the state has no reservations about
providing these two things, because providing them keeps the political apparatus
of the technological society well oiled. Ellul used the term propaganda to refer to
the process by which information is controlled with the intent of maintaining
efficiency. Real (1981) described it as “the dominance of technical means over the
flow of information through society” (p. 110). Propaganda, in this usage, is not
the dissemination of lies by dictators and despots. It is the management of ideas
with the intent of keeping the system running smoothly. “Propaganda is simply
the means used to prevent these things from being felt as too oppressive and to
persuade man to submit with good grace” (Ellul, 1965, p. xviii).
If the state exists as Ellul described it, the need for such persuasion is clear. The
state is a finely structured machine that is intended to run with as little human
interruption as possible. As noted above, politicians take a back seat to
bureaucrats, who are more attuned to the needs of the machine. In a like manner,
citizens must take a seat behind politicians, who are more attuned than the public
at large. Therefore, although modern democracy is thought by many to operate
on the basis of popular opinion, Ellul disagreed. Public opinion is much too
unpredictable and cannot be given too much access to the political machine.
Should the state be arranged to meet every whim (many constantly changing) of
the citizen, it would be paralyzed (Ellul, 1967).
Impact – Environment
Focus on technology causes an attempt to control the environment –
leads to ecological degradation
Harvey 3 – Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, The Graduate Center, The
City University of New York (David, “The Fetish of Technology: Causes and
Consequences,” Macalester International, Vol. 13, 2003,
http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1411&context
=macintl)BC
B. The Domination of Nature A great deal has been written and debated,
particularly since the exertions of the Frankfurt School from the 1930s on, about
the fantasy of the total domination of nature through technological forms .7
Critics frequently attribute this to movements in the realm of thought (the
Enlightenment being a particular object of critique, with modern science and
engineering also taking their knocks) rather than to distinctively capitalistic
fantasies about the conquest and domination of nature through engineering and
production processes that treat nature as “one gigantic gasoline station”8 or as a
vast and inexhaustible waste disposal system into which the unwanted
byproducts of ever-increasing production and consumption can ceaselessly be
poured. We now know enough about the awful consequences of the playing out of
such fantasies to act more responsibly. Unintended consequences and
environmental degradation and destruction arise out of thoughtless actions taken
in a situation in which everything, as in nature, does indeed relate to everything
else. But a right royal battle on this point is being fought out in realms of thought,
including within science itself, as well as through the dominant institutions in
order to transform material practices, social relations, and ways of life along
more ecologically sensitive paths. In this, the fantasy of total control of nature
does not necessarily give way, for it is perfectly possible to redirect it, as some
within the environmental movement do, toward more sophisticated
environmental management strategies that still presume total control is possible.
Ambivalent attitudes within the environmental movement toward the power and
significance of science form a nexus where this contradiction is being fought out.
There is a huge question mark over the exact role to be played by science and
technology, as opposed to transformations in social relations, in finding solutions
to environmental dilemmas and ecological degradations. It should, however, be
abundantly clear that there will be no major transformation in our relation to
nature without changes in social relations, in mentalités, and in ways of
sustaining material life, as well as in the hardware, software, and organizational
forms of technologies.
Alt – Abyssal Ground
Our alternative is to bring this debate back to abyssal ground –
disoccupying metaphysical dwelling spaces and calculative rationality
is the only way to return to a form of social life that privileges wonder
and mystery.
Joronen ’10 (Mikko Joronen, Faculty Member of Mathematics and Natural
Sciences @ University of Turku, “The Age of Planetary Space: On Heidegger,
Being, and Metaphysics of Globalization”, pg. 223-226, wcp)
Resistance of Finitude: Dwelling in the Earth-Sites In spite of the revolutionary
sense of ‘power-free-letting-be’, our role as the ones who let being to make its
transformation poses number of questions concerning our part in this radical
turning from the ontological violence to the other beginning of abyssal being.
What is exactly our relation to the finitude of being? Should we only wait for the
end of the prevailing mode of being and thus hope a new sending of being? At
least Heidegger’s comment in his posthumously published Der Spiegel interview
about “only god” (i.e. a new sending of being) being capable of “saving us” seems
to imply this, apparently leaving little room for human activism (Heidegger
1976:107; see also Schatzki 2007:32). Hence, is our part just to question the
prevailing unfolding and so to wait for the new sending, the other beginning, the
new arrival of being? First of all, it is crucial to recognize that waiting for the
world-historical turning is not inactivity but a revolution that turns powerfree thinking into praxis. It is a non-violent revolution, which can take many
forms of activism such as disobedience and protests. In fact, Fred Dallmayr even
compares this praxis of non-violent resistance with the paths of Gandhi and
Martin Luther King, Jr. (2001:267). Altogether, as Malpas writes, there is no
reason why the world-historical turning of being cannot be waited through
political activism, as long as such activism avoids being taken up by a
machinational mode of unfolding and thus remains non-violent and aware of its
limitedness and finitude (Malpas 2006:300; see also Irwin 2008:170, 188–189).
Secondly, it is important that Heidegger relates our letting-be-like recognition of
abyssal being to the earth aspect of the site where things show up themselves.
The unconcealment of the abyssal ground, the unveiling of the abundant being
concealed by the limits of particular world-disclosures, is also an unconcealment
of the earth, since the “material” things that the earth provides are never emptied
into present world-disclosure. Earth rather stands in strife against every
particular rationalization made by particular world-disclosures. Accordingly,
even though all particular world-disclosures always denote an unfolding of things
as what they are, none of them are an unfolding of things as all that they are
(Heidegger 2001a:52–53; Malpas 2006:193; Schatzki 2007:54–55). All secured
realms of disclosure always conceal other possible ways of unfolding,
which means that by concealing the abyssal realm of abundance against which
every particular unfolding takes place world-disclosures conceal the
inexhaustibility of things on earth in a very metaphysical sense. Accordingly,
unlike in the manipulative possession promoted by the contemporary planetary
machination, earth does not belong to anyone since it can never be captured as a
whole (de Beistegui 2007:17). It is our non-violent rejection of the
manipulative power of calculative ordering, which puts the violent
capturing of the earth aside and hence lets what has already fled our rational
apparatuses to become in power: the abyssal ground of earth. Perhaps one of
the most striking examples of the need for non-violent resistance and power-free
following of the abyssal earth is the contemporary event of global warming. While
this devastating change is affecting all parts of the earth, even the atmosphere,
some of the most vulgar solutions, especially the geo-engineering proposals, aim
at intentional, even global scale, climate modification either by reducing the
incoming radiation from the sun – for instance, by using the refractive screens or
sunshade of autonomous spacecrafts installed in space (Angel 2006), and by
spraying cooling sulphate particle concentrations in the stratosphere (Crutzen
2006) – or by removing CO2 from the atmosphere – for instance, by increasing
carbon sequestration with iron fertilization pumped at oceans (Buesseler&Boyd
2003). These various potential geoengineering implementations seem to do
nothing but follow the baseline of the gigantic machination, the subjugation of
things into orderable reserve commanded to stand by so that they may be
manipulated by the operations of calculation. Even though such geo-engineering
may eventually mitigate the negative consequences of climate change, it offers a
calculative moulding of even more complex systems of orderings as a solution to
the problem of global warming, which is by itself subordinate to, as well as an
outcome of, this manipulative and calculative subjugation of earth, the logic of
circular self-overcoming in the ever greater modalities of exploitative power. As
Malpas writes, although it is evident that more complex systems of orderings also
increase the possibilities of their failure, machination always presents itself as a
source for continuous improvements by simply viewing these failures as an
indication of a further need for technological perfection (2006:298). In other
words, machination does not implicate an achievement of total ordering, but a
drive toward total ordering where this drive itself is never under suspicion.
Nevertheless, as contemporary climate change indicates, earth never allows itself
to become captured, completely controlled, or emptied into unfolding that frames
it in terms of orderable and exploitable standing-reserve. Earth rather resists all
attempts to capture it: it resists by pointing out the lack that leads to the failure of
all systems of orderings. It is precisely this lack, the line of failure that
has always already started to flee the perfect rationalization and total
capture of things, which presents the earth aspect of Heidegger. Instead
of the calculative engineering of technical solutions, the non-violent
resistance allows the earth to become a source of abyssal being, a
source of self-emerging things that always retains a hidden element since the
earth never allows itself to become completely secured though particular worlddisclosures (see Harrison 2007:628; Peters&Irwin 2002:8). In other words,
instead of mere calculative manipulation, we can resist the manipulative
machination of earth and thus let the living earth become a source of
abyssal being, an earth-site for our dwelling. Thirdly, it is the recognition of the
finitude, the limit, that allows a breakdown of our taken for granted ontological
intelligibility of prevailing world-disclosure. Identification of the finitude affords
a view into the possible absence of prevailing world-disclosure, a situation of
distress Richard Polt calls the ‘emergency of being’ (2006:30), where the world
we are thrown into becomes unsettled, releases its hold, and eventually allows us
to ‘remember’ its originary happening as a mere historical appropriation of
particular limits from the groundless abyss. Moreover, compared with
Heidegger’s earlier notion about the recognition of our own finitude – our death
– forcing us to face what stands as the complete contrary to the meaning of being
– the nothingness with empty-of-all meaning – the notion about the finitude of
being as such refers to rather positive realm, to the abyssal reservoir of plenitude
(Young 2000:190–192). Thus, the ‘nothing’ is not excluded as the opposite of
being, as a mere negativity of empty nihilism; nothing rather belongs to the realm
of being through the sense of possible absence it implies, absence (the possibility
of finitude) in this case keeping the site opened for the play and ‘other beginning’
of being. Planetary machination, however, and the calculative thinking it affords,
do not allow this appearance of finitude: as a total positioning they destroy the
earth upon which we dwell by changing it into an errant planet, into a globe in an
astral universe without the earth-site for making manifest of the limits of the
happening of being. As Bernard Radloff sums up, “earth is not a planet”
(2007b:36) – earth is not a planet, because the planet belongs to the
representational thinking that hides the fundamental openness of the abyssal
earth-sites through which the sphere of total gaze, the planetary globe, became
possible in the first place. Eventually this globe, ordered through the networks
cast upon the planet, opens neither paths nor possibilities, but a profound
nihilism of calculative consumption and utilization of the earth. As Simon
Critchley writes, rather than simple transgression or restoration of the conditions
that ground the contemporary situation, we need to experience their limit, to
delineate them (1997:12). The crucial point is that the contemporary ontic
homelessness, the late-modern nihilism of planetary machination, does not allow
the fundamental sense of ontological finitude, the distress and emergency about
the limitedness and finitude of the prevailing mode of being, to arise (Heidegger
1996a:74–75; Radloff 2007b:240). This ontological homelessness, the sense
about finitude and play of being, can only be confronted through the
happening of being, through being that presences through sites, which
means that one can become opened to abyssal being to the extent that one first
finds the finitude of the prevailing mode of being, its limits. Hence, Heidegger’s
notion about dwelling in the earth-sites, our ‘being-at-home’ on earth, is properly
understood as a ‘homecoming’ that takes place through the ontological
homelessness: out of the passage through what is foreign, we no more merely live
through the given unfolding, but better, by “being unhomely in becoming
homely” we become to sense the potential for human beings ‘to dwell on earth’
with understanding about the finitude and givenness of the ruling unfolding
(Heidegger 1996a:120–121; in this with more details, see Mugerauer 2008, on
Heidegger’s comparison between modern homelessness and Marx’s notion of
alienation, see Heidegger 1993a:243–244). Since the primary aim of this
non-metaphysical and non-grounding dwelling is the recognition of
the abyssal earth-sites, it neither proposes the chauvinism of provincial
locality nor bounded ‘homeland’ rooted in organic national family of blood and
soil, as Thiele for instance misinterprets (1995:172–175) – all of these definitions,
the ‘organic’, the ‘national’, and the ‘blood’, are metaphysical determinations that
presuppose a concept of collective subjectivity explicitly rejected by Heidegger
(Heidegger 1993a:244–245; see also de Beistegui 2007:10; Radloff 2007b:241–
242). Instead, the possibility for a non-metaphysical dwelling in the sites of
ontological finitude signifies a chance for an open and abyssal clearing on earth,
an eco-poetic promise – ecological as opposed to violent exploitation of nature,
poetic as opposed to the metaphysical violence of calculative rationality. As de
Beistegui suggests, instead of bounded territorialism or cosmopolitanism, such
“citizenship on earth” could perhaps be translated into something like
“geopolitanism” (2007:18; cf. Morin 2009; Turnbull 2006). As it has become
evident, the contemporary nihilism and planetary homelessness of
(late)modernity does not correspond with the primordial ontological
homelessness based on dwelling in the finite earth-sites of abyssal being. The
homelessness of technological calculation, which is now “coming to be the
destiny of the world”, is a symptom of the oblivion of being – an abandonment of
abyssal and open being in favor of metaphysical rationality of ideologically and
universally grounded conceptual systems – when the dwelling in the sites of
finitude is a ‘homecoming’ that founds our taken-for-granted belongingness to
particular world-disclosure by unsettling and dislocating us from it
(Heidegger 1993a:242,243). At the end, we are left with a non-metaphysical sense
of dwelling, with a resistance based on the finitude of being. Accordingly,
resistance includes both (1) the power-free dwelling on earth and (2) the nonmetaphysical sites based on finite and abyssal being. As I have tried to show, this
sort of dwelling offers neither total unity of intelligibility, an
ontologically bounded and grounded dwelling, nor alienation based on planetary
nihilism of will-full calculations, but a sense of finitude and thus a sense about
the limits of the planetary unfolding of machination. It is a dwelling that
remains open for abyssal being and thus for an Event, which as a play
can never be mastered since mastering does not provide possibilities
but necessities. As exposed to abyss, we human beings are exposed to the
concealed ‘Ab-ground’ of being – to the abysmal reservoir of abundant being –
and so may turn into power-free grounders of abyssal earth.50
Alt – Negation
State action will inevitably be coopted by technique’s control over the
system – voting negative is an act of negation that is a first step in
rebelling to reclaim human agency from machinic tyranny
Moore 98 – assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Boise
State University (Robert Clifton, “Hegemony, Agency, and Dialectical Tension in
Ellul’s Technological Society,” Journal of Communication, Volume 48, Issue 3,
pages 129–144, September 1998, Wiley Online)BC
Technique and Human Agency
Ellul’s theory of technique, then, stresses the fact that the citizen is partly
responsible for the condition of modern social discourse. It is also useful to
analyze his view on the possibility of human agency as an ameliorative function.
Recall that this was an important topic for Barker-Plummer (1995) and Condit
(1994) and a primary reason for questioning the usefulness of hegemony theory.
The question to be addressed now is whether Ellul’s orientation leaves any hope
for the citizen to have a positive impact on the political environment.
Ellul’s general position on the modern political state is thought by many to be
extremely pessimistic. As described above, his view of the power of technique,
and its overwhelming adoption by state, media, and citizen alike, led Ellul to see
technological societies as oppressive, if not totalitarian. He consistently warned
us that the mechanized world of the technological society can leave nothing
outside its grasp, and that all citizens are compelled to fit into the system.
Van Hook (1981) claimed this totalitarianism “attempts to absorb the citizen’s life
completely” (p. 129).
Yet, the crucial word in Van Hook’s (1981) assessment of Ellulian theory is
“attempts” (admittedly another personification). The absorption is not
ineluctable; Ellul did propose a degree of human agency. If the inhuman
nature of technique was at the center of his critique, the logical contrast (and
solution) to it is human nature. Van Hook (1981) himself wrote, “Ellul often does
write in a pessimistic vein. But he intends to challenge people to action rather
than to encourage fatalistic resignation” (p. 132). Though Ellul (1990)
consistently told of the manifold deterrents of human freedom in today’s social
structure, he did not give up hope. If nothing else, the human still has the option
of negativity:
I will simply underline the fact that human life makes no sense if there is
no possibility of change of some kind, if we ourselves have no role to play, if
there is no history begun but not yet consummated. It is in this respect that
negativity comes to the fore. In one of my books I thus adopted the wellknown
formula of Guehenno that our first task as human beings is to say no. (p. 34)
In many ways, this broadens social agency beyond the lucid analysis of that
concept offered by Hays (1994), who described agency as “human social action
involving choices among alternatives made available by enabling features of
social structure” (p. 64). What Ellul suggested is that those alternatives might not
be readily available. Even so, a choice always exists, and humans still have
agency. Though technique pushes humanity toward machineness, Ellul pushed
humanity toward humanness, arguing that there is something infinitely
human in negation and change. Returning to his alliance with Kierkegaard,
Ellul (1985) suggested that one can find a “catharsis of silence” (p. 196). For the
individual, there are benefits to be found in such denial. The social change that
will occur on the basis of such denial, however, still needs to be discussed.
It is crucial at this juncture to recognize what Ellul did not say about change. Ellul
believed that modern political states—whether capitalist, socialist, or
communist—are all being swept into the pattern of technique. Given this
situation, political revolution is no longer likely or advisable. The disbanding of
one state operating with technique would only lead to another state operating
within the same framework. Moreover, the “will to dominate” is illimitable (Ellul,
1990, p. 25). Ellul saw this in all societies. Revolution in this view is futile,
and rebellion is a more appropriate strategy. Stanley (1981) linked Ellul
with Camus on this account, suggesting that there is no future in which “social
unity is achieved and problems resolved” (p. 69).
To an extent, Ellul can also be linked with Condit and Barker-Plummer on this.
Condit (1994) asserted that the model of revolutionary change held by many
Marxist theorists “is not a necessary one” (p. 210). Barker-Plummer (1995)
questioned Gitlin’s (1980) reform–revolution dichotomy, which suggests that
ideological change is an all-or-nothing process. Neither believes that revolution
should be the primary goal of social criticism.
Yet, these two recent critics of hegemony theory believe that positive social
change might be possible without the impetus of a revolution. Here is where Ellul
parts company. Taking a somewhat Hobbesian approach to political theory, Ellul
never advocated such an optimistic position. Instead, he saw the modern
technological state as a sovereign in need of dialogue. Only through
uniquely human agency can such dialogue take place. Citing parts of Ellul’s
(1967) The Political Illusion, Stanley (1981) described the situation as follows:
Consequently, Ellul calls for groups to present themselves as counterweights to
the sovereign power—not as negating the state, which is impossible, but as
“poles of tension” (Ellul, 1967, p. 215) confronting the state, creating a condition
of equilibrium in which “we are not trying to absorb one factor by means of
another.” (Stanley, 1981, p. 76)
Given the tremendous power of the technological state, this was Ellul’s only
option. Traditional political channels are products of technique. If citizens form
groups that stand outside of the traditional political system, they can offer a
response to the overwhelming voice of the state.
Such a response reveals crucial elements in Ellul’s overall worldview. For
example, given his sociological and theological orientation, Ellul saw this
dialogue as a means of limiting power. As noted above, no revolution was
envisioned. Little in Ellul’s writing suggests a vision of major evolution. Rather,
Ellul took the position of an anarchist. He did not use that term to describe a lack
of order, but, rather, a reduction of power. Ellul (1991) stated, “The real question
is that of the power of some people over others. Unfortunately, as I have said, I do
not think we can truly prevent this. But, we can struggle against it” (p. 23).
Alt – Negation – XT
Dialectical negation must avoid political engagement to restore
human agency
Moore 98 – assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Boise
State University (Robert Clifton, “Hegemony, Agency, and Dialectical Tension in
Ellul’s Technological Society,” Journal of Communication, Volume 48, Issue 3,
pages 129–144, September 1998, Wiley Online)BC
Given that he refused to adopt a Marxist eschatological position, Ellul saw this
struggle as constant. He saw no heaven on earth. He saw an eternal struggle for
control in society, because “covetousness and the desire for power” are human
constants that cross all cultural boundaries (Ellul, 1991, p. 20). This is where Ellul
stands in stark opposition to theorists who propose using expanded channels of
communication to promote a new social structure that is just and equitable. The
teleological approach of those theorists begs the question of the nature of
communication processes after the new order is established. Will the widened, or
more numerous, channels of communication still be needed after the revolution?
Ellul claimed that human nature and the nature of technique both suggest the
difficulty of an overly optimistic view of the ability of restructured media to lead
to a restructured society.
Such a bleak outlook is based on a presupposition that in any society people will
attempt to gain and maintain power. The only proper role for the social critic (as
a human agent) is to stymie such attempts. Though this might seem like limited
action, Ellul felt that it is always feasible action. If people are willing to pay the
price, it is an action that is possible, even when social structure seems to offer no
alternatives. Thus, Ellul’s view of agency is broader than that of Hays (1994).
The human being is always able to say no . The purpose of such negation is
thus clear. Given Ellul’s anarchist position described above, his goal was to
create a dialogue and bring to the world what it rejects and does not want to
talk about (Ellul, 1972). The dialectical ideas presented by the conversant should
stand as constant poles of tension to the dominant views of the technological
society (Stanley, 1981).
Ellul’s insistence that the conversant remain nothing more than a conversant
separates him from a large body of contemporary media scholarship. Should a
group that is presenting the alternative ever be taken seriously, and its ideas
adopted into the dominant culture, the group will gain a certain degree of power
in itself. Given Ellul’s view of humanity, this is a constant temptation and a
reason for avoiding the teleological view of communication and democratic
processes, which were not truly dialectical in Ellul’s eyes. If human agency
leads to a positive social change , those who propose such change must ask
if the change brings them more power in social structure. After all, Ellul’s
overarching theme was the contrast between humans and machines. In an age
where politics is largely mechanical, anarchists should avoid being caught up—
and eaten up—in cogs. For Ellul (1991), the essence of anarchism was “to
become a human being, yes, but a politician, never ” (p. 8).
The alternative is key to promote awareness of the harms of
technology – this causes a shift in the mindset of society
Rose 3 – Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick (Ellen, “The
Errors of Thamus: An Analysis of Technology Critique,” Bulletin of Science,
Technology & Society, Vol. 23, No. 3, June 2003, pp. 147-156, Sage Pub,
http://bst.sagepub.com/content/23/3/147.full.pdf)BC
There is no doubt that this situation has a great deal to do with the times in which
we live. Society has changed (perhaps because no one heeded the technology
critics in the first place), but the discourse forged half a century ago by critics
striving to prevent or at least slow impending change has not. Thus, just as
Thamus’s objections were easily dismissed by a people whose culture had
thoroughly integrated written language, so, in the near future, human reliance on
new media and devices may be such that people will look back with a similar
spirit of thankfulness on the work of the technology innovators and advocates
whom I have derogatorily characterized as hypesters, whereas the cautionary
words of the critics will seem pointless, irrelevant, and even ridiculous. Indeed,
for many young people who have grown up in front of television and computer
screens, that time has already come. Of course, most technology critics would
argue, and do, that it is precisely because we so readily allow our lives and
thought worlds to be co-opted and transformed by new media and technologies,
and the rhetoric about them, that their perspectives are so important. Indeed,
despite the diversity of their approaches, one of the critics’ shared purposes is
unquestionably to rouse society from the stupor in which it has apparently fallen
when it comes to perceiving and understanding the widespread implications of
technological change. As Winner (1986) put it in The Whale and the Reactor,
Individual habits, perceptions, concepts of self, ideas of space and time, social
relationships, and moral and political boundaries have all been powerfully
restructured in the course of modern technological development. . . . Vast
transformations in the structure of our common world have been undertaken
with little attention to what those alterations mean. . . . But it seems
characteristic of our culture’s involvement with technology that we are seldom
inclined to examine, discuss, or judge pending innovations with broad, keen
awareness of what those changes mean. . . . For the interesting puzzle in our
times is that we so willingly sleepwalk through the process of reconstituting the
terms of human existence. (pp. 9-10)
In The Real World of Technology, Franklin (1990) offered a similar commentary
on both the power of technology “to reorder and restructure social
relations ” and the fact that these changes “are taken as given and not
questioned ” (p. 13). Similarly, Noble (1998) worried about the fact that
“unrestrained technological development is allowed to proceed apace, without
serious scrutiny or oversight” (p. 207); Mumford (1934/ 1962) pointed out that
“we have multiplied the mechanical demands without multiplying in any degree
our human capacity for registering and reacting intelligently to them” (p. 273);
Postman (1985) protested the “customary mindless inattention” with which we
receive culture-transforming technologies such as the television and the
computer (p. 161); and Ellul (1954/ 1964) described his treatise The
Technological Society as “a call to the sleeper to awake” (p. xxxiii). Throughout
his books, McLuhan (1964) also bemoaned our “docile acceptance” (p. 29) of new
media. Indeed, in Understanding Media, McLuhan wrote that what is difficult for
him to understand is not the impacts of new technologies so much as the
unquestioning numbness with which we accept them into our lives: “So
extraordinary is this unawareness that it is what needs to be explained” (p. 324).
Alt – Ellul
The alternative is an abandonment of technological determinism –
instead of a rejection of technology, an awareness of our dependence
on technique is key
Ellul, ’64 (Jacques, French sociologist and philosopher, The Technological
Society, trans John Wilkinson) //GY
But this must not lead the reader to say to himself: “All right, here is some
information on the problem, and other sociologists, economists, philosophers,
and theologians will carry on the work, so I have simply got to wait.” This will not
do, for the challenge is not to scholars and university professors, but to all of us.
At stake is our very life, and we shall need all the energy, inventiveness,
imagination, goodness, and strength we can muster to triumph in our
predicament. While waiting for the specialists to get on with their work on behalf
of society, each of us, in his own life, must seek ways of resisting and
transcending technological determinants. Each man must make this effort in
every area of life, in his profession and in his social, religious, and family
relationships. ¶ In my conception, freedom is not an immutable fact graven in
nature and on the heart of man. It is not inherent in man or in society, and it is
meaningless to write it into law. The mathematical, physical, biological,
sociological, and psychological sciences reveal nothing but necessities and
determinisms on all sides. As a matter of fact, reality is itself a combination of
determinisms, and freedom consists in overcoming and transcending these
determinisms. Freedom is completely without meaning unless it is related to
necessity, unless it represents victory over necessity. To say that freedom is
graven in the nature of man, is to say that man is free because he obeys his
nature, or, to put it another way, because he is conditioned by his nature. This is
nonsense. We must not think of the problem in terms of a choice between being
determined and being free. We must look at it dialectically, and say that man is
indeed determined, but that it is open to him to oversome necessity, and that this
act is freedom. Freedom is not static but dynamic; not a vested interest, but a
prize continually to be won. The moment man stops and resigns himself, he
becomes subject to determinism. He is most enslaved when he thinks he is
comfortably settled in freedom.¶ In the modern world, the most dangerous form
of determinism is the technological phenomenon. It is not a question of getting
rid of it, but, by an act of freedom, of transcending it. How is this to be done? I do
not yet know. That is why this book is an appeal to the individual’s sense of
responsibility. The first step in the quest, the first act of freedom, is to become
aware of the necessity. The very fact that man can see, measure, and analyze the
determinisms that press on him means that he can face them and, by so doing,
act as a free man. If man were to say “These are not necessities; I am free because
of technique, or despite technique,” this would prove that he is totally
determined. However, by grasping the real nature of the technological
phenomenon, and the extent to which it is robbing him of freedom, he confronts
the blind mechanisms as a conscious being.¶ At the beginning of this foreword I
stated that this book has a purpose. That purpose is to arouse the reader to an
awareness of technological necessity and what it means. It is a call to the sleeper
to awake.
Framework
Our framework is better – their connection to technology makes
human decision-making impossible
Robins & Webster, ’99 (Kevin Robins, Frank Webster – professor at the
University of Glasgow, Head of the Department of Sociology at City University
London “Times of the Technoculture: From the Information Society to the Virtual
Life” Psychology Press, 1999, https://books.google.com/books?id=6EHkovxxzcC&source=gbs_navlinks_s) //GY
In this chapter we want to insist that the military origins of the Information
Revolution remain pertinent and pressing. This is the case whether one
examines the creation of the most advanced computer communications or
focuses on the character of information made available to the public, particularly
in times of tension. The cutting edge of ICTs remains the ‘bleeding edge’ of
military innovations. We shall document this in what follows, but from the
outset we would also stress that this is not simply a matter of the misapplication
of technologies which, given different circumstances, might be put right once
military imperatives are removed. Our main claim is that it is in the realm of
Information Warfare that a logic of control and domination, a principle which
influences much technological change, can be shown to be exercising its most
pernicious influence. This principle, one which derives the development of ever
more sophisticated systems of command and control, is something which
simultaneously develops technologies the better to survey and control putative
opponents while also building into the technologies mechanisms which may even
remove the need for human responsibility in decision-making. That is, more and
more weaponry is designed and developed to exercise control over the enemy
while at the same time taking away from its users the need to exercise judgment
in what they do. Control thereby is at once exercised over the enemy as well as
over those who use these technologies. This is expressed in ‘launch on warning’
weaponry, in surveillance systems programmed to evoke automatic responses
to pre-established stimuli, in the spread of the ‘cybernetic battlefield’ where the
enemy appears as a picture on the video screen and where responses are
conditioned by well-practised simulations. It expresses the integration of human
decision-making into ultra-sophisticated technologies with the exclusion of
human concerns and choices in favour of a planned and programmed course of
action directed at the enemy, which is observed and assessed, the better that it
may be controlled, in unprecedented ways.
The Role of the Judge is to think otherwise – this will open up the
possibility of alternatives to current sociocultural phenomena – our
presentation is key to rally support for the alt
Rose 3 – Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick (Ellen, “The
Errors of Thamus: An Analysis of Technology Critique,” Bulletin of Science,
Technology & Society, Vol. 23, No. 3, June 2003, pp. 147-156, Sage Pub,
http://bst.sagepub.com/content/23/3/147.full.pdf)BC
Let me establish from the outset that I believe absolutely in the importance of
technology critique. It is, I think, the role and responsibility of all
intellectuals, and of technology critics in particular, to think otherwise, to
offer cogent alternatives to ways of conceptualizing sociocultural phenomena
that have become so ingrained and “obvious” as to remain unconsidered and
unchallenged. But to serve this very important social function, technology
critique must be perceived as relevant; otherwise, it is too easily dismissed—as it
so often is—as the sour grapes of Luddite cranks. This is, of course, precisely the
kind of inaccurate, uniformed discourse that the technology critics seek to
counter, but in countering the hype with erudition and fierce integrity, they have
also tended to position themselves outside of technological society. As a result,
the valuable ideas and perspectives the technology critique offers are now
languishing, for the most part, on dusty bookshelves and becoming lost to the
world at large because the critics have not presented them in terms that make
them seem meaningful and relevant to members of modern society.
Tech = social construction
Social groups shape technological development
Pinch and Bijker 12 – Goldwin Smith Professor of Science & Technology
Studies in the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University
AND professor of Technology & Society at the University of Maastricht (Trevor
J.* AND Wiebe E.**, “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the
Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other,”
from The Social Construction of Technological Systems, MIT Press, Project Muse,
pp. 23-33, PDF)BC
In deciding which problems are relevant, the social groups concerned with the artifact
and the meanings that those groups give to the artifact play a crucial
role: A problem is defined as such only when there is a social group for which it
constitutes a “problem.” The use of the concept of a relevant social group is quite straightforward. The
phrase is used to denote institutions and organizations (such as the military or some specific
industrial company), as well as organized or unorganized groups of individuals. The key
requirement is that all members of a certain social group share the same set of meanings,
attached to a specific artifact.32 In deciding which social groups are relevant, we must first ask whether the
artifact has any meaning at all for the members of the social group under investigation. Obviously, the social group of
“consumers” or “users” of the artifact fulfills this requirement. But also less obvious social groups may need to be included.
In the case of the bicycle, one needs to mention the “anticyclists.” Their actions ranged from derisive cheers to more
destructive methods. For example, Reverend L. Meadows White described such resistance to the bicycle in his book, A
Photographic Tour on Wheels: . . . but when to words are added deeds, and stones are thrown, sticks thrust into the
wheels, or caps hurled into the machinery, the picture has a different aspect. All the above in certain districts are of
common occurrence, and have all happened to me, especially when passing through a village just after school is closed.
(Meadows, cited in Woodforde 1970, pp. 49–50) Clearly, for
the anticyclists the artifact “bicycle” had
taken on meaning! Another question we need to address is whether a provisionally defined
social group is homogeneous with respect to the meanings given to the artifact—or
is it more effective to describe the developmental process by dividing a rather
heterogeneous group into several different social groups? Thus within the group of cycle-users
we discern a separate social group of women cyclists. During the days of the high-wheeled Ordinary women
were not supposed to mount a bicycle. For instance, in a magazine advice column (1885) it is proclaimed, in reply to a
letter from a young lady: The mere fact of riding a bicycle is not in itself sinful, and if it is the only means of reaching the
church on a Sunday, it may be excusable. (cited in Woodforde 1970, p. 122) Tricycles
were the permitted
machines for women. But engineers and producers anticipated the importance of
women as potential bicyclists. In a review of the annual Stanley Exhibition of Cycles in 1890, the author
observes: From the number of safeties adapted for the use of ladies, it seems as if bicycling was
becoming popular with the weaker sex, and we are not surprised at it, considering
the saving of power derived from the use of a machine having only one slack.
(Stanley Exhibition of Cycles, 1890, pp. 107–108) Thus some parts of the bicycle’s development can
be better explained by including a separate social group of feminine cycle-users.
This need not, of course, be so in other cases: For instance, we would not expect it to be useful to consider a separate social
group of women users of, say, fluorescent lamps. Once
the relevant social groups have been
identified, they are described in more detail. This is also where aspects such as
power or economic strength enter the description, when relevant. Although the only
defining property is some homogeneous meaning given to a certain artifact, the intention is not just to retreat to worn-out,
general statements about “consumers” and “producers.” We
need to have a detailed description of
the relevant social groups in order to define better the function of the artifact
with respect to each group. Without this, one could not hope to be able to give any explanation of the
developmental process. For example, the social group of cyclists riding the high-wheeled Ordinary consisted of “young
men of means and nerve: they might be professional men, clerks, schoolmasters or dons” (Woodforde 1970, p. 47). For
this social group the function of the bicycle was primarily for sport. The following comment in the Daily Telegraph
(September 7, 1877) emphasizes sport, rather than transport: Bicycling
is a healthy and manly pursuit
with much to recommend it, and, unlike other foolish crazes, it has not died out.
(cited in Woodforde 1970, p. 122) Let us now return to the exposition of the model. Having identified the relevant social
groups for a certain artifact (figure 8), we
are especially interested in the problems each group has
with respect to that artifact (figure 9). Around each problem, several variants of solution can be identified
(figure 10). In the case of the bicycle, some relevant problems and solutions are shown in figure 11, in which the shaded
area of figure 2 has been filled. This
way of describing the developmental process brings out
clearly all kinds of conflicts: conflicting technical requirements by different social
groups (for example, the speed requirement and the safety requirement); conflicting solutions to the
same problem (for example, the safety low-wheelers and the safety ordinaries); and moral conflicts (for
example, women wearing skirts or trousers on high-wheelers; figure 12). Within this scheme, various solutions to these
conflicts and problems are possible—not only technological ones but also judicial or even moral ones (for example,
changing attitudes toward women wearing trousers). Following the developmental process in this way, we
see
growing and diminishing degrees of stabilization of the different artifacts.33 In
principle, the degree of stabilization is different in different social groups. By using the concept of stabilization, we see that
the “invention” of the safety bicycle was not an isolated event (1884), but a nineteen-year process (1879–98). For example,
at the beginning of this period the relevant groups did not see the “safety bicycle” but a wide range of bi- and tricycles—
and, among those, a rather ugly crocodilelike bicycle with a relatively low front wheel and rear chain drive (Lawson’s
Bicyclette; figure 13). By the end of the period, the phrase “safety bicycle” denoted a low-wheeled bicycle with rear chain
drive, diamond frame, and air tires. As a result of the stabilization of the artifact after 1898, one did not need to specify
these details: They were taken for granted as the essential “ingredients” of the safety bicycle. We want to stress that our
model is not used as a mold into which the empirical data have to be forced, coûle
que coûle. The model has been developed from a series of case studies and not from
purely philosophical or theoretical analysis. Its function is primarily heuristic—to
bring out all the aspects relevant to our purposes. This is not to say that there are no explanatory
and theoretical aims, analogous to the different stages of the EPOR (Bijker 1984 and this volume). And indeed, as we have
shown, this
model already does more than merely describe technological
development: It highlights its multidirectional character. Also, as will be indicated, it
brings out the interpretative flexibility of technological artifacts and the role that different
closure mechanisms may play in the stabilization of artifacts.
Technological artifacts are culturally constructed – there are external
influences on design
Pinch and Bijker 12 – Goldwin Smith Professor of Science & Technology
Studies in the Department of Science & Technology Studies at Cornell University
AND professor of Technology & Society at the University of Maastricht (Trevor
J.* AND Wiebe E.**, “The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts: Or How the
Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology Might Benefit Each Other,”
from The Social Construction of Technological Systems, MIT Press, Project
Muse, pp.34, PDF)BC
***NOTE: SCOT=Social Construction of Technology
In SCOT, the equivalent of the first stage of the EPOR would seem to be the
demonstration that technological artifacts are culturally constructed and
interpreted; in other words, the interpretative flexibility of a technological artifact
must be shown. By this we mean not only that there is flexibility in how people
think of or interpret artifacts but also that there is flexibility in how artifacts
are designed. There is not just one possible way or one best way of designing an
artifact. In principle, this could be demonstrated in the same way as for the
science case, that is, by interviews with technologists who are engaged in a
contemporary technological controversy. For example, we can imagine that, if
interviews had been carried out in 1890 with the cycle engineers, we would have
been able to show the interpretative flexibility of the artifact “air tyre.” For some,
this artifact was a solution to the vibration problem of small-wheeled vehicles:
Artifacts are developed through influences by different social groups
Law 12 – Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the Open University (John,
“Technology and Heterogeneous Engineering: The Case of Portuguese
Expansion,” from The Social Construction of Technological Systems, MIT Press,
Project Muse, pp. 105-106, PDF)BC
The first approach is sometimes called social constructivism.1 This outgrowth of
the sociology of science assumes that artifacts and practices are underdetermined
by the natural world and argues that they are best seen as the
constructions of individuals or collectivities that belong to social
groups. Because social groups have different interests and resources, they tend
to have different views of the proper structure of artifacts. Accordingly, the
stabilization of artifacts is explained by referring to social interests that are
imputed to the groups concerned and their differential capacity to mobilize
resources in the course of debate and controversy. Social constructivists
sometimes talk of this process as one of “closure.” Closure is achieved when
debate and controversy about the form of an artifact is effectively terminated.
The merits of the social constructivist approach are obvious. Many artifacts are,
indeed, forged in controversy and achieve their final form when a social group, or
set of groups, imposes its solutions on other interested parties by one means or
another. The fate of the electric vehicle in France (Callon, this volume) is
amenable to such analysis, as are such other cases as the British TSR-2 aircraft
(Law 1985), the Concorde aircraft (Feldman 1985), the third airports of London
and Paris (Feldman 1985), the bicycle (Pinch and Bijker 1984 and this volume),
and aspects of the development of missile guidance systems (MacKenzie, this
volume).2 Indeed, it is easy to think of examples. Whenever there is controversy,
the contingent and constructed nature of artifacts becomes manifest, and
explanations in terms of differential power and social interests become attractive.
Social factors influence technological development
Williams and Edge 96 – Professor of Science, Technology and Innovation
Studies at the University of Edinburgh AND Former Director of the Science
Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh (Robin* AND David**, “The social
shaping of technology,” Research Centre for Social Sciences, The University of
Edinburgh, February 1996, http://ac.els-cdn.com/0048733396008852/1-s2.00048733396008852-main.pdf?_tid=7989019a-240b-11e5-abcb00000aacb35f&acdnat=1436206920_f6d038f3858c15be717b4f0e14c90bb6)BC
We argue that a variety of scholars, with differing concerns and intellectual
traditions, find a meeting point in the SST project. They are united by an
insistence that the 'black-box' of technology must be opened, to allow the socioeconomic patterns embedded in both the content of technologies and the
processes of innovation to be exposed and analysed (MacKenzie and Wajcman,
1985; Bijker and Law, 1992). SST stands in contrast to post-Enlightenment
traditions which did not problematise technological change, but limited the scope
of enquiry to monitoring the social adjustments it saw as being required by
technological progress. SST emerged through a critique of such 'technological
determinism'. SST studies show that technology does not develop according to an
inner technical logic but is instead a social product, patterned by the conditions
of its creation and use. Every stage in the generation and implementation of new
technologies involves a set of choices between different technical options.
Alongside narrowly 'technical' considerations, a range of 'social' factors
affect which options are selected - thus influencing the content of
technologies, and their social implications.
Simply establishing that technologies are 'socially shaped' leaves open many
important questions about the character and influence of the shaping forces. In
seeking to grasp the complexity of the socio-economic processes involved in
technological innovation, SST has been forced to go beyond simplistic forms of
social determinism which, like technological determinism, see technology as
reflecting a single rationality - for example an economic imperative, or the
political imperative of a ruling dlite. For example a critique has been made of the
dominant neo-classical tradition of economic analysis, with its assumptions that
technologies will emerge readily in response to market demands (Coombs et al.,
1987).
In attempting to grasp this complexity, various conceptual frameworks have been
advanced both about the nature of the socio-economic forces shaping technology
and about the appropriate levels and frameworks for their analysis. These reflect
the differing research concerns and theoretical traditions within SST. We will
therefore begin by outlining (in Section 2) this diversity of intellectual origins,
and its legacy in current theoretical perspectives and debates.
Central to SST is the concept that there are 'choices' (though not necessarily
conscious choices) inherent in both the design of individual artefacts and
systems, and in the direction or trajectory of innovation programmes. If
technology does not emerge from the unfolding of a predetermined logic or a
single determinant, then innovation is a 'garden of forking paths'. Different
routes are available, potentially leading to different technological outcomes.
Significantly, these choices could have differing implications for society and for
particular social groups. The character of technologies, as well as their social
implications, are problematised and opened up for enquiry. We can analyse the
social influences over the particular technological routes taken (and their
consequences). This opens up two sets of questions. First SST stresses the
negotiability of technology (Cronberg, 1992), highlighting the scope for particular
groups and forces to shape technologies to their ends and the possibility of
different kinds of ('technological' and 'social' outcome). Second it raises questions
about irreversibility (Collingridge, 1992; Callon, 1993) - the extent and manner in
which choices may be foreclosed. Earlier technological choices pattern
subsequent development (Rosenberg, 1994). Certain options may be selected
and become entrenched (for example as a result of the tendency of new
technologies to develop cumulatively, erected upon the knowledge base and
social and technical infrastructure of existing technologies) particularly where
increasing returns to scale of investment result in 'lock-in' to established
solutions (David, 1975; Arthur, 1989; Cowan, 1992). SST points to closure, the
ways in which innovation may become stabilised (Pinch and Bijker, 1984), as well
as the possibility of reversing earlier choices (Latour, 1988). As we shall see
below, SST proponents differ over their characterisation of such 'choices', and in
their approaches to the stability or negotiability of technologies - with related
differences over the r61es and significance of large-scale social and economic
structures, as opposed to the activities of individuals and groups. Longestablished debates within social sciences have resurfaced in this field, with a
number of (often heated) theoretical disputes.
A2: Legal Reform Good
The aff can’t solve – militarized technological police control and
surveillance is pervasive and has been normalized
Robins & Webster, ’99 (Kevin Robins, Frank Webster – professor at the
University of Glasgow, Head of the Department of Sociology at City University
London “Times of the Technoculture: From the Information Society to the Virtual
Life” Psychology Press, 1999, https://books.google.com/books?id=6EHkovxxzcC&source=gbs_navlinks_s) //GY
In the name of security, state surveillance has become a pandemic, and even
normative, feature of modern society. In the process, it has extended from
intelligence activities to routine policing activities. This has been encouraged
particularly by the expanding police use of computer facilities, which has
promoted new forms of proactive and pre-emptive policing. As it becomes
possible to maintain ‘a broad data base that can be inexpensively screened, it
becomes prudent to consider everyone a possible suspect initially’. Such
developments can be seen, in Foucaldian terms, as part of ‘an irreversible
continuing historical process of more intensive and extensive social control’. As a
former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Kenneth Newman, has
expressed it, ‘it would be better if we stopped talking about crime prevention and
lifted the whole thing to a higher level of generality represented by the words
“social control”’. However, what is particularly significant is that these
surveillance and control strategies are modeled on the military paradigm. In
their computerization strategies, ‘the police are moving to a more military style of
operation’. Thus the policing strategy of ‘targeting and surveillance’, which
undertakes surveillance activities in order to ‘target’ individuals, groups,
locations or areas of special interest, is military in origin. It was developed by Sir
Kenneth Newman out of his experiences as Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster
Constabulary in the late 1970s, where the British army had ‘set up, under the
direction of the leading counter-insurgency theorist Frank Kitson, just such a
system for the collection and analysis of masses of intelligence information’.
Rather than being some extraordinary and exceptional state of affairs, the
military paradigm of surveillance technologies interlinked with command and
control systems that are insistently hidden from the public eye, has become a
generalized model for control and policing strategies.
A2: FRAMEWORK
Technique controls the state, not vice-versa—state technological
solutions are important but only as sites for critique
HANKS 1992 (Joyce Hanks is professor of French and Spanish at the University of Scranton, “The Politics Of God And The
Politics Of Ellul,” JETS 35/2, June, http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/35/35-2/JETS_35-2_217-230_Hanks.pdf)
Ellul takes pleasure in reducing overblown concepts to their proper size. He continually rebels against our society's dangerous tendency to
idolize itself and its various facets. Politics for Ellul amounts merely to "an honest concrete exercise in administration or management... it
has no spiritual, ideological, or doctrinal content."6 We are not to interpret this definition as a call to dismiss politics as unimportant,
small, technical tasks of politics deserve careful
attention in spite of the limited nature of their results. Seen from another angle, the danger in politics
however. On the contrary, Ellul maintains that the
centers in its relationship with power. A second Ellulian definition, related to Matt 20:20-25, calls politics "a means of conquering others
and exercising power over them."7 In this second definition politics would seem to involve the state's power,
but in other contexts
Ellul takes care to distinguish politics from the state. In his seminal The Technological Society, for
instance, Ellul claims the state has lost most of its decision-making capability, so that we
should no longer label it "political."8
In practice, however, Ellul usually follows common usage, considering "political matter" to be "the domain and sphere of public interests
created and represented by the state." "Politics" he defines as "action relative to this domain, the conduct of political groups, and any
influence exercised on that conduct."9 In spite of Ellul's apparently contradictory definitions, developed for use in differing contexts, we will
not go far wrong if we see in his ordinary use of the word "politics" a concern for the tendency to use the power of the state for the purpose
of controlling people. In Ellul's view politics can and should be restricted to less fearsome activities, such as administration.
the
state "will grab as much power as it is allowed to grab,"11 to the great detriment
and danger of the individual. He describes factors at work in our time that offer the state
unprecedented opportunities for arrogating power to itself. These involve primarily its
alliance with technique and the sacred status our society has granted it . But he also sees
The problem of limiting power requires further exploration. Ellul sees the exercise of power as "always dangerous"10 and believes
political power as the domain of Satan, who grants it to people so they can subjugate each other.12 Sacredness as a characteristic of the state
the traditional
sacredness of political power has been enhanced in our day through its
abstraction.13 He argues that our present-day sacreds remain mysterious and
unassailable, so that criticism of them provokes outrage, panic and passion. The
state gives meaning to life, and we look to it for the solution to all our problems.
In return it requires us to make unprecedented sacrifices and to condone all
kinds of evil perpetrated in its name. This is specially true, Ellul maintains, as the state has grown
to absorb "into itself the entire life of the nation," forming the "nation-state,"14 and as the state has allied itself with
technique, our other sacred focus. In his most recent book on technology Ellul examines technique's role in politics and economics,
where technique "is like a key, like a substance underlying all problems and
situations. It is ultimately the decisive factor. "15 This means that politicians will
not manage to bring technique under their control, as many assume they will. On the
contrary, technique increasingly determines politics.16
and of technique receives its most convincing treatment in Ellul's The New Demons, where he maintains that
A2: CEDE THE POLITICAL
Debate doesn’t create informed citizens—the infinite proliferation of
related issues means that the more we debate governmental energy
policy the less influence we have
ELLUL 1980 (Jacques Ellul, The Technological System Translated from the French by Joachim Neugroschel,
http://www.jesusradicals.com/wp-content/uploads/system.pdf)
Monsieur Lattès rightly feels that
for the exercise of democracy, all citizens must be well
informed and judge with full knowledge of the facts. If parliamentary debate is to have any sense, all the deputies must be well
educated and well informed. Then, regarding the problem of energy, Lattès asks seven "obvious" questions, whose answers
one must know for any valid opinion in the energy debate. But he does not seem to realize for even an instant that this issue,
paramount as its importance may be, is simply one of dozens: the risks of military
policies, the multinational corporations, Inflation, its causes and remedies, the
ways and means of aid to the third world, etc. For each issue, the citizen would have to
have a complete, serious, elaborate, and honest file. Who could fail to see the
absurdity of the situation! People do not even have time to “keep up to date."
Furthermore, Lattès apparently believes that the correctly informed citizen could
decide on the problem of nuclear energy beyond gut responses and panicky
reactions. But (and I will develop this further on) what marks the situation is the inextricable
conflict of opinions among the greatest scientists and technicians. The more
informed the citizen, the less he can participate. Because the evaluations are
perfectly contradictory. Lattès is deluding himself. But this is certainly more comforting! There is absolutely
no way the citizen can decide for himself. Yet the politician is equally deprived (cf. "L'Illusion
politique" in Finzi: Il potere tecnocratico).6
A2: HABERMAS
Habermas has it backwards—a democratic state won’t rein in
technology, it will be captured by technique
ELLUL 1980 (Jacques Ellul, The Technological System Translated from the French by Joachim Neugroschel,
http://www.jesusradicals.com/wp-content/uploads/system.pdf)
Habermas does a superficial analysis of the relationship between orientation of
technological progress depends on public investments," hence on politics. He
seems to be totally unaware of dozens of studies (including Galbraith's or mine) showing the
subordination of political decisions to technological imperatives. He winds up
with the elementary wish to "get hold of technology again" and "place it under the
control of public opinion . . . reintegrate it within the consensus of the citizens.”
The matter is, alas, a wee bit more complicated; likewise, when he contrasts the technocratic schema with
the decision-making schema. To grasp the interaction, he ought to study L. Sfez (Critique de la décision, 1974). And Habermas's discussion
the "pragmatic model" is along the lines of a pious hope, a wish: the process of
scientification of politics, such as appears desirable to him, is a "must.” But the
reality of this technicization of politics actually occurs on a different model!
Habermas poses the philosophical problem honesty: The true problem is to know if, having reached a
certain level of knowledge capable of bringing certain consequences, one is
content to put that knowledge at the disposal of men involved in technological
manipulations, or whether one wants men communicating among themselves to
retake possession of that knowledge in their very language. But Habermas poses
the problem outside of any reality. When reading this text, we need only ask:
Who is that "one" who puts technology at the disposal of either group? Who
exercises this (if you like) supreme "will"?
of
A2: TECH INEVITABLE
Claims about the inevitability of technology are the deterministic
foundation for technological dictatorship and terrorism
ELLUL 1990 (Jacques, Jacques motherfuckin’ Ellul, The Technological Bluff, Google Books)
Our future is clear and irrevocably fixed. This might, of course, be a matter for
intellectual debate. One might bring against Ducrocq or Bressand the damage that progress does, or quote critical reports.
But this is no longer the situation. The report that 1 have summarized is an official text which is meant to show the
government what it should do and forecast. Above all, we have to see that this is not a mere
hypothesis or probability. No, tomorrow's society is like this. The main task of the
government, then, is on the one hand to prepare young people to enter this
society and on the other hand to bring this society into being. It is here that
terrorism arises.
This totally technicized, computerized society is inevitable. Thus we have to go
with the flow, to make it arrive, to preside at its birth, and to integrate the new
generation into this world. We no longer have any choice. There are no options,
which would be useless, for we know what the outcome will be. In a different ideological context we, too,
must go with the flow of history. But we are well aware that when we do this we
are scientifically determined. (Do not forget that Marxism was regarded as the science of sciences; today technologism
is.) The ineluctable outcome is dictatorship and terrorism. I am not saying that the governments that
choose this as the flow of history will reproduce Soviet terrorism. Not at all! But they will certainly engage in an ideological terrorism.
This terroristic claim is what makes technique inevitable—it isn’t
given in advance
ELLUL 1990 (Jacques, Jacques motherfuckin’ Ellul, The Technological Bluff, Google Books)
"This society is inevitable and we are thus preparing young people to enter it , to find a
place and a job in it." This is the terrorist argument, as we have said. What seems not to be
considered is that this society is not inevitable. By preparing people to enter it, by
giving them no other aim than to be competent in it, by creating among them a
frantic need to work on technique, by soaking them in the knowledge and
coherent practices of this society, we are making it increasingly probable. What
will finally make it inevitable is neither the development of science and technique
nor economic needs but the shaping of people who can do nothing else and will
not be comfortable in any other society. What makes techno-science inevitable is
the belief that it is, the pseudo-predictive boasting, and the assuring of people
that it is in process of realization.
A2: NO ALT
Rejecting detailed political solutions is a first step to break the
hegemony of technique—we can oppose nuclear power most
effectively if we don’t confuse politics with the state
HANKS 1992 (Joyce Hanks is professor of French and Spanish at the University of Scranton, “The Politics Of God And The
Politics Of Ellul,” JETS 35/2, June, http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/35/35-2/JETS_35-2_217-230_Hanks.pdf)
Critics generally agree that Ellul offers more analysis of modern society's problems than solutions
for those problems. He often counters that we cannot possibly hope to find adequate
solutions before grasping the precise nature of the problems we face. He
conceives his role as one of helping to dispel some of the myths that cloud our vision
and prevent us from seeing our reality clearly. Ellul remains convinced that his most useful
contribution lies in sociological and theological analysis, the areas of his expertise, rather than in
detailed prescriptions for the rest of us to follow. He has no desire to develop a "following" or to see the
formation of a "school" of Ellulian disciples. His firm belief in democracy restrains him from dictating what others should do. In spite of this
strong, consistent stance, however, in some of his books Ellul hints at possible ways out of our present binds. Occasionally he develops a
proposal in some detail.18 Ellul's personal political practice provides additional insight into his approach to solutions.
We can
consider his life as an illustration of the motto he often repeats: "Think globally, act locally." He reports the results
of his overall thinking in books and articles with a view to provoking others' reflection and takes a concrete stand on regional issues he can
investigate carefully and feels strongly about. His many articles and letters to the editor in the national Le Monde and in Bordeaux's Sud-
lifelong involvement: pleas in favor of various refugees, arguments against the
spread of nuclear power, a concerted campaign against the "development" for tourism of the nearby coast of Aquitania
(one of Ellul's many environmental concerns), and so forth.19
Ouest suggest the flavor of this
One of Ellul's efforts on a national scale involved the French Reformed Church in the mid-1980s. Sensing the dearth of communication
between the hierarchy of the Church and the rank and file, he embarked on a solitary campaign to redesign the Church from the ground up.
He appealed for what he called the "Estates General of Protestantism," to be open to all who were interested in the future of the Church. As
people met and reflected on what the Church should be and do, a new organism would be formed and the elaborate ecclesiastical
bureaucracy bypassed or perhaps eliminated. Because of his stature, Ellul's appeal received considerable media attention. But he fell ill just
before the well-attended conference of laypersons and clergy in Paris that he had targeted to consider his proposal. When he could not
travel from Bordeaux to Paris to defend his ideas in person, they received only minimal attention and his project failed. We should note
Ellul's emphasis on the individual's involvement and decision in his "Estates General" undertaking and the way the proposal avoids
appealing to any kind of power structure. Indeed, the threat felt by the Church hierarchy when Ellul suggested including the entire Church
in basic decision-making probably explains why his proposition met with rapid defeat.
During World War II, in an earlier era of his political activity, Ellul took part in the French resistance movement. He served in government
immediately after the war as adjunct mayor of Bordeaux. Often cited as the experience that taught him how insignificant politicians'
decisions have become in a technical age, Ellul's time in office left him with a desire to participate in autonomous groups for the purpose of
achieving change rather than to run for elective office.20
Ellul's advice concerning politics can be summarized in terms of a recommendation that we discover and maintain its relative status.
In
an age where entire societies look to the state and politics to solve every
imaginable problem, our best course lies in the opposite direction: finding ways
to limit the reach of political power. All movements fail, in Ellul's eyes, when they
assume that political solutions can remedy the ills they deplore. Real problems
have no political solution, so it is important not to pose them in political terms.
And political problems themselves do not have solutions at all—only
"accommodations."21
With dogged consistency Ellul has applied his belief in the relative nature of politics to one trend after another over a period of decades.
Measured by this principle, the vast majority of efforts are found wanting: personalism, the communist party, anticommunist efforts,
socialism, the World Council of Churches, Marxist-Christian dialogue, most liberation theologies, the Church in France, politicized feminist
Ellul does not condemn all these movements outright. On the
contrary, often he finds significant pockets of hope for the future precisely within some of
them. But he deplores the repeated tendency of such groups to shoot themselves in
the foot by centering their efforts around political solutions.
movements, and so on.
He does not at all suggest that we
abandon politics as a useless endeavor. He insists, rather, that we must keep
politics in its place— a secondary, relative place that holds much less importance
than we usually
give it:
De-politicizing . . . is not a rejection of politics. It is a rejection of illusion and
ideology. .. . De-politicization implies a true interest in political questions. It
implies involvement. What is superfluous will be stripped away, but politics itself
will be taken seriously.... De-politicizing comes after engagement and not before.
It is the attitude of those who are already committed to politics and not of those who regard
As suggested above, we must guard against misunderstanding Ellul's point here:
such commitment as absurd and useless.22
Such a tightrope act requires discretion and motivation of a kind that Ellul does not spell out in his purely sociological works (roughly half
his output). To understand him more fully we must turn to his theological books, where we discover his concrete suggestions for political
involvement, which he directs to the Christian believer.
A2: PERMUTATION
Demands for state reform are inconsistent with our rethinking of
politics
HANKS 1992 (Joyce Hanks is professor of French and Spanish at the University of Scranton, “The Politics Of God And The
Politics Of Ellul,” JETS 35/2, June, http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/35/35-2/JETS_35-2_217-230_Hanks.pdf)
Such a positive attitude toward anarchism fits naturally with Ellul's long-held belief that our society needs to experience a peaceful
since its alliance with technique began in
earnest, the state, Ellul believes, has tried to eliminate resistance and to produce a
homogeneous society. In any attempt to foil this tendency
it is important above all never to permit oneself to ask the state to help us. This
means that we must try to create positions in which we reject and struggle with
the state, not in order to modify some element of the regime or force it to make
some decision, but, much more fundamentally, in order to permit the emergence of social, political,
intellectual, or artistic bodies, associations, interest groups, or economic or Christian groups totally independent of
the state, yet capable of opposing it, able to reject its pressures as well as its
controls, even its gifts.51
revolution based on small, autonomous groups. Particularly
Such groups should be widely diversified and constitute points of tension over against the monolithic state. Ellul suggests that young people
may find themselves especially motivated to oppose society, but he also mentions more consciously formed groups that make him hopeful,
such as ecological and antinuclear movements, consumer groups, neighborhood associations, and some
women's movements.52
Technology Studies Wrong
Don’t evaluate Technology Studies – it is shaped by the technological
bluff
Son 4 – assistant professor of philosophy at Handong Global University (WhaChul, “Reading Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Bluff in Context,” Bulletin of
Science, Technology & Society, Vol. 24, No. 6, December 2004, pp. 518-533, Sage
Publications)BC
The Hidden Techno-Logy Bluff
Furthermore, Ellul challenged the existing discussion about possible change in
the character of modern technique. Mentioning the hope that computer
technique can enhance decentralization and democracy, Ellul argued,
The idea that the computer is a creator of freedom is a myth pure and simple. . .
.Yet I cannot think that all the talk of the possibility of decentralization by such
technical means as the microcomputer is a lie. There is no intention to deceive. It
is a major example of technological bluff. It is a bluff that ensnares democrats
and liberals, and that is all it is. (TB, pp. 276-277)
Although this remark has a specific target, its implication for contemporary
technology studies poses a serious challenge. The importance of technology
studies is being recognized by more and more universities and governments.
They realize that the technological development is not just about engineering and
science but that it also has sociopolitical aspects. Many ethical committees and
research projects inquiring the social and cultural implication of technology are
established, and many universities start opening courses and programs in related
fields such as history and sociology of technique, applied ethics, technology
policy, and informatics.13 What Ellul argued in TB was, however, that even this
kind of effort could end up in being techno-logical bluff, even if one might see this
as an improvement to a certain extent. From an Ellulian point of view, there are
at least three potential dangers in technology studies. To make the argument
more specific, here I focus on technology policy studies together with theories of
democratizing technology, which have a major status in technology studies.
From an Ellulian perspective, human control over technology is often accepted
uncritically in technology policy studies. Most research on the social, cultural,
and ethical implications of new technologies presuppose that the direction of
certain technological developments is completely up to the responsible human
participant. The same attitude is often found in terms of the potential
consequence of the projects. Consequently, they try to exhaust all possibilities
that one can imagine and try to regulate them by drawing some limit to the given
technological research project itself or to the utilization of the results. Only very
rarely the whole technological project is rejected because of its potential danger
or damage. Ellul would argue that this kind of project itself can function as a
techno-logical bluff by creating the appearance that human beings are still in
control of all technological development. If one acknowledges that, at least in
some cases, man cannot control a certain technological project in terms of its
known and unknown risks, then a decision for a moratorium in some
technological research area (TB, pp. 177, 187) could be a reasonable response.
This idea, however, is taken as completely nonsensical nowadays.
It was mentioned above that the techno-logical bluff is closely linked to the
ideological aspect of the efficiency principle. The second problem related to the
first point is that some technology studies can simply be used as the legitimizing
process for a certain desired technological development. As mentioned above,
Ellul’s notion of autonomous technique encompasses the structure of the market
and sociopolitical environment. Sometimes it is apparent for players in the
market that a certain technology will be very important in the near future. A good
example would be nanotechnology. To survive in a world market, it is very
important to be a first runner from the beginning stage and many efforts are
made on a government’s level. In addition to research in nano-technology itself,
numerous committees are established and large research funds are provided for
research projects concerning the ethical aspect of nano-technology. From the
beginning, however, it is obvious to all involved that nanotechnology is
important, and it will have to be developed further in the near future. It is
difficult to expect that the research on social, cultural, and political aspects of the
technology will produce a report that denounces the project as a whole, even
when the project takes too much risk and its merit is dubitable. Furthermore, it is
easy to imagine that many of these so called ethical research papers are funded
deliberately to legitimize the given technological project and soothe possible
worries among people. It is well known that large corporations try to create a
positive public image for a controversial technology to preserve their interests
(Nakajima, 2001).
The third danger immediately follows from the second: the possibility of public
manipulation. Theories and practices related to democratizing technology are
interesting in this respect. There have been many attempts to increase the public
participation in the decision-making procedure for a technological development.
Feenberg (1999) developed a theory of deep democratization of technology based
on a social constructivist view on technological development. Sclove (1995)
presented a theory of democratic design based on Barber’s (1984) idea of strong
democracy. Consensus conferences, for example, are one of the better-known
methods for public participation in the decision-making procedure of technology
policy, which is highly recommended by Sclove (1995, p. 216-219) and other
authors. However, they do not pay sufficient attention to the fact that modern
technological enterprises have made it more difficult to put democratic principles
into practice. The biggest problem is that there is no way to prevent one from
being misled by deliberate and nondeliberate kinds of manipulation or technological bluff. Among the flood of information, it is very difficult for lay citizens to
understand the disagreement among experts. There are also worries concerning
whether the public makes its mind up by rational judgment or based on
misleading advertisement disguised as information. Furthermore, the hidden
conviction that one or the other technique is inevitable for human life, planted by
pervasive techno-logical bluff, not by any serious reasoning, is a stumbling block
for the simple proposal that the public knows what is best. This produces a
complicated situation, in which the innocent proposal for democratizing
technology turns out to be a techno-logical bluff on a higher level, because of
other kinds of techno-logical bluff that are already so pervasive.
Ellul does not deny that people are still able to have and express their critical
mind, form critical movements, and influence decisions concerning particular
techniques. The real problem is, according to Ellul, that techno-logical bluff is
changing the basic perception of technique so profoundly and subtly that even
those critical movements cannot be completely free from its grip.
Aff
Technology Good
Technology can be an agent of progressive change
Carlisle and Manning 99 – Open University Business School, Milton Keynes
AND visiting professor from the University of Durham (Y.M.* AND D.J.**,
“Ideological persuasion and technological Determinism,” Technology in Society,
Volume 21, pp.81-102, Science Direct)BC
The fact that technological change is progressive is a fundamental fact about
technology whether it be the technology of production or the technology of its
product. Every technological achievement has its natural ceiling imposed by
the laws of nature . A propeller-driven aircraft cannot exceed the speed of
sound as can a jet-propelled aircraft, and neither can operate as high as the
rocket-propelled missile. For the same reasons that the nuclear submarine has a
greater range than the diesel/electric submarine or the hovercraft can exceed the
speed of a surface vessel , there is always a frontier to be crossed by
technological innovation which has been imposed by the inherent limitations on
the performance of every machine subject to the same laws of nature that permit
its function in the first place.
Consequently, the technologist has as inexhaustible a challenge to his ingenuity
as he has an inexhaustible source of inspiration in the progressive discoveries of
experimental science. Given a devotion to the criteria of “efficiency”, “economy”,
and “utility” in conceiving improved design, the technologist can only prove to be
an agent of progressive change in what can only be a competitive
profession in which the winner must eventually take all of his technologically
determined share of the market.
Technology is good and is key to alt solvency
Rose 3 – Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick (Ellen, “The
Errors of Thamus: An Analysis of Technology Critique,” Bulletin of Science,
Technology & Society, Vol. 23, No. 3, June 2003, pp. 147-156, Sage Pub,
http://bst.sagepub.com/content/23/3/147.full.pdf)BC
Of course, the label “anti-utopian” is immediately suggestive of a shortcoming of
this mode of critique: It emerges less as a response to technological developments
than as a reaction to the hyperbole of technoprophets, which, insofar as it
compels people to succumb to the prophet’s self-interested prescription of how
the world ought to be, is disparaged as irresponsible and even “tyrannical”
(Dublin, 1989, p. 51). Following this line, Roszak (1986/1994) confessed on the
first page of The Cult of Information that his interest is not in computers per se
but in “their folklore” (p. xiii), which it is his intention to discredit. In thus
seeking to counterbalance the unbounded optimism and enthusiasm of the
technophiles, technology critics are inclined to go to the opposite extreme, “to
speak only of burdens” while remaining “silent about the opportunities that new
technologies make possible” (Postman, 1992, p. 5).
This unrelieved pessimism is sometimes offered as a reason for the lack of
effectiveness and diffusion of technology critique. According to Barbara
Warnick (2002), “bleak rejection paints a picture that is doomed to be
rejected by the public ” (p. 125). Self-described cyborg Steve Mann (2001)
agreed: “How many times can the alarm be sounded before we start to ignore it”
(pp. ix-x)? After all, despite the often unrelenting negativity of the critics’
messages, technology has vastly improved human existence in many
tangible ways. Though we may not all want to wear our technology, as Mann
does, who among us would forgo electric lights, automobiles, hot showers,
refrigerators, washing machines, modern medicine? The reality of life without
these and other products of technological development would be, as Raymond
Williams (1989) vividly reminded us, “dirty water, an earth bucket, a four-mile
walk each way to work, headaches, broken women, hunger and monotony of diet”
(p. 10). Indeed, if I and other technology critics have the time and luxury to create
an intellectual space within which to contemplate the effects of technology, it is in
part because of the innovations that have freed us from the necessity
of slaving to scrape a bare subsistence from the earth.
The tendency to present only the negative implications of technological
development is, as Postman (1992) freely admitted, an “ error ” (p. 5), but it
alone lacks sufficient explanatory power. We might also look beyond the quality
of negativity to the bleak pictures thus created: In their dark descriptions of a
technology that insinuates itself into our thought world, the technology critics
seem to explain and anticipate the failure of their investigations to have a
significant effect on the way our society receives technology. Ellul (1954/1964),
for example, described an autonomous, self-regulating technical system that
achieves the unquestioning acceptance of the human beings who maintain it
through the creation of a collective passion for technique and the resulting
suppression of all critical response (p. 369). If, as Ellul and other critics argue,
the technological society perpetuates itself by compelling its citizens to accept
without question the doctrine that whatever fosters technical progress is good
whereas whatever and whoever hobble it are bad, then the technology
critique has not a hope of being heard.
If, however, one does not accept that people are so contented with their lot, or
so thoroughly bound in servitude to an autonomous technology, that they
are unable to contemplate other possibilities, then one is led to a somewhat
different conclusion: To understand the failure of technology critique to have a
significant impact on the ways in which society receives technology, we must look
more carefully at the nature of the critique itself.
End of technological development = billions die
Bostrom ‘3 (Nick Bostrum, PhD from London School of Economics,
“Transhumanism FAQ”,
http://www.paulbroman.com/myspace/Transhumanism_FAQ.txt 2003, wcp)
Population increase is an issue we would ultimately have to come to grips with even if healthy life-extension were not to
happen. Leaving people to die is an unacceptable solution. A large population should not be viewed simply as a problem.
Another way of looking at the same fact is that it means that many persons now
enjoy lives that would not have been lived if the population had been smaller. One
could ask those who complain about overpopulation exactly which people’s lives they would have preferred should not
have been led. Would it really have been better if billions of the world’s people had never existed and if there had been no
other people in their place? Of course, this is not to deny that too-rapid population growth can cause crowding, poverty,
and the depletion of natural resources. In this sense there can be real problems that need to be tackled. How
many
people the Earth can sustain at a comfortable standard of living is a
function of technological development (as well as of how resources are distributed). New
technologies, from simple improvements in irrigation and management, to better
mining techniques and more efficient power generation machinery, to genetically
engineered crops, can continue to improve world resource and food output, while
at the same time reducing environmental impact and animal suffering.
Environmentalists are right to insist that the status quo is unsustainable. As a matter of physical necessity, things cannot
stay as they are today indefinitely, or even for very long. If we continue to use up resources at the current pace, without
finding more resources or learning how to use novel kinds of resources, then we will run into serious shortages sometime
around the middle of this century. The
deep greens have an answer to this: they suggest we
turn back the clock and return to an idyllic pre-industrial age to live in
sustainable harmony with nature. The problem with this view is that the preindustrial age was anything but idyllic. It was a life of poverty, misery, disease,
heavy manual toil from dawn to dusk, superstitious fears, and cultural
parochialism. Nor was it environmentally sound – as witness the deforestation of England and the Mediterranean
region, desertification of large parts of the middle east, soil depletion by the Anasazi in the Glen Canyon area, destruction
of farm land in ancient Mesopotamia through the accumulation of mineral salts from irrigation, deforestation and
consequent soil erosion by the ancient Mexican Mayas, overhunting of big game almost everywhere, and the extinction of
the dodo and other big featherless birds in the South Pacific. Furthermore,
it is hard to see how more
than a few hundred million people could be maintained at a reasonable standard
of living with pre-industrial production methods, so some ninety percent of
the world population would somehow have to vanish in order to
facilitate this nostalgic return. Transhumanists propose a much more
realistic alternative: not to retreat to an imagined past, but to press ahead as
intelligently as we can. The environmental problems that technology creates
are problems of intermediary, inefficient technology, of placing insufficient
political priority on environmental protection as well as of a lack of ecological
knowledge. Technologically less advanced industries in the former Soviet-bloc pollute much more than do their
advanced Western counterparts. High-tech industry is typically relatively benign. Once we develop
molecular nanotechnology, we will not only have clean and efficient
manufacturing of almost any commodity, but we will also be able to clean up
much of the mess created by today’s crude fabrication methods. This would set a
standard for a clean environment that today’s traditional environmentalists could
scarcely dream of.
Internet Good
The internet increases happiness and autonomy – studies prove
Castells 14 – Wallis Annenberg Chair Professor of Communication Technology
and Society at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He is also
Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley; director
of the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Open University of Catalonia
(UOC); director of the Network Society Chair at the Collège d’études mondiales in
Paris, and director of research in the Department of Sociology at the University of
Cambridge. He is académico numerario of the Spanish Royal Academy of
Economics and Finance, fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, fellow of the British Academy, and fellow of the Academia Europea
(Manuel, “The Impact of the Internet on Society: A Global Perspective,” BBVA
Open Mind, September 8th, 2014,
https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/article/the-impact-of-the-internet-onsociety-a-global-perspective/?fullscreen=true)BC
As stated above, academic research has established that the Internet does not
isolate people, nor does it reduce their sociability; it actually increases sociability,
as shown by myself in my studies in Catalonia (Castells 2007), Rainie and
Wellman in the United States (2012), Cardoso in Portugal (2010), and the World
Internet Survey for the world at large (Center for the Digital Future 2012 et al.).
Furthermore, a major study by Michael Willmott for the British Computer
Society (Trajectory Partnership 2010) has shown a positive correlation, for
individuals and for countries, between the frequency and intensity of the use of
the Internet and the psychological indicators of personal happiness. He used
global data for 35,000 people obtained from the World Wide Survey of the
University of Michigan from 2005 to 2007. Controlling for other factors, the
study showed that Internet use empowers people by increasing their feelings of
security, personal freedom, and influence, all feelings that have a positive effect
on happiness and personal well-being. The effect is particularly positive for
people with lower income and who are less qualified, for people in the developing
world, and for women. Age does not affect the positive relationship; it is
significant for all ages. Why women? Because they are at the center of the
network of their families, Internet helps them to organize their lives. Also, it
helps them to overcome their isolation, particularly in patriarchal societies. The
Internet also contributes to the rise of the culture of autonomy.
The key for the process of individuation is the construction of autonomy by social
actors, who become subjects in the process. They do so by defining their specific
projects in interaction with, but not submission to, the institutions of society.
This is the case for a minority of individuals, but because of their capacity to lead
and mobilize they introduce a new culture in every domain of social life: in work
(entrepreneurship), in the media (the active audience), in the Internet (the
creative user), in the market (the informed and proactive consumer), in
education (students as informed critical thinkers, making possible the new
frontier of e-learning and m-learning pedagogy), in health (the patient-centered
health management system) in e-government (the informed, participatory
citizen), in social movements (cultural change from the grassroots, as in
feminism or environmentalism), and in politics (the independent-minded citizen
able to participate in self-generated political networks).
There is increasing evidence of the direct relationship between the Internet and
the rise of social autonomy. From 2002 to 2007 I directed in Catalonia one of the
largest studies ever conducted in Europe on the Internet and society, based on
55,000 interviews, one-third of them face to face (IN3 2002–07). As part of this
study, my collaborators and I compared the behavior of Internet users to nonInternet users in a sample of 3,000 people, representative of the population of
Catalonia. Because in 2003 only about 40 percent of people were Internet users
we could really compare the differences in social behavior for users and nonusers, something that nowadays would be more difficult given the 79 percent
penetration rate of the Internet in Catalonia. Although the data are relatively old,
the findings are not, as more recent studies in other countries (particularly in
Portugal) appear to confirm the observed trends. We constructed scales of
autonomy in different dimensions. Only between 10 and 20 percent of the
population, depending on dimensions, were in the high level of autonomy. But we
focused on this active segment of the population to explore the role of the
Internet in the construction of autonomy. Using factor analysis we identified six
major types of autonomy based on projects of individuals according to their
practices:
a) professional development
b) communicative autonomy
c) entrepreneurship
d) autonomy of the body
e) sociopolitical participation
f) personal, individual autonomy
These six types of autonomous practices were statistically independent among
themselves. But each one of them correlated positively with Internet use in
statistically significant terms, in a self-reinforcing loop (time sequence): the more
one person was autonomous, the more she/he used the web, and the more she/he
used the web, the more autonomous she/he became (Castells et al. 2007). This is
a major empirical finding. Because if the dominant cultural trend in our society is
the search for autonomy, and if the Internet powers this search, then we are
moving toward a society of assertive individuals and cultural freedom, regardless
of the barriers of rigid social organizations inherited from the Industrial Age.
From this Internet-based culture of autonomy have emerged a new kind of
sociability, networked sociability, and a new kind of sociopolitical practice,
networked social movements and networked democracy. I will now turn to the
analysis of these two fundamental trends at the source of current processes of
social change worldwide.
Ellul Indict
Ellul’s conception of the state was too broad and contradictory
Moore 98 – assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Boise
State University (Robert Clifton, “Hegemony, Agency, and Dialectical Tension in
Ellul’s Technological Society,” Journal of Communication, Volume 48, Issue 3,
pages 129–144, September 1998, Wiley Online)BC
Although not avoiding discussion of the state, Ellul did not hinge his work on a
narrow definition of the state. This is the other difficulty his excursion into this
subject poses. One of the frustrations for most readers of the French writer is the
broad brushstrokes with which he painted. Benello (1981) wrote, in reference
to The Technological Society, that it “operates more in terms of auras and
impressions than clearly defined ideas” (p. 91). Whether this aura-like writing
was the product of Ellul’s existential philosophy, a desire to present ideas that
could be comprehended in diverse cultures, or some other phenomenon, we can
only speculate. Though still speculative, there is some evidence to suggest that
Ellul was looking for the big picture, not the details. Thus, Stanley (1981) pointed
out the ambiguous and occasionally contradictory nature of Ellul’s work.
Specifically, he mentioned how Ellul “argues that the state is simultaneously
omnipotent and merely supervisory” (p. 84). What Stanley demonstrated in
analyzing Ellul’s work in relation to Hobbesianism, is that the state must be
defined clearly enough to understand the individual’s relation to it (as in the
relation between a citizen and the sovereign). In this light, we can understand
that Ellul’s purpose in the late 20th century was simply to demonstrate the
distinctions that made the technological state different from the traditional state
Tech=Social Construction indict
Bijker’s analysis of social groups’ influence disregards relative
position of social groups
Klein and Kleinman 2 – Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at
the Georgia Institute of Technology AND Professor of Community &
Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Hans K.* AND
Daniel Lee**, “The Social Construction of Technology: Structural
Considerations,” Science Technology Human Values, Winter 2002, vol. 27, no. 1,
28-52)BC
What we believe is missing in all of these cases is a discussion of groups’ capacity
or power. What enables one group’s interpretation to be embodied in the artifact?
Toward the end of his book, Bijker (1995, 282) does introduce a casting of power
linked to his notion of technological frame. Ultimately, however, this
conceptualization comes too late and is overly vague. Throughout Bijker’s text,
power is either ignored or deployed in an ad hoc fashion. Echoing his
work with Pinch, Bijker’s diagram of the relationship between social groups and
an artifact suggests groups are equivalently situated in terms of their capacity to
shape artifacts (p. 47). At another point, Bijker refers to the rhetorical power of
speed in the bicycle case (p. 89) but provides no explanation for what makes
rhetoric powerful. In still another instance, Bijker refers to economic power (p.
200) but he does not define the term, explain its source, or carefully consider
its effects. Finally, in the case of lighting technology, Bijker suggests that the
“Edison Company had a relatively strong position because of the patents it held”
(p. 201). In fact, Bijker devotes an entire section of a chapter to patent litigation,
but he never considers how and why a patent strengthens an actor’s position visà-vis an artifact. Bijker offers no discussion of the significance of or bases for
actors’ capacity to defend against patent infringement. Some actors have this
capacity, and others do not, and this fact may affect the outcome of the
technology construction process. We contend that a more cogent analysis of
technology construction demands far more systematic consideration of matters of
group capacity or power than is found in the SCOT literature. We will suggest
below that group capacity should be understood in broadly organizational or
structural terms, as it is such factors that fundamentally shape group capacity.
Permutation
***The cards advocate Perm do both
The alternative’s negation fails to engage society – the permutation is
best
Rose 3 – Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick (Ellen, “The
Errors of Thamus: An Analysis of Technology Critique,” Bulletin of Science,
Technology & Society, Vol. 23, No. 3, June 2003, pp. 147-156, Sage Pub,
http://bst.sagepub.com/content/23/3/147.full.pdf)BC
First, rather than offering abstract, general pronouncements from afar,
technology critique should be grounded in the lived experiences of real people,
whom it represents as agents of cultural change rather than its mindless victims.
A second, and related, characteristic is that it offers concrete possibilities for
enacting change through everyday practice. Heather Menzies (1996), for
example, based her analyses of the information economy on the experiences and
stories of real people. As she insisted in Whose Brave New World?, to effect
change, technology critique must be “grounded in the social context and language
of human experience” (p. xv). Whereas Ellul, Postman, Mumford, and other
critics emphasized the importance of stepping back from the fray and seeing the
big picture, Menzies recognized the value of climbing into the trenches and
thereby attaining a real understanding of technological impacts at a personal
level as well as an insight into the possibilities for human action. According to
Menzies, “the new critical discourse on technological restructuring and the
information highway . . . must be grounded in local dialogue, local communitybuilding, and locally appropriate action” (p. 164). Ross (1991) concurred that
“ technology must be seen as a lived, interpretive practice for people
in their everyday lives ” and added that the role of the cultural critic is to
“redefine the shape and form of that practice” (pp. 131-132). This theme is also
taken up by Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O’Day (1999), authors of Information
Ecologies: Using Technology With Heart, which offers case studies of “people
who use technology effectively and responsibly” (p. 211) in everyday settings and
tasks. Nardi and O’Day argued that “the limits of the analysis of the technological
system” lie in its failure to “address with enough force the possibility of local and
particular change. Social critics identify sweeping problems, and they are
naturally drawn to sweeping solutions” (p. 43), but seeing the problem in such
large-scale, complex terms prevents people from thinking about how they might
take action at a local level—and thus perpetuates their learned helplessness.
A lack of technological competence undermines the credibility of the
alternative – the permutation provides deeper insight because it looks
at the social impacts from within – a middle ground is key
Rose 3 – Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick (Ellen, “The
Errors of Thamus: An Analysis of Technology Critique,” Bulletin of Science,
Technology & Society, Vol. 23, No. 3, June 2003, pp. 147-156, Sage Pub,
http://bst.sagepub.com/content/23/3/147.full.pdf)BC
The third characteristic of a relevant technology critique for our time is that it is
written from a position of technological competence, rather than avoidance. As I
have suggested elsewhere (Rose, 2000), such avoidance and dismissal of
technology “is no longer possible or warranted,” because those who comment on
technology “are now unavoidably implicated and immersed in technological
developments” (Rose, 2000, p. 193). Moreover, “in an age devoted to the
enlargement and circulation of knowledge, expertise, not antipathy, confers the
authority to speak” (Rose, 2000, p. 192). Therefore, criticism must go hand in
hand with a certain degree of technological competence. Media education offers
one model for the way in which technology use can actually become a means
of promoting deeper insight into the social impacts of media and
technology . Media education is a pedagogical approach designed to help
students gain awareness of the ways in which television, tabloids, and other
media function to condition and construct viewers and readers. As Len
Masterman (1992) described it, media education is “a demythologizing process
which will reveal the selective practices by which images reach the television
screen, emphasize the constructed nature of the representations projected, and
make explicit their repressed ideological function” (p. 47). In its early days, media
education consisted largely of an “inoculation” approach highly reminiscent of
technology critique: It involved protecting impressionable youngsters from the
harmful influences of the mass media (primarily television) by telling them which
media products were “good” and which were “bad.” However, over the years, the
emphasis of media education has shifted from regarding students as passive
consumers in need of protection to valuing their judgments and experiences as
media consumers and, most important, encouraging them to become active
producers of newspapers, films, computer programs, and other media.
Technological competence thus becomes the means by which students and
teachers work together to develop critical insight into the constructedness of
media messages. Technology critique is, I believe, ready to make a similar
transition: from a discourse grounded in a no-longer-tenable position of
technology avoidance to one that speaks with authority and relevance to
members of our technological society. In the words of Arthur Kroker, editor of an
online journal devoted to exploring the meanings and manifestations of high
technology , it is necessary “to swim within the sea which one
confronts ” (Menzies, 2000).
The final characteristic of a renewed technology critique is that it rejects
extreme positions in favor of “a middle ground from which we can
carefully consider the impact of technologies without rejecting them
wholesale ” (Nardi & O’Day, 1999, p. 20). The irony is that the extreme stance
assumed by most technology critics actually tends to stifle the kind of critical
reflection that they want people to engage in—which is precisely why the
techno-utopians speak in hyperbole . Ideas become concretized in absolute
terms rather than remaining fluid and open for analysis and debate. Instead of
offering conclusive, sweeping statements about the negative impacts of
technological phenomena, technology critique should draw on and present
diverse perspectives and viewpoints and should indicate, by means of this
balanced presentation, possibilities for responsible local action.
I am not by any means suggesting that, having found a new way of framing social
analysis, we abandon as irrelevant to our lives and time the work and ideas of
technology critics such as Ellul, Mumford, and Postman. On the contrary, this
article emerges from my deep respect for their work and my realization that it has
had a disappointingly small impact on society’s response to new media and
technology. Yet the technology critics have taught me well. I have learned from
them that it is both possible and necessary to think otherwise about technological
developments, but I have also learned that insightful commentary from a
distance is not enough: What is needed is a critique that provides guidelines and
models for reflection and action at the level of lived experience. Let me, then,
conclude this article as I began it, with reference to Socrates and his student,
Plato. Plato immortalized Socrates’ teachings by using them as the basis for his
own philosophy. I do not by any means compare myself to Plato, except in this:
that I too believe it necessary to perpetuate the important ideas of my mentors by
framing them in more relevant, meaningful, and generally accessible terms.
Transhumanism t/
Transhumanism turn - machines will not eclipse humans, humans
will become machines – solves the impact to the K as well as all
suffering ever
Tirosh-Samuelson ‘8 (Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Professor of History at ASU,
“Engaging Transhumanism: The Meaning of Being Human”, wcp)
For transhumanists (i.e., those who advocate the transitional steps humans need to take to reach the posthuman age),
the human species is no more than a “work in progress:” Currently the human
species is in a comparatively early phase of human evolution because humans are
still enslaved to their genetic programming that destines them to experience pain,
disease, stupidity, aging, and death. Bioengineering and genetic enhancement
will bring about the posthuman age in which humans will live longer, will possess
new physical and cognitive abilities, and will be liberated from suffering and pain
due to aging and disease; moreover, humans will even conquer the
ultimate enemy—death—by attaining “cognitive immortality,” that is,
the downloading of the human software (i.e., the mind) into artificially intelligent
machines that will continue to exist long after the individual human has perished.
The human/computer interface will be characteristic of the posthuman age in the
following ways: large computer networks may emerge as superhumanly
intelligent entities; computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that
users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent; and biological
science will improve natural human intellect. This future state of affairs will be so unique that
advocates call it “the singularity,” namely, “a point where our old models must be discarded and a new reality rules, a
point that will loom vaster and vaster over human affairs until the notion becomes a commonplace.” Whether
transhumanists focus on human enhancement by design, or radical life extension, or on computer/human interface, the
posthuman age is envisioned as the transcendence of current human biological limitations. In the
posthuman
future, humans will not be the product of evolution but the designers and
controllers of the evolutionary process itself.
!d
Tech can’t make things any worse – no impact uniqueness means
theres only a risk it gets better
Walker ‘9 (Mark Walker, Assistant Professor @ New Mexico State University,
“Ship of Fools: Why Transhumanism is the Best Bet to Prevent the Extinction of
Civilization”, 2009, wcp)
This line of thinking is further reinforced when we consider that there is a limit to the downside of creating posthumans,
at least relatively speaking. That is, one of the traditional concerns about increasing knowledge is that it seems to always
imply an associated risk for greater destructive capacity. One way this point is made is in terms of ‘killing capacity’:
muskets are a more powerful technology than a bow and arrow, and tanks more powerful than muskets, and atomic
bombs even more destructive than tanks. The
knowledge that made possible these technical
advancements brought a concomitant increase in capacity for evil. Interestingly,
we have almost hit the wall in our capacity for evil: once you have
civilization destroying weapons there is not much worse you can do.
There is a point in which the one-upmanship for evil comes to an end—when
everyone is dead. If you will forgive the somewhat graphic analogy, it hardly
matters to Kennedy if his head is blown off with a rifle or a cannon. Likewise, if A
has a weapon that can kill every last person there is little difference
between that and B’s weapon which is twice as powerful. Posthumans probably
won’t have much more capacity for evil than we have, or are likely to have shortly. So, at least in terms of how many
persons can be killed, posthumans will not outstrip us in this capacity. This is not to say that there are no new worries with
the creation of posthumans, but the greatest evil, the destruction of civilization, is something which we now, or will soon,
have. In
other words, the most significant aspect that we should focus on
with contemplating the creation of posthumans is their upside. They
are not likely to distinguish themselves in their capacity for evil, since we have
already pretty much hit the wall on that, but for their capacity for good.
Alt Fails
The alternative will inevitably fail – change isn’t possible
Son 4 – assistant professor of philosophy at Handong Global University (WhaChul, “Reading Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Bluff in Context,” Bulletin of
Science, Technology & Society, Vol. 24, No. 6, December 2004, pp. 518-533, Sage
Publications)BC
It was already mentioned that Ellul does not see the possibility of radical reform
in the technological society any more. In the light of this perspective, the current
movements and discourses for better technique and society could be viewed by
Ellul in two ways: either that it is too late to expect a radical change, or that those
movements and discourses are different twists of the techno-logical bluff. In a
sense, Ellul says both.
Thresholds Passed
There are several indications that Ellul thought that it was possible to experience
a radical change and reform in the technological society. Ellul mentioned
somewhere else that since the May Event in 1968, he began to see even more
hope.
I was, I might say, more pessimistic before 1968 than after. I used to think that
we were so trapped in the technological system that we had no further resources
to draw on. And then 1968 brought an explosion which opened certain paths and
which showed that we were not truly conditioned. (Vanderburg, 2004, p. 45)
As aforementioned, Ellul also expected that the development of computer
technique might lead to a significant momentum for change in the technological
society (TB, pp. 1, 101, 179). Although he said that it was a mistake, he does not
seem to mean that his hope was mistaken. It could have happened, but it did not.
In the preface of TB, Ellul distinguished the projects of TSoc and TB. He says
that, in 1954, he wanted to play the role of a watchman. “But no one listened to
me and the result was inevitable. My main purpose today, then, is not quite the
same. I am now looking at the point which we have reached today” (TB, p. iv). In
other words, Ellul viewed that the technological system has expanded
so much that there is little room left for a radical change. There was a
change at a certain moment of history, but it is now gone.12
Society is aware of the harms of technology – the alternative only
reinforces passivity
Rose 3 – Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick (Ellen, “The
Errors of Thamus: An Analysis of Technology Critique,” Bulletin of Science,
Technology & Society, Vol. 23, No. 3, June 2003, pp. 147-156, Sage Pub,
http://bst.sagepub.com/content/23/3/147.full.pdf)BC
Here, then, is what I regard as the first significant error: the tendency of
technology critics to construct the population in general not as fully participant
members of society but as “dull and even stupid” (Postman, 1992, p. 20) victims
of an out-of-control technological system or as the “witless dupes” (Penley &
Ross, 1991, p. xiii) of the techno-elite. This perspective is, I believe, neither
accurate nor useful . It is inaccurate because it fails to account for the many
small ways in which technology users acknowledge and resist the reality of
technological impacts and imperatives every day. Consider, for example, the
cartoons and jokes that circulate within and festoon the walls of most
computerized workplaces: the well-known picture of the irate duck, frozen in the
process of bringing a hammer down on his computer; the “Murphy’s Laws of
Computing” posters; the Dilbert cartoons. Such humor, also perpetuated in a
great deal of coffee room banter, communicates, in an accessible if indirect way,
some of the same ideas put forth in the more serious critique. In particular, it
conveys an almost existential awareness of the fact that rather than empowering
its users, technology often seems to collude with organizational imperatives for
efficiency to create a system that individual users must serve, at the expense of
their own needs, values, and personal growth. Although most technology users
may lack the critics’powers of articulation and broader perspective, they are
nevertheless acutely aware of the ways in which their own lives are being affected,
and not always for the better, by new technologies. Ultimately, technology
critique that casts people in the role of passive, mindless victims is not useful
because it merely reinforces that passivity. The critics would serve society better
by acknowledging that people are agents, not victims, of this cultural
transformation and by offering concrete possibilities for everyday practices that
would contest the hegemony of technology and its celebrants—but that is
something they rarely do.
Critiques of technology are paradoxical and will never spillover
Rose 3 – Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick (Ellen, “The
Errors of Thamus: An Analysis of Technology Critique,” Bulletin of Science,
Technology & Society, Vol. 23, No. 3, June 2003, pp. 147-156, Sage Pub,
http://bst.sagepub.com/content/23/3/147.full.pdf)BC
If these tendencies create a fundamental rift between the technology critics and
the rest of society, then the wedge that further enlarges that rift is the third error:
the critics’ continual emphasis on the importance of critical thought as a means of
confronting rampant technological development. This emphasis, which I have
elsewhere described as “the critical imperative” (Rose, 2000, p. 190), may seem
paradoxical: How can the critics expect sustained, critical reflection from a public
whom they have constructed as an unthinking, lemming-like mass? There is no
doubt that critical thought is antithetical to the sleepwalking state with which
citizens of our technological society are seen to go about their daily business,
numbly allowing more and more of their lives to be mediated and controlled by
technology. Nevertheless, it is also the case that the critics persist in holding out
the hope, however slender, that there are those among that sleepwalking mass
who possess the intellectual will to awake from the hyperbole-induced mass coma
and confront technology as conscious beings. Mere awareness of the runaway
juggernaut of technology is, they suggest, the only thing that can prevent society
as a whole from being flattened by it: “For no medium is excessively dangerous if
its users understand what its dangers are” and ask questions about it; “to ask is to
break the spell” (Postman, 1985, p. 161).
But to become critically aware, one must somehow (the critics rarely indicate
how) achieve a requisite distance from technology. As Ellul (1981) insisted, “We
have to locate ourselves on the outside in order to look at the phenomenon” of an
all-encompassing technology (p. 90). Postman (1992) also reiterated the
importance of maintaining “an epistemological and psychic distance from any
technology, so that it always appears somewhat strange, never inevitable, never
natural” (p. 185). Mumford (1970) concluded The Pentagon of Power with a
reminder that the only means by which humanity can now free itself from the
technological prison of its own making is “to detach oneself from the system,” to
exercise “a steady withdrawal of interest,” for “the gates of the technocratic
prison will open automatically, despite their rusty hinges, as soon as we choose to
walk out” (pp. 433-435). And in her feminist analysis of the discourse of Wired
magazine, Melanie Stewart Millar (1998) agreed that “we simply need to step
back” because as long as we remain caught up in the speed and novelty of digital
discourse, “critical understanding of what is going on is impossible” (p. 29).
Sustained, distanced reflection on technology and its impacts is, of course, what
the critics themselves do. However, caught up in the business of day-to-day living
and coping, most people find it impossible to do the same, to set aside quiet
moments during which to engage in sustained contemplation on the roles that
computers and other technologies play in their lives. Indeed, technology itself
seems to preclude the possibility of achieving such moments of deep reflection by
keeping its users “chronically overcommitted” (Menzies, 2000) and by
demanding their intense involvement. Whether one is using computers for work
or pleasure, the machine somehow compels one to input data ever faster, to
churn out ever more documents and spreadsheets, to spend ever more time
dealing with and contributing to a serious e-mail glut, to participate in online
chat rooms and multiuser domains more and more compulsively, and to play
video games ceaselessly for hours, sometimes days, on end. As people run to keep
up with the frenetic pace of their cybersociety, making time for quiet, distanced
contemplation becomes increasingly impossible.
The alt links to the K – the extremes of the critique undermine its
appeal to the public
Rose 3 – Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick (Ellen, “The
Errors of Thamus: An Analysis of Technology Critique,” Bulletin of Science,
Technology & Society, Vol. 23, No. 3, June 2003, pp. 147-156, Sage Pub,
http://bst.sagepub.com/content/23/3/147.full.pdf)BC
In this way, technology critics have played a key role in the establishment of a
polemic between two discursive extremes: those who represent technology as the
ultimate panacea for all social ills and those who represent it as the means by
which people are being robbed of their humanity and transformed into mere cogs
of the system. Neither extreme, because they are extremes, paints an accurate,
believable, or responsible picture. However, faced with these two distinct camps,
both demanding absolute allegiance, most people make the obvious decision .
It is not, as is often mistakenly assumed, a matter of rejecting the gloomy
prognostications of the critics in favor of the technophiles’ optimistic visions of
the future. Rather, it is a matter of pragmatically choosing to align oneself with
those individuals who possess technical skills and knowledge, those who have
already colonized the present and stand ready to invent the future, rather than to
place one’s trust in those who, possessing not even basic word-processing skills,
can easily be dismissed as dour naysayers who do not really know what they
are talking about. What is more—and here we come full circle—because the
oppositional nature of the critique has helped to create a situation in which
people are compelled to choose between two extremes in the first place, the
critique itself is in part responsible for precisely what it deplores: the
public’s uncritical acceptance of technology and its imperatives.
The alt fails – 5 reasons
Rose 3 – Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick (Ellen, “The
Errors of Thamus: An Analysis of Technology Critique,” Bulletin of Science,
Technology & Society, Vol. 23, No. 3, June 2003, pp. 147-156, Sage Pub,
http://bst.sagepub.com/content/23/3/147.full.pdf)BC
These, then, are what I believe to be important but largely overlooked reasons for
the failure of technology critique to play a significant role in the way society
receives technology: It tends to construct the populace as a mindless mass; it is
based on a notion of culture that not only bears no relationship to most people’s
personal experiences but that must be defended against the mass society of which
all people compose a part; it emphasizes the importance of achieving a
dispassionate, objective, critical distance from technology that bears no
relationship to the way that most people are compelled to experience computers
and other technologies on a day-to-day basis; it is based on the critics’ refusal to
engage with technology in the way that most people today must; and it emerges
from and perpetuates an oppositional dialogue that compels people to take sides
with those who know rather than those who, having eschewed technology,
apparently do not. In short, rather than offering a meaningful discourse that
speaks to people in terms of their lived experiences, technology critique tends to
establish a clear boundary between the critics and everyone else.
Virilio
Links
Generic
Focus on particular surveillance technologies obscures the larger
technological matrix surrounding it – this continues technological
omnipresence culminates in the integral accident
Virilio 94 Paul Virilio, part-time crazy person, full time Frenchie. “The vision machine”. 1994. Pgs. 23 –
27. PWoods.
Drawing a false analogy, photography's promoters were immediately persuaded that what the photograph had over the
human eye above all was, precisely, its specific speed which, thanks
to the implacable fidelity of the
instrument and at quite a remove from the subjective and distorting action of the
artist's hand, enabled it to fix and reveal movement with a precision and a richness
of detail that naturally elude the eye. The world, 'rediscovered' as an unknown
continent, at last appeared in 'all its naked truth'.¶ In the autumn of 1917 Emile Vuillermoz wrote
about cinema d'art: I he eye that carves up space and fixes inimitable tableaux in time, that renders eternal the fleeting
moment in which nature reveals its¶ genius ... is the eye of the lens.'
Considered irrefutable proof of the
existence of
an objective world, we snapshot was, in fact, the bearer of its own future ruin. In their aay Bacon and Descartes may
well have advanced the cause of a certain experimental methodology and talked about
mnemonic practices as devices useful in organising information. It would not have occurred to
them to conceptualise such practices because, for them, it was a matter of familiar processes belonging to the realm of the selfevident.¶ But in multiplying 'proofs' of reality, photography exhausted it. The more instrumental
photography
became (in medicine, in astron- omy, in military strategy . . . ) , the more it penetrated beyond
immediate vision, the less the problem of how to interpret its products¶ managed to emerge from the deja vu of
objective evidence. And the more it reverted to the original abstraction of heliography, to its primitive definition, to
that depreciation of solids whose 'contours are lost' (Niepce) and to the emphasis on point of view whose innovative power
painters and writers like Proust had grasped.¶ This
drift of overexposed matter, reducing the
reality-effect to the greater or lesser promptness of a luminous discharge, found a
scientific explanation in Einstein's 'theory of viewpoint'. It was this theory that led to the Theory of Relativity and, in the long
run, more or less destroyed anything connected with external proofs of a unique ¶ duration as a cogent principle for classifying
events (Bachelard), the thinking of being and the uniqueness of the universe of the erstwhile philosophy of consciousness. ¶
As we know, discoveries from Galileo to Newton had presented an image of a
universe in which everything could be described, illustrated or reproduced by
experiments and concrete examples. There was a shared faith in a world toiling away with comforting
regularity before our very eyes and this produced a sort of incubation of vision¶ and knowledge
which only became more extensive with time.6 Photography likewise, in fulfilment
of Descartes' hopes, had been largely an art in which the 'mind' dominating the
machine interpreted¶ the results in the fine tradition of instrumental reason.
But, conversely, because the technical
progress of photography brought daily proof of its advance, it became gradually more and more impossible to avoid the
conclusion that, since every object is for us merely the sum of the qualities we attribute to it, the sum of ¶ information we
derive from it at any given moment, the
objective world could only exist as what we represent it
to be and as a more or less enduring mental construct.¶ Einstein took this reasoning
to its logical conclusion by showing that space and time are forms of intuition that
are now as much a part of our consciousness as concepts like form, colour, size and
so on. Einstein's theory did not contradict classical physics. It simply¶ revealed its limits which were
those of any science linked to man's sensory experience, to the general sense of
spatial relationships which the logistics of perception have been secretly
undercutting since the¶ Renaissance and especially since the nineteenth century.¶ 22¶
The retreat from the mathematically derived mechanical expla- nation took time. Max Planck postulated quantum theory in
1900, 'quanta' being mathematical facts that cannot be accounted for. After that, as Sir Arthur Eddington remarked: 'every
genuine law of nature stood a good chance of seeming irrational to the rational man.'7 ¶ These facts were difficult to accept for
they not only went against cumulative scientific prejudice, they went equally against the domi- nant philosophies and
ideologies.¶ This makes it easier to see why Einstein's theory was banned, why efforts to popularise it and communicate it to a
wider audience were so sporadic, 'limiting and reducing the body of knowledge on the subject to a small, privileged group
crushing the philosophical spirit of the people and leading to the gravest spiritual impoverishment', the physicist wrote in
1948. By reminding us that 'there is no scientific truth', in the middle of a century crawling with engineers, Einstein
remobilised what fifteenth-century poets and mystics like Cues called learned ignorance; in other words the presupposition of
not-knowing and especially not-seeing which restores to every research project its fundamental context of prime ignorance.
Also he did this at a time when the alleged impartiality of the lens had become the panacea of an image arsenal which
arrogated to itself the ubiquitous, all-seeing power of Theos in the Judeo-Christian tradition, to such an extent that it seemed,
at last, that the possibility was being offered of unco- vering a fundamental structure of being in its totality (Habermas), of
finally defeating fanatical beliefs of all kinds including a religious faith that would then be reduced to a vague, private
concept."¶ Benjamin exults: 'Photography
prepares the salutory movement by which man and
his surrounding world become strangers to each other ... opening up the clear field
where all intimacy yields to the clarification of details.' This clear field is the primary
promotional field of propaganda and marketing, of the technological syncretism
within¶ which the witness's least resistance to the phatic image is developed. To admit
that for the human eye the essential is invisible and that, since everything is an illusion, it follows that
scientific theory, like art, is merely a way of manipulating our illusions, went against the
politi- cal-philosophical discourses then evolving in tandem with the impera- tive of convincing the greatest number, with its
accompanying desire for infallibility and a strong tendency towards ideological charlata- nism. Publicly
to point to
how mental images are formed, including the way their psychophysiological
features carry their own fragility and limitations, was to violate a state secret of the
same order as a military secret, since it masked a mode of mass manipulation that
was¶ Practically infallible.
1 his, by the way, also accounts for the itinerary of the whole host¶ 1 materialist
philosophers like Lacan, passing prudently from the lfnage to language, to the linguistic being, who have dominated the
intellectual scene for close on half a century, defending it as though it were a citadel, forbidding any conceptual opening, and
deploying, to this end, massive reinforcements in the form of Marxist-Freudian babble and semiological cant.¶ Now the
damage is done, the often fatal quarrels which, until quite recently, surrounded different modes of representation - in Nazi
Ger- many and the Soviet Union, and also in Great Britain and the United States — have been all but buried.¶ To find out how
they worked, though, one only has to read Anthony Blunt's memoirs, a real little roman a clef. A renowned expert, Professor
and connoisseur, as well as a distant relative of Queen Elizabeth 11, Blunt was one of this century's most remarkable secret
agents in the service of the Soviet Union. And his political choices were absolutely consistent with the evolution of his artistic
tastes, the beliefs he held about systems of representation. ¶ As an undergraduate Blunt initially saw 'modern art' as a means of
venting his hatred of the Establishment. In the twenties, Cezanne and the Post-impressionists were still considered in Great
Britain to be 'mad revolutionaries'. But in the course of the 1933 university term, Marxism broke out at Cambridge. ¶ Blunt
then completely revised his position. Art could no longer cling to optical effects, to an individualist and therefore relative
vision that shed doubt on the objective legibility of the universe and produces metaphysical anxiety. From now on the end of
all logocen- trism will be called 'revolutionary', 'a community-based and monu- mental social realism'.¶ It is interesting to note
that at the same moment, and in response to the nationalisation of Soviet cinema, a documentary school sprang up in Britain,
also sustained by then-burgeoning socialist theories.¶ This movement, which was to have considerable international influence, crystallised around the Scot John Grierson. For Grierson, as for Walter Lippmann, democracy
was
'scarcely achievable without information technology on a par with the modern
world'.¶ After a tough time spent on minesweepers in the First World War, Grierson had become 'Film Officer' with the
Empire Marketing Board. This organisation, founded in May 1926, was designed to promote trade in Empire goods. The Film
Unit was at that stage the last sub-department in the 'Publicity and Education' Department. The secretary of the whole
colonial-promotions group was top civil ser- vant Stephen Tallents. The
situation thus presented an
extraordinary conjunction of all the symptoms of acculturation: colonisation and
endocolonisation and the use of advertising and propaganda for the edification of
the masses. It was moreover at the Dominions Office, and thanks to Rudyard Kipling's and Stephen Tallents' support,
that 24 top civil servants in the administration met with a representative of the Treasury and ended up agreeing, on 27 April
1928, to an advance of £7,500 to finance an experiment in film propaganda whose subject would be England itself. According
to the brains behind it, this new documentary thrust, subsidised by the State and conceived as a public¶ service, grew out of a
vast anti-aesthetic movement (as one might have guessed) and as a reaction against the art world. It was also an aggressive
response to the lyricism of the Soviet propaganda film, particularly Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin. ¶ Where role model
Robert Flaherty had created an ethnological cinema that was universally popular, the film-makers of the British Documentary
Movement, emerging
from the mass war of 1914, wanted to put together an anthology
of public vision. They had understood that photography and film - in so far as they are the memory, the trace not only
of historical events, but also of anonymous extras with whom one could easily identify — provoked a specific emotion in the
viewer. The images were those of the fatum, of something done once and for all. They exposed time, induced a feeling of the
irreparable, and through a dialectic reaction, fostered that violent will to engage the future which was invariably weakened
by¶ any apparent mise en scene, any aesthetisising discourse.
During the 1930s the Documentary Movement continued to be
influenced politically by men such as Humphrey Jennings, freshly fired in the revolutionary furnace of Cambridge, the
communist politician Charles Madge and the anthropologist Tom Harrisson, prime¶ movers in the left-wing Mass Observation
movement.
They all believed in the ineluctable progress of technology, in a technically 'liberated cinema'. In August 1939
Grierson wrote that¶ 'the documentary idea should simply enable everyone to see better'. On the eve of the Second World War
the bloody media epic of the Spanish Civil War was to demonstrate further the power of the anthological cinema. Republican
fighters went as far as losing whole¶ battles in their keenness to live out a faithful remake of the Russian Revolution as they
had seen it at the movies. Throwing themselves in front of the camera in the same poses as their Russian models, they felt
themselves to be actors in a great revolutionary epic. ¶ 'Truth is the first casualty of war', in Rudyard Kipling's paradoxical
phrase. Kipling was one of the founders of the British Documentary Movement and it was definitely the reality-principle they
sought to attack. The movement succeeded in overpowering the vaguely elitist dogma of the objectivity of the lens, replacing it
with the¶ equally - though differently - perverse dogma of the camera's innocence.¶ :auty changes quickly, much as a landscape
constantly changes with the position of the sun.' What Rodin asserted empirically, according to Paul Gsell, began to find some
semblance of scientific confirmation fifty years on.¶ In the 1950s, as the great dominant ideologies began their decline,
physiology and psychophysiology abandoned the archaic method- ological attitude that had so astounded Maurice MerleauPonty, the Cartesian refusal to let go of the body, that had degenerated into mere convention. ¶ Since the 1960s one discovery
after another in the field of visual perception has revealed that light detection, and the intensity of the reaction to light stimuli
and ambient light, have a molecular basis. Molecules, those internal lights, apparently 'react the same way we do when we are
listening to music'.¶ On top of this scientists have rediscovered biological rhythms, bio- rhythms, perfectly familiar to breeders,
botanists and the common gardener for centuries. ... As
far back as the sixth century BC, for instance,
the philosopher Parmenides held that mental images, our memory, resided in a
unique relationship between light and heat, cold and dark, located in the centre of
our bodies. If this relationship were disturbed, amnesia, the forgetting of the visible
world, resulted.¶ Professor Alain Reinberg explains: 'Each living being adapts itself to periodic
variations in the world around it, these variations being essentially caused by the
rotation of the earth about its axis every twenty-four hours and by its rotation
around the sun every year.'9¶ It is as though the organism possessed 'clocks' (for
want of a better word) and kept setting them back at the right time in terms of
signals coming from the environment, one of these essential signals being the
alternation between darkness and light, night and day, as well as noise and quiet,
heat and cold, etc. Nature thus provides us with a sort of programming (here again, the term is merely provisional)
that regulates our periods of activity and rest, each organ working differently, more or less intently, all in its own good time.
Our bodies in fact contain several clocks that work things out among themselves, the most important being the hypothalmic
gland located above the optic commisure (where the optic nerves cross). The same thing happens with the pineal gland, ¶
which depends largely on the alternation of light and dark. The Ancients were familiar with the phenomenon and Descartes, in
par- ticular, talks about it.¶ In
short, if the Theory of Relativity maintains that the intervals of
time properly supplied by clock or calendar are not absolute quantities imposed
throughout the universe, the study of biorhythms reveals them to be the exact
opposite: a variable quantity of sensa (primary sensory data) for which an hour is
more or less than an hour, a season more or less than a season.¶ This places us in a somewhat
different position from that of 'bodies¶ inhabiting the universe' (to be is to inhabit, Heidegger's buan). Very much in keeping
with certain ancient cosmogenies, like irisation, we become bodies inhabited by the universe, by the being of the universe. ¶
Sensa are not only a more or less exact, more or less pleasurable or coherent way of
informing ourselves about the external environment, as well as a means of acting and existing in it,
not to mention oc- casionally dominating it. They
are also messengers of our internal environment,
which is just as physical and just as relative because it possesses its own laws. This
situation of exchange of course ceases with our organic life, the universe that was
busy sending out signals before we arrived then carrying on without us.¶ With
chronobiology, as in physics, a living system appears and, contrary to what Claude
Bernard or the advocates of homeostasis thought, it does not tend to stabilise its
various constants in order to return to a determined equilibrium. The system, is
'always far for equilibrium'. For it, according to Ilya Prigogin, equilibrium is death. (Paul de Tarse imagined a
being in a perpetual state of becoming far from fulfilment for whom the equilibrium of reason would resemble death.) The
Renaissance quest to overcome distances, all kinds of distances, would once again
lead to the elimination of intervals, and our own movement in the time of the
universe was to be singularly transformed by acknowledgement of this
internal/external couple always far from equilibrium. Furthermore, this occurred at a time when
Marxist and other philosophers were finally getting down to the serious job of revision, rather late in the day, scratching their
heads over 'the hopeless perversion of the ideals of the Enlightenment and the demise of a philosophy of consciousness that
posited an isolated subject in relation to an objective world that could be represented and changed'. This
was the
exhaustion of that Cartesian tradition which had sprung out of the original invention
of the serialisation not only of forms-images but also of mental images and which
was the origin of the City and human social communities based on the constitution
of collective paramnesias, on the 'ideal of a world essentially the same, essentially
shared as that preliminary foundation of the construction of meaning (Sinnbildung)
we call geometry'.10 Everyone, in fact, in their own way, is living out the end of an era.¶ My friend, the Japanese
philosopher Akira Asada, said to me the other day: 'All in all, our technologies have no future, only a past.' But what a past!¶
They say Futurism could only have sprung up in Italy, the one country where only the past is current, and it was the
Mediterranean Marinetti and his group who elaborated the theme of movement in action. But a number of good, solid
European philosophers, on the other hand, have pretty much forgotten the fundamental relationship that exists between
tekhne (know-how) and poiein (doing). They
have forgotten that the gaze of the West was once
also the gaze of the ancient mariner fleeing the non-refractive and non-directional
surface of geometry for the open sea, in quest of unknown optical surfaces, of the
sight-vane of environments of uneven transparency, sea and sky apparently without
limits, the ideal of an essentially different, essen- tially singular world, as the initial
foundation of the formation of meaning.¶ The ship, being fast, was in fact the great
technical and scientific carrier of the West. At the same time, it was a mix in which two absolute forms of
human power, poiein and tekhne, found themselves working together. ¶ In the beginning, there were no
navigation maps, no known desti- nations, only 'Fortune fleeing like a prostitute,
bald from the back'. At the mercy of the winds and the pull of the currents, the vessel
inaugurated an instrumental structure which at once tested and clearly reproduced
destiny's always far from equilibrium, its latency, its eternal unpredictability,
exalting through these man's capacities for reaction, courage and imagination.¶
According to Aristotle, there is no science of the accident. But the ship defines
another power, in the face of what might arise: the power of the unexplored side of
the failure of technical knowledge, a poetics of wandering, of the unexpected, the
shipwreck which did not exist before the ship did; and beside this, very much
alongside it, that stowaway, madness: the internal shipwreck of reason for which
water, the fluid, remains a Utopian symbol throughout the cen- turies.11 And since for the
Ancient Greeks apocalypses and events in the making are the inconstant gods, the ship takes on a sacred
charac- ter: it becomes associated with the military, religious and theatrical liturgies
of the City.¶ From Homer to Camoens, Shakespeare and Melville, the power of
movement in action continues to be incorporated into a metaphysical poetics which
becomes a sort of telescoping in which the painter or poet disappears into their
work; the work disappears into the world it evokes since the perfect work induces
the desire to live in it.12 But the West's 'wings of desire' are sails, oars, a whole
apparatus, a technical know-how which, in perpetually perfecting means-end
relationships, in shifting its very rules, never ceases to swamp the unpredictable
rules of the poetic accident.¶ From Galileo, pointing his telescope towards the sea's
horizon and the vessels of the Venetian Republic before turning it on the sky, to
William Thomson in his nineteenth-century yacht, with his relative measurement of
time and kinetics, currents and waves, the continu- ous and the discontinuous,
vibrations and oscillations ... tekhne and poiein have worked together. Maritime metaphors have
continued to spur on, providing a way round the physical and mathematical stumbling blocks encountered by researchers who, in the time-honoured 28¶ expression,
'sail the unexplored seas of science' and who are still, often, also musicians, poets, painters, craftsmen of
genius, navigators. Paul Valery writes: 'Man has extended his means of perception and action
much more than his means of representation and summation'. But for the Italian
Futurists the latest means of action are means of representation at the same time.
They saw every vehicle or technical vector as an idea, as a vision of the universe,
more than its image. Italian aeromythology, with aeropoetry soon followed by aerosculp-¶ ture and aeropainting in
1938, is a new fusion-confusion of percep- tion and object which already foreshadows video and computer oper- ations of
analogous simulation. It also revitalises the technical mix of origins, the aeroplane, and more especially the seaplane, taking
the place of the ship of nautical mythology.¶ Gabriele D'Annunzio dedicated a short text celebrating the con- sanguinity of man
and the machine to his record breaking friend Fran- cesco de Pinedo. He called it 'Francesco de Pinedo's wings versus the
wheel of fortune': 'The Venetian model of the war and trade ship hung over our heads. Being, like you, an aviator and a sailor, I
could not hide my elation in front of you as, in defiance of fortune, I listed the instruments on board ... I liked you, as the
Florentine liked¶ Agathocles the Sicilian who never, in all his admirable life, owed a thing to fortune but to himself alone, to his
own wisdom, to his audacity and constancy ... as well as to his art: the art of resisting, insisting, conquering.'13 ¶ After sundry
adventures in the interests of war as much as sport, the Marchese de Pinedo ended up killing himself in September 1933, on
the eve of his attempt to beat the world record for long-distance flight in a straight line.¶ The
original voyage has
been replaced by the trajectory of motor power. To a large extent, the former appeal
of the enigma of technical bodies has vanished with it. Until quite recently, this had never been
altogether absent from their use, from their plasticity and the imagin- ary of their beauty.¶ 'If it works, it's obsolete!'
Formulated during the last world war, the famous saying of Lord Mountbatten, then head of British arma- ments' research,
signalled the irresistible encroachment of one last mythology. Technoscience, science's greatest weapon, is an intro- verted
mix in which origin and end telescope together. By such a sleight of hand, the English navigator evacuates the innovatory
power of the old poiein in favour of the dynamics of madness and terror ¶ which remain technology's final, eternally
clandestine fellow-travel- ler.¶ Again the debate surrounding the invention of the snapshot is not unrelated to the growth of
this ultimate hybrid. From the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had been radically transforming the very nature of
representational systems which still held, for many artists and art lovers, the lure of mystery, of a sort of religion (Rodin). Well
before the triumph of dialectic logic, the arts were already laboriously ploughing on towards synthesis, towards overtaking the
existing oppositions between poiein and the technical. Ingres, Millet, Courbet and Delacroix used photography 'as a reference
and point of com- parison'. The impressionists, Monet, Cezanne, Renoir, Sisley, made ¶ themselves known by showing their
work in the studio of the photo- grapher Nadar. They were heavily influenced by the scientific research of Nadar's friend
Eugene Chevreul, especially the treatise published in 1839: On the law of simultaneous colour contrast and the classification of
coloured objects according to this law as it relates¶ to painting.TM¶ Degas, who considered the model, the woman, to be 'an
animal' (a laboratory animal?), vaguely adopted the vision of the camera. 'Until now, the nude has always been represented in
poses that presuppose an audience.' Degas, by contrast, claimed simply to 'surprise' his models and provide a document as
immutable as a snapshot - as much a documentary as a painting, in the strict sense of the term. ¶ At the beginning of the
twentieth century, with Dada and the Futurists, the world was heading towards complete depersonalisa- tion, primarily of the
thing observed but also of the observer. The dialectical play between the arts and sciences was being progressively eroded,
making way for a paradoxical logic which prefigured the delirious logic of technoscience. We could even read into Mountbat-¶
ten's motto a dim commentary on the pivotal concept behind artistic and intellectual avant-gardes, a concept differing greatly
from the notion of modernity which goes back as far as Ancient Egypt. ¶ Just
when traditional systems of
representation were about to lose their 'perfectibility', their specific capacities for
evolution and change, Adolf Loos decided to compare cultural evolution to an army
on the march, an army consisting mainly of stragglers. 'I may well be living in 1913', he writes, 'but
one of my neighbours is living in 1900, the¶ other in 1880. The peasant of the upper Tyrol is stuck in the seventh ¶
century.'
Under
attack at the same time from Marcel Duchamp, European¶ avantgardes did, in fact, move around from city to city, indeed from continent to
continent, like an army, to the beat of the progress of industrialisation and
militarisation, of technology and science, as though art were now no more than the
ultimate transportation of the gaze from one city to the next.¶ After the Napoleonic debacle,
London and Great Britain (whicL gave us steam and industrial speed) took over the
traditional post once occupied by Italy and the Eternal City as site of artistic pilgrimage. Paris and France (which gave us photography, cinema and avia- tion) then took
over from them, only to be ousted in turn by New York and the United States, victors
triumphant of the last world war¶ Today, the strategic value of speed's 'no-place' has
definitely out- stripped the value of place. With the instantaneous ubiquity of teletopology, the immediate face-to-face of all refractory surfaces, the bringing into
visual contact of all localities, the long wandering of the gaze is at an end.
They miss the forest for the trees – sole focus on surveillance obscures the larger
matrix of speed surrounding it – even their policy simulations play into larger
regimes speed
Wilson 11 Eric Wilson, Dr. Eric Wilson has a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge, an LLB
from the University of British Columbia and an LLM from the University of Washington. He was awarded
the SJD from Melbourne in 2005. His current subject interests are critical legal theory, criminology, and the
history and philosophy of international law. “The Logistics of Perception: Paul Virilio and the Concept of
Pure War”. 2011. Pgs. 3 – 10. PWoods.
The relevance of Virilian analysis for contemporary military thought lies in the
fact that Virilio is the first critical theorist to posit a wholly circulatory theory of
power. 3 This becomes readily apparent in his analysis of the world economy, which he subsumes under the rubric of
cybercapitalism, the digitalization of all forms of international exchange; ‘The
effectiveness of electronic money lies in its mass, which increase its velocity of
circulation.’4 Virilio claims that as the ‘last post-industrial resource, acceleration exceeds
accumulation…the escape velocity [vitesse de liberation] becomes the equivalent of
profit.’5 This, of course, underscores Virilio’s eschewing of historical materialism. Although it was Marx who
proclaimed ‘the annihilation of space through time’,6 speed is not a mode of production it is a
factor of production that has acquired an autonomous governing force over the
mode in the form of velocity.7 Speed reduces the being of the State to the
panoptical effect of an unlimited transparency that is ultimately self-consuming,
what Virilio calls ‘the aesthetics of disappearance’; ‘The state’s only original
existence is as a visual hallucination akin to dreaming.’8 Politics ‘disappears into aesthetics’
precisely through its inability to successfully uphold the ‘reality principle’, which is premised upon conventional
representational demarcations between the ‘real’, the ‘visual’, and the ‘virtual’.9 The
centrality of simulation
to political reality effects a foundational transformation of social order into what
Virilio calls speed-politics. Virilio identifies the ontological and political ‘loss of
reality’ of speed-politics with the kinematic, which assumes two forms. Kinematic
optics, or cinematic motion, effectively ‘dissolves’ substance through the
acceleration of perception; time supplants space which ‘deletes’ Being.10 ‘Kinematic
acceleration’ is realized through the ‘dismemberment’ of space/time into isolated
‘frames’, or editorial ‘cuts’. In both instances of the kinematic the virtual representation of reality is now governed by alterations in the rate, or speed, of
perception: ‘It is reality [that] we have to measure in a cinematic way.’11 Virilio locates
the moment of the historical emergence of the kinematic with the development of aerial reconnaissance photography
along the western front in the First World War. A perceptual ‘heterogeneity’, I need to add, that was mediated through the
mechanical production and distribution of the ‘freeze frame’ of the photograph. The
‘freeze frame—the
segmentation of both space and time into micro units of measurement—served as
the opticalvisual basis for a new form of computation, establishing a material
linkage between photography and the computer; ‘The camera-recording of the First World War
already prefigured the statistical memory of computers, both in the management of aerial observation data and in the ever
more rigorous management of the simultaneity of action and reaction.’15 With the revolutionary development in optical
technology—accompanied by the cultural primacy of the visual—the
human eye itself can now be
scientifically classified as a ‘weapons system’, as was done by the U.S. Army
pamphlet, Psychology for the Fighting Man, first published in 1943: ‘The human
eye is one of the most important military instruments that the armed forces
possess.’16 In 1966 the British visual psychologist R.L. Gregory even likened the retinal edge to ‘an early warning
device’ that was ‘used to rotate the eyes to aim the object-recognition part of the system onto objects likely to be friend or
foe rather than neutral.’17 As Virilio has argued, the convergence
between speed and kinematic
optics is underpinned by the military drive to create both a functionally perfect
and operationally universal system of surveillance. One could go on forever
listing the technological weapons, the panoply of light-war, the aesthetic of the
electronic battlefield, the military use of space whose conquest was ultimately the
conquest of the image. The electronic image of remote detection; the artificial
image produced by satellites as they endlessly sweep over the surface of
continents drawing automatic maps; life-size cinema in which the day and the
light of film-speed succeed the day and light of astronomical time. It is subliminal
light of incomparable transparency, where technology finally exposes the whole
world.18 The final outcome is a total ‘virtualizing’ of reality arising from ‘the unprecedented limits imposed on
subjective perception by the instrumental splitting of modes of perception and representation.’19 This
optical/ontological collapse of politics into speed underlines the key Virilian notion of Pure
War a military metaphor that signifies the centrality of the panoptical to the
contemporary mode of combat. ‘The primacy of speed is simultaneously the primacy of the military’;Pure
War is the master-sign of a (post-) modern world-system that is governed by absolute speed, signifying the total
reversibility between the ‘political’, the ‘military’, and the ‘economic’.22 Politics
disappears into a tripartite logistics of perception: military, tele-cinematic, and
techno-scientific.23 In geo-strategic terms, pure war is derived from the
historical shift in military thought from defense to offence: ‘The very long period of the
supremacy of defence over offence that marked the history of fortification…is superseded today by the era of the
supremacy of the absolute speed of weapons of interdiction on the field of battle over the movement of the relative speeds
of mechanized forces.’ 24 At
first, the battlefield was local, then it became worldwide and
finally became global, which means satellized with the invention of video and of
the spy satellites of observation of the battlefield. From now on, the battlefield is a global one. It is
not worldwide any more in the sense of the First or Second World War. It is global in the sense of the
planet, the geo-sphere.25 Accordingly, pure war is ‘an optical, or electrico-optical
confrontation; its likely slogan, “winning is keeping the target in constant
sight.”’26 From this, Virilio adduces that ‘above all, the field of battle is a field of perception, which must be organized
in such a way as to control the movements of the adversary and cause them to follow a false lead, to demoralize them and
exterminate them.’27 This passage directly echoes General William Westmoreland’s militaristic techno-utopianism
concerning ‘the electronic battlefield’. On the battlefield of the future, enemy
forces will be located,
tracked, and targeted almost instantaneously through the use of data links,
computer assisted intelligence evaluation, and automated fire control. With first
round kill probabilities approaching certainty, and with surveillance devices that
can continually track the enemy, the need for large forces to fix the opposition
physically will be less important. For Virilio, nuclear weapons, until now the most
dreaded of the ubiquitous ‘weapons of mass destruction’ are, in fact, bordering on
obsolescence in part because of their comparative slowness. What will [take the
place of nuclear weapons] will be directed-beam weapons using laser technology,
charged particles or electromagnetic forces, which will function at the speed of
light, after the fashion of the high-resolution cameras aboard military
observation satellites.29 When that stage is reached...the deterrence strategy
geared to nuclear weapons will give way to one based upon ubiquitous orbital
vision of enemy territory...’winning’ here means the status quo of a new balance
of forces, based not on explosives and delivery systems but on the instant power
of sensors, interceptors and remote electronic detectors [i.e., pre-emption]. As Merleau-Ponty
once wrote: ‘The problem of knowing who is the subject of the state and war will be of exactly the same kind of problem as
the problem of knowing who is the subject of perception.’ Virilian Pure War has been doctrinally expressed by the
Pentagon as ‘Rapid Dominance’, 31 or, in the vernacular, ‘shock and awe’: in ‘crude terms [the invader] should seize
control of the environment and paralyse or so overload an adversary’s perceptions and understanding of events so that the
enemy would be incapable of resistance.’32 More fully Control
means controlling the ‘ether’, that is
all ‘signatures’ or detectable emissions from infrared, radar, electronic to visual
as well as the communications infrastructure and even radio and television.
Properly applied, control will monitor and regulate what the adversary sees and
understands and what is not seen and understood. In Rapid Dominance, this definition of control
means being able to fight ‘invisibly’, and to control both the night and the day.’ As is readily apparent, ‘shock and awe’
directly correlates with the kinematics optics of Pure War.34 ‘It
is a war of images and sounds, rather
than objects and things, in which winning is simply a matter of not losing sight of
the opposition. The will to see all, know all, at every moment, everywhere, the will
to universalised illumination: a scientific permutation on the eye of God which
would forever rule out the surprise, the accident, the irruption of the unforeseen’.
The logistics of perception, as a globalised opticality, yields ‘the will to universalized illumination’. The logistics of
perception, therefore, possesses two necessary attributes: The technical: everything can be seen. The revolution in the
logistics of perception, therefore, leads us to consider its second attribute (ii) The normative: everything must be seen.
The ‘paradox’ of Pure War, therefore is that: (a) it relies upon the overwhelming
application of absolute force (‘rapid dominance’), but; (b) it is wholly risk
adverse. This paradox only becomes greater once we understand the ultimately self-subverting nature of ‘the will to
universal illumination’; the prioritization of sight itself creates
the threat of military failure through
the innovation and deployment of more effective camouflage or ‘anti-detection’
counter-measures by The Enemy—Rumsfeld’s nightmarish ‘unknown unknowns’. The more
that victory depends upon—and is virtually guaranteed—by perception, the more we become aware of the
catastrophic implications of disguise and disappearance, and, thus, of the
interminable anxiety over the veracity of our detection. In Virilio’s own words, ‘if knowledge
can be shown as a sphere whose volume is endlessly growing, the area of contact with the unknown is growing out of all
proportion.’44 Or, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, ‘We
can never know that we don’t know’,
resulting in a literally infinite expansion in our field of sight; for Gary Hill, therefore,
‘Vision is no longer the possibility of seeing, but the impossibility of not seeing’—a
judicious statement, subliminally linking the radical ‘giveness’ of the preponderance of sight with the anxiety-driven
imperative to not allow anything to remain undetectable. In an almost dialectical manner both sight and disappearance
contain within them the ‘seeds’ of their respective antinomies. As
all characteristics of the instruments
of combat are henceforth subjected to this categorical imperative of a longdistance-non-detection (velocity, maneuverability, agility, etc.), the central
concept of this new war game becomes ‘first look, first shot, first kill’…In fact,
since seeing the enemy first and keeping him in view constitutes adequate
advantage, justifying tactics of surprise and therefore the ‘first shot’, the
‘absolute’ speed of waves of electromagnetic detection prevails henceforth over
the ‘relative’ speed of the supersonic or hypersonic flying object. To no longer lose sight of
the enemy is thus to gain the upper hand, or indeed even to win the conflict, this war in which the disappearance from
sight tends to prevail over the power of conventional or nonconventional explosives.
Modern surveillance constitutes an assemblage – An ever-evolving apparatus of
capture designed to observe and codify deviant flows – Restrictions of a
particular technology ignores the larger regimes of bodily coding surrounding it
Haggerty and Ericson 2K Kevin D. Haggerty, Department of Sociology, University of
Alberta and Richard V. Ericson, Principal of Green College Professor of Law and Sociology,
University of British Columbia. “The surveillant assemblage”. Pgs. 609 – 614. PWoods.
Deleuze and Guattari introduce a radical notion of multiplicity into phenomena
which we traditionally approach as being discretely bounded, structured and
stable. ‘Assemblages’ consist of a ‘multiplicity of heterogeneous objects, whose
unity comes solely from the fact that these items function together, that they “work”
together as a functional entity’ (Patton 1994: 158). They comprise discrete flows of an essentially
limitless range of other phenomena such as people, signs, chemicals, knowledge
and institutions. To dig beneath the surface stability of any entity is to encounter a host of different phenomena
and processes working in concert. The radical nature of this vision becomes more apparent when one realizes how any
particular assemblage is itself composed of different discrete assemblages which are themselves multiple.
Assemblages, for Deleuze and Guattari, are part of the state form. However, this notion of
the state form should not be confused with those traditional apparatuses of
governmental rule studied by political scientists. Instead, the state form is
distinguished by virtue of its own characteristic set of operations; the tendency to
create bounded physical and cognitive spaces, and introduce processes designed
to capture flows. The state seeks to ‘striate the space over which it reigns’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 385), a
process which involves introducing breaks and divisions into otherwise free-flowing
phenomena. To do so requires the creation of both spaces of comparison where
flows can be rendered alike and centres of appropriation where these flows can be
captured. Flows exist prior to any particular assemblage, and are fixed temporarily and spatially by the assemblage. In
this distinction between flows and assemblages, Deleuze and Guattari also articulate a distinction between forces and
power. Forces consist of more primary and fluid phenomena, and it is from such phenomena that power derives as it
captures and striates such flows. These processes coalesce into systems of domination when otherwise fluid and mobile
states become fixed into more or less stable and asymmetrical arrangements which allow for some to direct or govern the
actions of others (Patton 1994: 161). The remainder of this paper documents attributes of the surveillant assemblage.
Some caution is needed, however, at this point. To
speak of the surveillant assemblage risks
fostering the impression that we are concerned with a stable entity with its own
fixed boundaries. In contrast, to the extent that the surveillant assemblage exists,
it does so as a potentiality, one that resides at the intersections of various media that can be connected for
diverse purposes. Such linkages can themselves be differentiated according to the degree to which they are ad hoc or
institutionalized. By accentuating the emergent and unstable characteristic of the surveillant assemblage we
also
draw attention to the limitations of traditional political strategies that seek to
confront the quantitative increase in surveillance. As it is multiple, unstable and
lacks discernible boundaries or responsible governmental departments, the
surveilant assemblage cannot be dismantled by prohibiting a particularly
unpalatable technology. Nor can it be attacked by focusing criticism on a single
bureaucracy or institution. In the face of multiple connections across myriad
technologies and practices, struggles against particular manifestations of
surveillance, as important as they might be, are akin to efforts to keep the ocean’s tide back
with a broom – a frantic focus on a particular unpalatable technology or practice
while the general tide of surveillance washes over us all. The surveillant assemblage
does not approach the body in the first instance as a single entity to be molded,
punished, or controlled. First it must be known, and to do so it is broken down
into a series of discrete signifying flows. Surveillance commences with the creation of a space of
comparison and the introduction of breaks in the flows that emanate from, or circulate within, the human body. For
example, drug
testing striates flows of chemicals, photography captures flows of
reflected lightwaves, and lie detectors align and compare assorted flows of
respiration, pulse and electricity. The body is itself, then, an assemblage
comprised of myriad component parts and processes which are broken-down for
purposes of observation. Patton (1994: 158) suggests that the concept of assemblage ‘may be regarded as no
more than an abstract conception of bodies of all kinds, one which does not discriminate between animate and inanimate
bodies, individual or collective bodies, biological or social bodies’. Likewise, the
surveillant assemblage
standardizes the capture of flesh/information flows of the human body. It is not so
much immediately concerned with the direct physical relocation of the human body (although this may be an ultimate
consequence), but with transforming the body into pure information, such that it can be rendered more mobile and
comparable. Such
processes are put into operation from a host of scattered centres of
calculation (Latour 1987) where ruptures are coordinated and toward which the
subsequent information is directed. Such centres of calculation can include
forensic laboratories, statistical institutions, police stations, financial institutions,
and corporate and military headquarters. In these sites the information derived from flows of the
surveillant assemblage are reassembled and scrutinized in the hope of developing strategies of governance, commerce and
control. For Orwell, surveillance
was a means to maintain a form of hierarchical social
control. Foucault proposed that panoptic surveillance targeted the soul, disciplining the masses
into a form of self-monitoring that was in harmony with the requirements of the
developing factory system. However, Bauman (1992: 51) argues that panopticism in contemporary society has
been reduced in importance as a mechanism of social inte- gration. Instead of being subject to disciplinary surveillance or
simple repression, the population is increasingly constituted as consumers and seduced into the market economy. While
surveillance is used to construct and monitor consumption patterns, such efforts
usually lack the normalized soul training which is so characteristic of
panopticism. Instead, monitoring for market consumption is more concerned with attempts to limit access to places
and information, or to allow for the production of consumer profiles through the ex post facto reconstructions of a
person’s behaviour, habits and actions. In those situations where individuals
monitor their behaviour
in light of the thresholds established by such surveillance systems, they are often
involved in efforts to maintain or augment various social perks such as
preferential credit ratings, computer services, or rapid movement through
customs. Foucault’s larger body of work displays an appreciation for the multiple uses and targets of surveillance.
Most discussions of surveilance fixate on his analysis of the panopticon, with its individualized disciplinary form of bodily
scrutiny. However, Foucault also analysed aggregate forms of surveillance. Institutions are involved in the production and
distribution of knowledge about diverse populations for the purpose of managing their behaviour from a distance
(Foucault 1991). In this way, surveillance also serves as a vital component of positive population management strategies.
This will to speed is not isolated to government – it also manifests in
academia as intellectuals endlessly attempt to condense the world
into a series of coherent and legible texts which continues endless war
against deviance
Halberstam 11 Jack Halberstam, professor of English at the University of Southern California. “The Queer Art
of Failure”. Pg. 5. PWoods.
Illegibility, then, has been and remains, a reliable source for political autonomy. —
James C. Scott, Perceiving Like a State Any book that begins with a quote from SpongeBob SquarePants and is motored by
wisdom gleaned from Fantastic Mr. Fox, Chicken Run, and Find- ing Nemo, among other animated guides to life, runs the
risk of not being taken seriously. Yet this is my goal. Being
taken seriously means missing out on
the chance to be frivolous, promiscuous, and irrelevant. The desire to be taken
seriously is precisely what compels people to follow the tried and true paths of
knowledge production around which I would like to map a few detours. Indeed
terms like serious and rigorous tend to be code words, in academia as well as
other contexts, for disciplinary correctness; they signal a form of training and
learning that confirms what is already known according to approved methods of
knowing, but they do not allow for [exceptional] insights or flights of fancy.
Training of any kind, in fact, is a way of refusing a kind of Benjaminian relation to
knowing, a stroll down uncharted streets in the “wrong” direction (Benjamin 1996); it is
precisely about staying in well-lit territories and about knowing exactly which
way to go before you set out. Like many others before me, I propose that instead the goal is to
lose one’s way, and indeed to be prepared to lose more than one’s way. Losing, we
may agree with Elizabeth Bishop, is an art, and one “that is not too hard to master / Though
it may look like a disaster” (2008: 166–167). In the sciences, particularly physics and
mathematics, there are many examples of rogue intellectuals, not all of whom are reclusive
Unabomber types (although more than a few are just that), who wander off into uncharted territories
and refuse the academy because the publish-or-perish pressure of academic life
keeps them tethered to conventional knowledge production and its well-traveled
byways. Popular mathematics books, for example, revel in stories about
unconventional loners who are self- schooled and who make their own way
through the world of numbers. For some kooky minds, disciplines actually get in
the way of answers and theorems precisely because they offer maps of thought
where intuition and blind [unscripted] fumbling might yield better results. In 2008,
for example, The New Yorker featured a story about an oddball physicist who, like many ambitious physicists and
mathematicians, was in hot pursuit of a grand theory, a “theory of everything.” This thinker, Garrett Lisi, had dropped out
of academic physics because string theory dominated the field at that time and he thought the answers lay elsewhere. As
an outsider to the discipline, writes Benjamin Wallace-Wells, Lisi “built his theory as an
outsider might, relying on a grab bag of component parts: a hand-built
mathematical structure, an unconventional way of describing gravity, and a
mysterious mathematical entity known as E8.”1 In the end Lisi’s “theory of everything” fell short of
expectations, but it nonetheless yielded a whole terrain of new questions and methods.
Similarly the computer scientists who pioneered new programs to produce
computer-generated imagery (CGI), as many accounts of the rise of Pixar have
chronicled, were academic rejects or dropouts who created independent
institutes in order to explore their dreams of animated worlds.2 These alternative
cultural and academic realms, the areas beside academia rather than within it,
the intellectual worlds conjured by losers, failures, dropouts, and refuseniks,
often serve as the launching pad for alternatives precisely when the university
cannot. This is not a bad time to experiment with disciplinary transformation on
behalf of the project of generating new forms of knowing, since the fields that
were assembled over one hundred years ago to respond to new market economies
and the demand for narrow expertise, as Foucault de- scribed them, are now
losing relevance and failing to respond either to real-world knowledge projects or
student interests. As the big disciplines begin to crumble like banks that have
invested in bad securities we might ask more broadly, Do we really want to shore
up the ragged boundaries of our shared interests and intellectual commitments,
or might we rather take this opportunity to rethink the project of learning and
thinking altogether? Just as the standardized tests that the U.S. favors as a guide
to intellectual advancement in high schools tend to identify people who are good
at standardized exams (as opposed to, say, intellectual visionaries), so in
universities grades, exams, and knowledge of canons identify scholars with an
aptitude for maintaining and conforming to the dictates of the discipline. This book, a
stroll out of the confines of conventional knowledge and into the unregulated territories of failure, loss, and unbecoming,
must make a long detour around disciplines and ordinary ways of thinking. Let me explain how universities (and by
implication high schools) squash
rather than promote quirky and original thought.
Disciplinarity, as de- fined by Foucault (1995), is a technique of modern power: it depends
upon and deploys normalization, routines, convention, tradition, and regularity,
and it produces experts and administrative forms of governance. The university
structure that houses the disciplines and jealously guards their boundaries now
stands at a crossroads, not of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, past and
future, national and transnational; the crossroads at which the rapidly
disintegrating bandwagon of disciplines, subfields, and interdisciplines has
arrived offer a choice between the university as corporation and investment
opportunity and the university as a new kind of public sphere with a different
investment in knowledge, in ideas, and in thought and politics. A radical take on
disciplinarity and the university that presumes both the breakdown of the disciplines and the closing of gaps between
fields conventionally presumed to be separated can be found in a manifesto published by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney
in 2004 in Social Text titled “The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses.” Their essay is a searing critique
directed at the intellectual and the critical intellectual, the professional scholar and the “critical academic professionals.”
For Moten and Harney, the
critical academic is not the answer to encroaching
professionalization but an extension of it, using the very same tools and
legitimating strategies to become “an ally of professional education.” Moten and
Harney prefer to pitch their tent with the “subversive intellectuals,” a maroon
community of outcast thinkers who refuse, resist, and renege on the demands of
“rigor,” “excellence,” and “productivity.” They tell us to “steal from the
university,” to “steal the enlightenment for others” (112), and to act against “what
Foucault called the Conquest, the unspoken war that founded, and with the force
of law refounds, society” (113). And what does the undercommons of the university
want to be? It wants to constitute an unprofessional force of fugitive knowers,
with a set of intellectual practices not bound by examination systems and test
scores. The goal for this unprofessionalization is not to abolish; in fact Moten and
Harney set the fugitive intellectual against the elimination or abolition of this, the
founding or refounding of that: “Not so much the abolition of prisons but the
abolition of a society that could have prisons, that could have slavery, that could
have the wage, and therefore not abolition as the elimination of anything but
abolition as the founding of a new society” (113). Not the elimination of anything
but the founding of a new society. And why not? Why not think in terms of a different
kind of society than the one that first created and then abolished slavery? The
social worlds we inhabit, after all, as so many thinkers have reminded us, are not
inevitable; they were not always bound to turn out this way, and what’s more, in
the process of producing this reality, many other realities, fields of knowledge,
and ways of being have been discarded and, to cite Fou- cault again, “disqualified.” A few
visionary books, produced alongside disciplinary knowledge, show us the paths not taken. For example, in a book that
itself began as a detour, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1999),
James C. Scott details the ways the
modern state has run roughshod over local, customary,
and undisciplined forms of knowledge in order to rationalize and simplify social,
agricultural, and political practices that have profit as their primary motivation. In
the process, says Scott, certain ways of [perceiving] the world are established as normal
or natural, as obvious and necessary, even though they are often entirely
counterintuitive and socially engineered. [Perceiving] Like a State began as a study of
“why the state has always seemed to be the enemy of ‘people who move around,’” but quickly became a study
of the demand by the state for legibility through the imposition of methods of
standardization and uniformity (1). While Dean Spade (2008) and other queer scholars use Scott’s book to
think about how we came to insist upon the documentation of gender identity on all govern- mental documentation, I
want to use his monumental study to pick up some of the discarded local
knowledges that are [eliminated] in the rush to bureaucratize and rationalize an
economic order that privileges profit over all kinds of other motivations for being
and doing.
Economics
Economic thought represents dominance of time and the acceleration
of fiscal rationality beyond material constraints.
Kroker and Kroker 8 (Arthur and Marilouise, editors of CTheory, “City of
Transformation: Paul Virilio in Obama's America,” CTheory is an international,
peer-reviewed journal of theory, technology, and culture, publishing articles,
interviews, event-scenes and reviews of key books, Oct. 30, 2008,
http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=597#bio)
Are we beyond Speed and Politics? What characterizes contemporary politics is the unstable
mixture of speed information and slow movements. Like the slow implosion of the
manufacturing economy, the slow rise of evangelical visions of catastrophe, the slow
ascent -- the slow ubiquity -- of the speed of technology, the slow descent of culture into the
cold state of surveillance under the sign of bio-governance. You can see it everywhere.
In the world economy, the speed of mortgage backed securities, credit swap debt
offerings, and complex derivatives always seeks to move at the speed of light. Iceland is
the world's first country actually liquidated by hyperreality with debts amassed at lightspeeds now constituting 10 times its national wealth . Like Michel Serres' the perfect parasite, the Wall
Street financial elite has worked a perfect number on the host of the world economies -- implanting unknown
levels of toxic debt everywhere in the circulatory system of finance capita l, from China and
Japan to the European community. Waking up to the danger of hot debt moving at light-speed
when it is definitely too late, Japanese bankers suddenly declaim that "It is beyond panic." Wall Street types
say it is "panic with a capital P." Harvard economists, standing on the sidelines like a chorus of
lament, wisely add that we are now between "capitulation and panic" and "debt is
good." That in a world of over-extended economies, sudden loss of financial credibility,
and a seizing up of credit mechanisms everywhere, the only thing to do, financially
speaking, is wait for the capitulation point -- that fatal moment when despair is so deep,
pessimism so locked down tight in the investor's heart, that everything just stops for an
instant. No investments, no hope, no circulation. And for the always hopeful financial analysts, this is precisely the point to begin
anew, to reinvest, to seize financial redemption from despair. Definitely then, not a speed economy, but a politics
and economy of complex recursive loops, trapped in cycles of feedback which no one
seems to understand, but with very real, very slow consequences: like vanishing jobs,
abandoned health care and trashed communities. In The City of Panic, Virilio writes about the
"tyranny of real time," "this accident in time belonging to an event that is the fruit of a
technological progress out of political control." For Virilio, we're now interpellated by a
complex, three dimensional space-time involved in the acceleration of technological
progress "that reduces the extent, the fullness of the world to nothing."
Impacts
Accident
Will to speed makes culminates in the integral accident – controls
every existential scenario
Virilio 6 Paul Virilio, part-time crazy person, full time Frenchie. “The Information Bomb”. 223 – 237.
PWoods.
With the end of the twentieth century, it is not merely the ¶ second millennium which is reaching its close.
The Earth
too, the planet of the living, is being closed off. ¶ Globalization is not so much, then, the
accomplishment of ¶ the acceleration of history as the completion, the closure, of ¶ the field of possibilities of the terrestrial
horizon. ¶ The
Earth is now double-locked by the endless round of ¶ satellites and we
are running up against the invisible outer ¶ wall of habitable space, in the same way as we
bump up ¶ against the envelope, the firm flesh, of a liveable body. As ¶ mere men and women, mere terrestrials, the world
for us ¶ today is a dead-end and claustrophobia an agonizing threat. ¶ Our metaphysical hopes have wasted away and our
desires ¶ for physical emancipation are similarly withered. ¶ The
Earth of the great multiplication of
the species is ¶ becoming, then, the colony, the camp of the great ordeal. ¶ Babel is
returning - as cosmic ghetto, city and world all in ¶ one - and perhaps this time it is indestructible. ¶ Less than a thousand
days before the end of a pitiless a ¶ Century, series of facts, of events of all kinds, alerts us to an untimely emergence of
limits, the end of a geophysical horizon which had till then set the tone of history.¶ Between the astropliysical suicide of the
Heaven's Gate sect and the Assumption of Princess Diana, we had the announcement, the
official
annunciation of the genetic bomb, the unprecedented possibility of cloning
human beings on the basis of a computer read-out of the map of the human
genome.¶ Since then, thanks to the coupling of the life and infor- mation sciences, the outlines of a
cybernetic eugenicism have emerged, a eugenicism which owes nothing to the
politics of nations - as was still the case in the laboratories of the death camps but everything, absolutely everything, to science - an economic tech no-science in
which the single market demands the commercialization of the whole of living
matter, the privatization of the genetic heritage of¶ humanity. Besides this, the
proliferation of atomic weapons, freshly boosted by India, Pakistan and probably
other desta- bilized countries on the Asian continent, is prompting the United
States - the last great world power - to accelerate its famous 'revolution in
military affairs' by developing that emergent strategy known as 'information war',
which con- sists in using electronics as a hegemonic technology: a role it now
takes over from nuclear physics. The atom bomb can then be merely a last guarantee, ¶ provided of course
that the information bomb effectively proves its credentials as the new absolute weapons system. It is in this
context of financial instability and military uncertainty, in which it is impossible
to differentiate¶ between information and disinformation, that the question of the
integral accident arises once again and that we learn, at the Birmingham summit of May 1998,
that the Central Intelligence Agency not only takes seriously the possibility of a
'widespread computer catastrophe' in the year 2000, but that it has scheduled
this hypothetical event into its calendar, indicating on a state-by-state basis how
far individual nations still have to go to forearm themselves against it.1¶ Similarly, the
United States Senate announced the cre- ation of a committee to assess this potential electronic disaster and the Bank of
International Settlements in New York followed suit shordy afterwards, setting up a high- level committee to attempt to
forestall a
computer crash in which the damage caused by the serial downturns in
the Asian economies might produce global meltdown.¶ As the first great global manoeuvre in
'Information Warfare',2 what we see here is the launch of a new logistics, that of the cybernetic control of
knowledge: politico- economic knowledge, in which the single market affords a
glimpse of its military and strategic dimension in terms of 'information transfer'.
To the point where the systemic risk of a chain reaction of the bankruptcy of the
financial mar- kets (for so long masked during the promotional launch of¶ the Internet) is now officially
acknowledged, showing that this major risk can also be used to exert pressure on those nations which are reluctant
to give in to free-trade black- mail.3 As I pointed out some considerable time ago, if interactivity is to
information what radioactivity is to energy, then we are confronted with the
fearsome emergence of the 'Accident to end all accidents', an accident which is no
longer local and precisely situated, but global and generalized. We are faced, in
other words, with a phenomenon which may possibly occur everywhere
simultaneously.¶ But what we might add today is that this global systemic risk is precisely what makes for the
strategic supremacy of the future 'weapons systems' of the infowar, that electro- economic war declared on the world by
the United States and that, far more than the viruses and other 'logical bombs' hidden away by hackers in the software of
our computers, this integral accident is the true detonator of the information bomb, and hence of its future power of
deterrence over the political autonomy of nations.¶ As the ultimate exemplar of monopoly, the cyberworld is thus never
anything else but the hypertrophied form of a cybernetic colonialism, with the interconnectedness of the Internet
prefiguring the imminent launch of the cyber- bomb - the future information superhighways - and, subsequendy, the
establishment, still under the aegis of the United States, not just of an expanded NA TO but also of new all-out defences on
the Cold War model, with cyber- glaciation here supplanting nuclear deterrence.¶ On
12 May 1998, again at
the meeting of heads of state in Birmingham, the American president, in his
report on 'the strategy for controlling cybernetic crime', stressed the urgent need
to establish legislation against the cybercrime of mafias using remote
technologies and also against the risks involved in the emergence of 'digital
money', 'e- cash', which too easily evades any economic control. 'Cybercriminals
can use computers to raid our banks . . . extort money by threats to unleash
computer viruses,' declared Bill Clinton,4 explaining to the heads of state pre- sent that the United States was in
the front line of the battie against this, but that 'international crime requires an international response. America is
prepared to act alone when it must, but no nation can control cybercrime by itself any¶ more.'5¶ It is hard to believe one's
ears. The president of the state responsible for the greatest economic deregulation in his- tory still seeks to pose as the first
person daring to shout 'fire!' so as to lead a crusade against a chaos he himself has organized, together with his vicepresident, prime mover in the creation of the future information superhighways.¶ The
atom bomb, the
information bomb and the demo- graphic bomb - these three historical
deflagrations evoked by Albert Einstein in the early 1960s are now on the agenda
for the next millennium. The first is there, with the dangers of nuclear weapons
becoming generally com- monplace, as heralded in the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests. And the
second is also present, with the threat of cybernetic control of the politics of
states, under the indi-¶ rect threat of a generalized accident, as we have seen above. As for the
third, the demographic bomb=it is clear that if the use of computers is
indispensable in the development¶ of atomic weapons, it is equally indispensable
in the deci- pherment of the genetic code and hence in the research aimed at
drawing up a physical map of the human genome, thus opening up a new eugenicism promoting
not the nat- ural but the artifidal selection of the human species.6¶ And given the
considerable growth in the demography of our planet in the twenty-first century,
are we not right to suspect that experiments on the industrialization of living matter will not be content merely to treat
patients and assist infertile couples to have children, but will soon lead back to that old folly of the 'new man'? That is to
say, the
man who will deserve to survive (the superman), whereas the man without
qualities, the primate of the new times, will have to disappear - just as the 'savage'
had to disappear in the past to avoid cluttering up a small planet - and give way to the
latest model of humanity, the transhuman, built on the lines of transgenic crops, which are so much better adapted to
their environment than the natural prod- ucts. That this is indeed the case is confirmed by the recent declarations of
Professor Richard Seed on his attempt to achieve human cloning, or the statements of those who openly advocate the
production of living mutants, which are likely to hasten the coming, after the extra-terrestrial, of the extra-human, another
name for the superhuman race which still looms large in our memories.¶ And is the
'human genome project',
which has now been running for ten years and which is financed to the tune of $3
billion by the Department of Energy and the National Institute of Health for the purpose of deciphering
DNA, anything other than a race at last to acquire the data of life, just as, in another age,
the United States aimed for the moon by financing NASA?¶ It is always arace! Has not the geneticist Graig
Venterjust set up a private company with the aim of deciphering, in a project
parallel to the public one, the whole of the genetic code in just three years, by linking
up with a subsidiary of the pharmaceuticals group Perkin Elmer, who are special- ists in DNA-sequencing machines, and
doing this with an investment of just $200 million?7¶ Mter Kasparov's symbolic failure against the Deep Blue computer,
the summer saga of the automatic Mars Pathfinder probe and the misadventures of the Mir space station, we are seeing
the scheduled end of manned flight and a questioning of even the usefulness of the future inter- national orbital station.
This is the end of an 'extra-terrestrial' adventure for our generation but we have before us, by contrast, the spectacular
launch of the 'extra- human' epic, as astrophysics gradually gives way to biophysics. These are all so many signs of the
inuninent supplanting of macro-physical exotidsm by micro-physical endotidsm. A
probable end to the
external colonization of the space of distant lands and the dubious dawning of a
colonization which will be internal - the colonization of the space- time of living
matter, the new frontier of the will to power of the techno-sciences.¶ 'Homo est clausura
mirabilium dei', wrote Hildegard of Bingen, thus expressing a reality previously masked by the anthropocentrism
oforigins: man might not be said to be the centre of the world, but its closure, the end o fthe world. Significantly, this
phrase was uttered by a woman born in the year 10 8. It is a phrase which stands opposed to the eugenic myth by throwing
a singular light on the origin of nihilism in the omnipotence of the impotence of sciences as soon as they reopen the
question of the origins of life.¶ Genetic engineering is fundamentally eugenicist, but only the memory of the Nazi
extermination requires it to admit this. Hence the seriousness of the negationist threat, not just against the prophetic
memory of the death camps but against the principle of the continuity of the living, that 'principle of responsibility'
towards the future of humanity.¶ This is a shamefully 'conservative' principle in the eyes of those who desire nothing so
much as the revolution of the end, that nihilism of an omnipotent progress which runs through the twentieth century from
the Titanic to Chernobyl, with an eye always to the coming of the Survivor, the messiah so fervently desired by the cult of
madness of present times.¶ In fact, since the end of the Cold War we have been constantly trying to reproduce other ends
on this identical pattern: the end of history, the end of representative democracy or, again, the end of the subject, by
attempting to create the double (the clone) or the hybrid (the mutant) thanks to genetic manipulation.¶ Far from being
some kind of achievement, this 'post- industrial' undertaking deploys the energy of despair in an effort to escape the
conditions favourable to life and thus to arrive at chaos, or, in other words, to regress to the initial conditions which
prevailed, as it is believed, before the origins of life.¶ Transgenic, transhuman - these are all terms which mark the
headlong charge forward, in spite of all the evi- dence, of a transpolitical community of scientists solely preoccupied with
acrobatic performances. In this they are following the example of those fairground shows mounted¶ in the nineteenth
century by the self-styled 'mathemagi-cians’ . . . Ultimately, this so-called post-modern period is not so¶ much the age in
which industrial modernity has been sur- passed, as the era of the sudden industrialization of the end, the all-out
globalization of the havoc wreaked by progress.¶ To attempt to industrialize living matter by bio-techno- logical
procedures, as is done in the semi-official project of reproducing the individual in standard form, is to turn the end into an
enterprise, into a Promethean factory.¶ In the age of the 'balance of nuclear terror' between East and West, the
military-industrial complex had already succeeded in militarizing scientific
research to ensure the capability of mutual destruction - the 'MAD' concept.¶
Genetic engineering is now taking over from the atomic industry to invent its own
bomb.¶ Thanks to computers and the advances of bio-technology, the life sciences
are able to threaten the species no longer (as in the past) by the radioactive
destruction of the human environment, but by clinical insemination, by the
control of the sources of life, the origin of the individual.¶ We can see now that, just as the
total war outlined at the end of the First World War was to be actualized during the Second, threatening, between 1939
and 1945, with Hiroshima and Auschwitz, not the enemy but the human race, the
global warfare prefigured
today in the great manoeuvres of information warfare' will be based on a
scientific radicalization, threatening - not so much with extermination as with
extinction - not a particular population or even the human race (as the thermo-
nuclear bomb might), but the very principle of all individuated life, the genetic and
information bombs now forming a single 'weapons system'.¶ Moreover, information is indeed the third
dimension of matter, after mass and energy, each historical conflict has in its
time shown up the mastery of these elements. Mass war: from the great ancient
invasions to the organization of the firepower of armies during the recent
European wars. Energy war: with the invention of gunpowder and, most
significantly, of atomic weapons, with the 'advanced' or high-energy laser still to
come. And lastly, tomorrow, the information war, which will make general what
espionage and police surveillance inaugurated long ago, though they were unable
to draw, as we are today, on the limit-acceleration of 'global information'.¶
'[They]· who knows everything fears nothing,' declared Joseph Goebbels, the head of the
Propagandastaffel. In fact, here as elsewhere, the question is not so much one of fear-¶ ing as of spreading fear by the
permanent over-exposure of life, of all lives, to 'all-out' control, which is afait
accompli - or almost - thanks to computer technology. But let us go back for a moment to the
third dimension of organized matter: whether it be speed of acquisition, transmission or computation, information is
inseparable from its acceleration in energy terms - slowed-up information being no longer even worthy of that name, but
mere background noise.¶ As we may recall, a journalist at the time of the creation of CNN offered the thought: 'Slow news,
no news?'¶ In fact the limit-speed of the waves which convey mes- sages and images is the information itself, irrespective
of its content, to the point where Marshall McLuhan's famous formula has to be corrected: 'it is not the medium which is
the message, but merely the velocity of the medium'. An
ultimate and absolutely final velocity,
which has just tele- scoped the 'time barrier', while tomorrow the photonic
computer will calculate in perfect synchronism with the speed of light, which
today promotes instantaneous telecommunications.¶ The 'information war' will
soon be based, then, on global interactivity, just as the war of atomic energy was
based on local radioactivity - and this will be so to the point that it will be entirely
impossible to distinguish a deliberate action from an involuntary reaction or an
'accident'; or to distinguish an attack from a mere technical breakdown, as was
already the case on 19 May 1998 (synchronizing almost perfecdy with the Birmingham summit) when
the Galaxy IV telecommunications satellite suddenly interrupted the¶ messages of
some 40 million American pager devotees after the device's on-board computer
had slightly shifted the satellite's position. An unforeseen accident or a full-scale test for infowar? It is
impossible to be certain, but the affair immediately triggered a debate on the vulnerability of the USA to break- downs in a
technology essential to the life of the country.8¶ As one might imagine, the Internet, the direct descen- dant of Arpanet,
helped to keep certain American public services up and running, such as the N P R radio channel which resorted to the Net
to re-establish the link with some of its 600 local stations.¶ We
should not forget that the cybernetic
system of the Web was set in place more than twenty years ago to counter the
electromagnetic effects of an atomic explosion at altitude and thus to forestall a
generalized accident affect- ing strategic telecommunications.¶ If war has always been the
invention of new types of destruction, the promotion of a series of deliberately pro- voked accidents (the 'war machine' is
only ever the inversion of the productive machine), with
the infowar which is currently in
preparation the very notion of 'accident' is taken to extremes, with the
extraordinary possibility of a generalized accident which, like a cluster bomb,
would embrace a very great range of accidents of all kinds.¶ Not a local accident,
as in the past, but a global one, capable of halting the life of a continent, if not
indeed of several at once, as with the threat to the operation of our computers on
the eve of the year 2000.¶ In the field of information warfare, everything is, then, hypothetical; and just as
information and disinformation have become indistinguishable from each other, so have attacks and mere accidents . . .
And yet the message here is not scrambled, as was still the case with the counter-mea- sures in electronic warfare; it has
become cybernetic. That is to say, the 'information' is not so much the explicit content as the rapidity of its feedback. ¶
Interactivity, imme.diacy, ubiquity - this is the true mes- sage of transmission and reception in real time.¶ Digital
messages and images matter less than their instantaneous delivery; the 'shock
effect' always wins out over the consideration of the informational content. Hence
the indistinguishable and therefore unpredictable character of the offensive act
and the technical breakdown.¶ The indeterminacy principle then spreads from the quantum world to that of
a computerized information strategy which is independent - or almost independent - of the conditions of the geophysical
milieu where its effects are nonetheless felt.¶ Thanks to the patient establishment of an interactivity extended to the whole
of our planet, 'information warfare' is preparing the first world war of time or, more precisely, the first war of world time,
of that 'real time' of exchanges between the interconnected networks.¶ We
can easily see, then, that the
current globalization of the market also has three dimensions to it: geophysical,
techno-scientific and ideological. Hence the inevitable con- nection to be made between the United
States's resolve to aim for global free trade by the period 2010-209 and the preparations for an information war. It is, in
fact, impossible clearly to distinguish economic war from information war, since
each involves the same hegemonic ambition of making commercial and military
exchanges interactive.10¶ Hence the repeated efforts of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to deregulate the
various different national sovereignties with the MAl, the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, or, alternatively, with
European Commissioner Leon Brittan's New Transadantic Market.¶ One would in the end understand nothing of the systematic deregulation of the market economy if one did not connect it with the systemic deregulation of strategic information.¶ To render all exchanges cybernetic, whether they be peaceful or belligerent, is the discreet aim of the contemporary innovations of the end of this millennium. But here the very last 'fortress' is no longer the Europe of the EEC so
much as the living human being - that isolated 'human planet', which has at all costs to be invaded or captured through the
industrialization of living matter.¶ Let us sum up: yesterday's
was a totalitarian war, in which the
dominant elements were quantity, mass and the power of the atomic bomb.
Tomorrow's war will be globalitarian, in which, by virtue of the information
bomb, the qualita- tive will be of greater importance than geophysical scale or
population size. Not 'clean war' with zero deaths, but 'pure war' with zero births
for certain species which have disappeared from the bio-diversity of living
matter.11 The warfare of tomor- row - and here it will be comparable with the 'desk murders' of yesteryear - will not
be so much an affair of desks as of laboratories - of laboratories with their doors flung wide to the radiant future of
transgenic species, sup- posedly better adapted to the pollution of a small planet held in suspension in the ether of
telecommunications.
Bare life
Humanity exists in a state of bare life – perpetually eligible for
sacrifice as the state deems fit in order to preserve existence as a
whole – this is soul murder
Adams 3 Jason Adams, M.A. candidate in political science at Simon Fraser University, Grand Valley
State University, Communication, Faculty Member. “Popular Defense in the Empire of Speed: Paul Virilio
and the Phenomenology of the Political Body”. 2003.
http://www.academia.edu/attachments/2058093/download_file. PWoods.
'bare life' is produced not so much by
sovereignty per se, but rather by the technologies of transportation, transmission
and transplantation, which in a time when we have suddenly attained the speed
of light, universally 'mediatizes' each and every body, turning them all into an
amorphous mass of bare life, fodder for the global transition from real space to
real time. Elaborating on this key concept, Virilio notes that prior to the 20th century, mediatization had been defined
Yet the difference for Virilio is that in his conception,
as the stripping of rights from one's person by a conquering imperial sovereign such as Caesar or Napoleon; as the era of
the conquering force in our own time has become that of the
media, which is far more thorough in its approach in that it strips entire political
bodies of their rights by uprooting, fragmenting and destroying them, only to
reconstruct the remains into a single 'globalitarian' body whose billions of
perceptual organs are then controlled directly through a global apparatus of
networked prosthetic devices. As he argues, human beings are able, through the
directly perceiving body, "to distinguish between what we think is real and
therefore true, and what perceiving body, "to distinguish between what we think
is real and therefore true, and what another individual might consider real and
true...'natural' communication therefore demands audiovisual proximity and fairly restricted intervals or territory; it
the tyrant is now receding,
also demands a limited number of communicants, each sharing the same vocalizations or other semantic signals".48 But
when the prostheses of perception finally conquer the body and make it its
subject, the overall effect is a 'mass mediatization', in which the
multiperspectivity of the ancient agora, with its thousands of uniquely situated
spectator-participants, and thus thousands of unique interpretations, gives way
to the uniperspectivity of 'e-democracy' with its uniformly situated spectatorparticipant and its singular 'optically correct' interpretation. Therefore it might be said that
Virilio's major contribution to the philosophy of the body has been to articulate the ontologies of being that together form
the ecology of the political body, the history of the empire of speed and its accelerating de-struction49 of this ecology
through the process of mediatization, and the implications that the intersection between the two might have for
contemporary politics; throughout his work then, there are three elementary bodies that, through their integration with
one another, make up the ecology of the political body; 1. The Animal Body: the man, the woman, the child, the dog, the
horse, the cow
2. The Social Body: the couple, the family, the group, the village, the city, the nation 3. The Territorial
Body: the island, the region, the continent, the ocean, the earth¶ The mutually dependent relationship between these
bodies makes abundantly clear the 'need for roots' spoken of by Simone Weil, since if the animal body of the individual
human being is removed from the social body of the couple and the family, not only will the number of births plummet,
but true political life will disintegrate into anomie, since it relies on each of these as its very basis.50 Similarly, if the social
body of the couple, the family or the group is removed from the territorial body of the city, the region or the continent, the
difference between here and there disappears along with it, resulting in a generalized sense of uniformity and
confinement; it is for reasons of this sort that Virilio is interested in the fate of the political body; as he elaborates, "to a
materialist, matter is essential: a stone is a stone: a mountain is a mountain: water is water: and earth is earth. As far as I
am concerned, I am a materialist of the body, which means that the body is the basis of all my work. To me, dance is an
extraordinary thing, more extraordinary than most people usually think. Dance preceded writing, speaking and music.
When mute people speak their body language, it is true speaking rather than handicap, this is the first word and the first
writing. Thus to me, the body is fundamental. The body, and the territory of course, for there cannot be an animal body
without a territorial body. Three bodies are grafted over each other: the territorial body - the planet, the social body - the
couple; and the animal body - you and me. And technology splits this unity, leaving us without a sense of where we are".51
In this formulation, Virilio has articulated a materiality rather different from that of the Marxist tradition, one that
escapes the split between materialism and idealism by focusing on what Ian Angus has called the 'living materiality' of the
body itself52 and its relationship with the technological extensions which it has fashioned, yet which also tend to uproot it
from the hic et nunc that is the very basis of its being, the unheard-of-center that draws the three bodies together into a
mutually beneficial system. Despite the seeming obviousness of the argument, the positing of the three bodies as a
political ecology that ought to be preserved runs surprisingly against the grain of much of Western thought, which tends to
argue from the dualistic perspective that humanity will only be free once it has escaped its animal, social and territorial
chains, and that we must therefore use 'whatever means necessary' to accomplish this unleashing. This is where Virilio
parts ways with the position taken by Plato, that the body is nothing more than a prison of the soul, that confuses its
attempts to understand the world, or that it is the body that is the root of social strife and warfare as a result of its
the body is the ecology in which the soul is
necessarily embedded, just as the body has a social and territorial ecology in
which it is embedded, a conviviality that is the very basis for the new political life
he looks forward to. Ironically, his argument is that the true 'prison', the true
basis for the 'confusion', 'social strife' and 'warfare' is nothing less than that
which has been constructed in the naive attempt to escape these ecologies
through the artificial prostheses of speed, those instrumental techniques whose
purpose is the mediatization of animal, social and territorial bodies so that they
will only come to know themselves within a technical ecology, a non-space
controlled by the military, the mass media or both. In his rejection of Plato's philosophy of the
body, Virilio embraced instead his teacher Merleau-Ponty's argument that since the soul and body are
one with each other and the world with which they form a system, there really is
no such thing as 'normal' space, since with the passing of events and the coming
into being of inventions, the perceptual regime of the animal body is reorganized
along with the values and perspectives of the social body. It is because of this
interdependent ecology of bodies that any attempt to divorce them would likely
end in a situation in which they would become instrumentalized as objects among
objects, as mechanical bodies-without-souls, as has certainly been the case in the
context of scientistic and totalitarian ideologies in general, and the empire of
speed in particular.¶ It is because of this focus on the political culmination of the animal, social and territorial
bodies that Virilio's phenomenology intersects so notably with that of Arendt, although he is considerably
more willing to articulate the unique forms of totalitarianism found in the 'liberal
democracies' than she, with her focus primarily being on the forms that emerged
under Hitler and Stalin. In fact his very critique of the technological splitting of the
political body seems to essentially replace her 'iron band of terror', which she
argues brings about a state of 'organized loneliness' through instrumental
alienation of animal bodies from the body politic, with his own concept of the
'empire of speed', whereby 'iron' becomes the 'technology' that facilitates the
implementation of what he calls 'multiple solitude'. He also elaborates on both her discussion of
the shrinking of the expanse of the territorial body by communications
technologies as an instrument of imperial control, as well as her critique of the
will to 'escape velocity' marked by the launch of the first satellite into space, each
of which he sees as working toward the de- struction of the political body and its
replacement by the speed body, an 'iron band' of organized loneliness on the
global level that will form the basis for a Global City of the 21st century to replace
the One Man of the 20lh century. Although he is certainly no antihumanist, poststructuralist or even late
uncontrollable 'appetites' - instead he argues that
Virilio has elaborated on the Foucauldian concepts of
surveillance and panopticism, modifying the discussion through an engagement
with Merleau-Ponty, reframing the Panopticon as a 'Perceptron'; in other words,
as a technical disciplining of the body made functional by way of a vast apparatus
of urban planning, surveillance cameras, web cameras, internet tracking and spy
satellites. Virilio sees this 'society of control' as functioning through a new
political anatomy whereby the military-information complex becomes the
symmetrical inversion of the 'information proletariat' subjected to it, through a
complex of cybernetic communications and instrumental techniques that make
the virtual soul the prison of the cyborg body, which has by that point taken over
from its organic counterpart.¶ In the final analysis then, Virilio's philosophy of the body is the primary basis
structuralist; since the late 1970s
from which he develops his critical theory of science and technology, and thus his relevance to the discipline of political
science, in that it too takes a phenomenological rather than postmodern approach, true to the tradition as laid out by
Husserl. As we have seen, this
is demonstrated in his attempt to get behind the supposedly
'objective' veneer of technoscience that has progressively alienated the soul from
the animal body, the animal body from the social body, and the social body from
the territorial body, in order to return to the things themselves, in this case, the
living materiality of the political body. It is also for this reason that his critical theory of politics can be
characterized as anarchist, since not only does he self-identify as such throughout his writings, but like most anarchists
he is also deeply suspicious of attempts to impose massifying and globalizing
forms of political, economic or technical infrastructure onto diverse locally-based
populations. This 'phenomenological anarchist' perspective which we have outlined in this chapter carries him
through his larger analyses of both the empire of speed and the popular defense to its assault, in which Virilio
brackets the 'natural attitude' propagated by the cybernetic society, in order to
get at those things that have been uprooted and obscured by instrumental reason.
CHAPTER TWO EMPIRE OF SPEED
AND THE DEATH OF THE POLITICAL BODY¶ As we saw in the last chapter,
Virilio's critique of the mass mediatization that he sees as the effect of the transportation, transmission and
transplantation technologies of contemporary imperial power, begins with his
demand that the sanctity of
the political body be preserved, a body which he defines as an amalgamation of
animal, social and territorial bodies that together form a reciprocal system,
whether this refers to the ecology of the nomadic hunter-gatherer or that of the
sedentary polis. Of course, this is only possible if the totalizing effects of technical
mediation between bodies are kept to a bare minimum and the infinitizing ethic
of the face-to-face encounter with the Other is preserved, thus reinforcing the ancient
plurality that has always constituted the world.54 The first section of this chapter demonstrates that for Virilio, the
central problematic of our time is precisely this, the ever-increasing acceleration
of technology, which has solidified into an 'empire of speed' whose primary
purpose is to subsume whatever limited political space there once was with a new
form of totalitarianism in which decision-making becomes automatic and
instantaneous. The following three sections investigate individually how this imperial project results
in each of the three bodies becoming separated from their common political
ecology and thus from one another and from themselves, such that a single
apparatus of prosthetic perception replaces billions of organs of direct
perception. The final section considers the method by which the empire of speed is installed and then enforced over
and against all other possible systems, through the illegal but nonetheless pervasive strategy of ecological warfare, which
consists of the de-struction of any possibility of conviviality or sustenance.¶ 2.1 Empire of Speed¶ If the political body is the
basis of all of Virilio's work, then 'speed' is the categorical imperative of its de-struction and is thus the basis of empire in
speed consists of a synthesis of instrumental and technical
control that makes an object of every living body through an ideology of perpetual
acceleration, a project which has only come to the verge of 'perfection' in the age
of cybernetics. Speed has never been distributed evenly, but has always functioned in
the form of a hierarchy, such that the more powerful sectors of society are those that
move at faster speeds, while the less powerful sectors are those that move at slower
speeds, an observable phenomena from the Concorde Jet of the elite to the
Greyhound Bus of the poor. A considerably more vivid example of this hierarchy is
found in the American automatic responder system which has been set up to
launch retaliatory nuclear strikes within one second of an offensive launch by any
other country55; here, the tyranny of acceleration has taken over so completely that
the human despot that once ruled at the top of the social pyramid has been
replaced by a totalitarian robot. It is because of this increasingly authoritarian stratification of acceleration
that Virilio contends that, as is also the case with wealth, the essence of speed is power; as he elaborates,
"power and speed are inseparable just as wealth and speed are
inseparable...power is always the power to control a territory with messengers,
modes of transportation and communication. Independent of the economy of
wealth, an approach to politics is impossible without an approach to the economy
of speed".56 Just as Virilio rejects the Marxist privileging of economic power as prior to speed power, he also rejects
the Foucauldian privileging of knowledge-power, arguing that "before knowing-power there is always
moving- power",57 thereby demonstrating the uniqueness of his conception, which places speed at the center
our time. As he uses the term,
without denying the importance of either economic or knowing power.¶ The imperial form which speed takes is clear not
only in the disparity between the various 'speed-classes' but also in the differences in the degree of democratic control that
were possible in past times of technologies of relative speed, which, because they required the power of the animal body,
thereby guaranteed the population a greater degree of bargaining power, versus the current era of the technologies of
the animal body has been replaced by the technical power of
automation.58 Similarly, just as the epoch of relative speed had been based on the unity
of the political body in such a way that it could easily mount a popular resistance
if need be, whether in nomadic hunter-gather society or the sedentary society of
the polis; as Virilio points out, "the prodigious technical acceleration of means of
transportation and transmission disintegrated this social order and founded a
new hierarchy between rulers and masses. This was the hierarchy of high speeds of penetration"59 in
which bare life became dependent upon 'qualified life' for its defense. Thus we see that the
absolute speed in which
shift from a society of relative speed to one of absolute speed is also one in which there is a shift from the relative sharing
animal,
social and territorial bodies are rendered superfluous to the functioning of power
and are thus disintegrated into the mediatization of digital being. 60 It is in this
process of mediatization of the political body that Virilio argues that the power
structure being imposed in the current epoch of absolute speed amounts to
nothing less than a high-tech totalitarianism, one that he labels the 'empire of
speed' since it extends so far beyond the continental realm of that criticized previously by Arendt; as he explains, "now,
through the single market, through globalization, through the convergence of
time towards a single time, a world time, a time which comes to dominate local
time...through cyberspace, through the big telecommunications conglomerates,
[there] is a new totalitarianism, a totalitarianism of totalitarianisms, and that is
of power, however marginal this may have been, towards a truly instrumental totalitarianism in which
what I call globalitarianism...and that's something infinitely more dangerous, even,
perhaps, than the Nazi or communist brands of totalitarianism"61 in that it has now
become so universal that every animal, social and territorial body is immediately
rendered its subject. Thus the concept of globalitarianism is one that extends his critique of the limits of
Marxian and Foucauldian conceptions of power, arguing against the idea that globalization can be so easily summed up as
either a new capitalist internationalism on the one hand, or that the 'Great Confinement' has already taken place prior to
the 'end
of the space' of a small planet held in suspension in the electronic ether of our
modern means of telecommunication",62 a confinement more universal and a
capitalism more total, than any seen thus far. The importance of understanding 'globalization' as
globalization on the other. To the contrary, he holds that "what is being revealed here are the beginnings of
being primarily about mass mediatization, according to Virilio, is that it assists in illuminating the fundamental
importance of the spatial and temporal dimensions of the terrestrial body to the orientation of the animal and social
bodies embedded within it; as he argues, "we
need to do this to come back to the Earth.. .to its
dimensions and to the coming loss of those dimensions... which only yesterday
still organized the politics of nations and their alliances".63 Indeed, it is not hard to see that
the 'lost dimension' of the local political body, which often had more to do with the time-lag
inherent in the relative speeds of transportation and transmission technologies than it did with political or physical
borders themselves, is
now being replaced with the virtual reality of the 'telecontinent'
and the 'global city' of absolute speed. This is a result of the fact that that in the current epoch, it is
technical bodies rather than living bodies that matter most to the functioning of empire; thus we grasp the weight of
Virilio's argument that "all
media basically form one single medium, from the telega in
the Ukrainian steppes to the transcontinental rail and the cinema motor city".65 It
is this single speed body that forms the infrastructure for the imperial apparatus
of control, which as Gandhi, Benedict Anderson and others have observed, has always required the instrumental
application of transportation and transmission technologies, even when earlier forms of empire were still based on
technologies of relative rather than absolute speed.66 As Virilio notes, the empire of speed has now reached such an
advanced stage that presidents are even declaring the end of the foreign policy/domestic policy opposition at the same
time that mayors are declaring that the borders of nations now run through the center of the city rather than outside of it.
For Virilio all of this grows out of the mass mediatization of the political body of the polis, in which " the
real city,
which is situated in a precise place and which gave its name to the politics of
nations, is giving way to the virtual city, that deterritorialized meta-city. Which is
hence to become the site of metropolitics, the totalitarian or rather globalitarian
character of which will be plain for all to see".67
Ecological destruction
Technological rationality guarantees ecological destruction – disasters become
normalized, reduced to a series of tweets that mask our agential incapacity – the
alternative is key to a new politics outside of regimes of speed
Cohen 12 Tom Cohen, social climatologist. “Telemorphosis Theory in the Era of Climate Change
Volume 1”. 2012. Pgs. 19-25. PWoods.
The point is, today everyone can see that the
system is deeply unjust and careening out of
control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And we are trashing the natural world.
We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater
drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. The atmosphere
can’t absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal
is serial disasters: economic and ecological. Warnings regarding the planet
earth’s imminent depletion of reserves or “life as we know it” arrive today more
as routine tweets than events that might give us pause, particularly as the current wars over
global “sovereign debt” and economic “crises” swamp attention. The intensifying specter of megadebt—
at a time of “peak everything” (peak water, peak oil, peak humans)—dumped into
a future despoiled of reserves and earning capacity has a specific relation to this
white-out—the “economical” and “ecological” tandem shifts all attention to the
first term (or first “eco”). In a post-global present consolidating what is routinely remarked as a neofeudal order, the titanic shift of hyperwealth to the corporatist few (the so-called 1%) sets the stage for a
shift to control societies anticipating social disruption and the implications of
“Occupy” style eruptions— concerning which the U.S. congress hastily passed new unconstitutional rules to
apprehend citizens or take down websites. The Ponzi scheme logics of twenty-first century earthscapes portray an array of
time-bubbles, catastrophic deferrals, telecratic capture, and a voracious present that seems to practice a sort of
tempophagy on itself corresponding with its structural premise of hyper-consumption and perpetual “growth. The
supposed urgencies of threatened economic and monetary “collapse” occlude and
defer any attention to the imperatives of the biosphere, but this apparent pause
or deferral of attention covers over an irreversible mutation. A new phase of
unsustainability appears in which a faux status quo ante appears to will to sustain
itself as long as possible and at whatever cost; the event of the twenty-first century is that there will
be no event, that no crisis will disturb the expansion of consumption beyond all supposed limits or peaks. In such an
environment other materialities emerge, reference systems default, and the
legacies of anthropo-narcissm go into overdrive in mechanical ways. Supposedly
advanced or post-theory theory is no exception—claiming on the one hand ever
more verdant comings together of redemptive communities, and discretely
restoring many phenomenological tropes that 20th century thought had
displaced. This has been characterized as an unfolding eco-eco disaster—a complex at once economic and ecological.1
The logics of the double oikos appear, today, caught in a self-feeding default. The present volume, in diverse ways,
reclaims a certain violence that has seemed occluded or anaesthetized (it
is a “present,” after all, palpably
beyond “tipping points” yet shy of their fully arrived implications— hence the pop
proliferation of “zombie” metaphors: zombie banks, zombie politics, zombie
“theory”). It departs from a problem inherent in the “eco” as a metaphoric
complex, that of the home (oikos), and the suicidal fashion in which this
supposed proper ground recuperates itself from a nonexistent position. The
figure of an ecology that is ours and that must be saved precludes us from
confronting the displacement and dispossession which conditions all production,
including the production of homelands. Memory regimes have insistently, silently and anonymously prolonged and
defended the construct of “homeland security” (both in its political sense, and in the epistemological sense of being secure
in our modes of cognition), but
these systems of security have in fact accelerated the
vortices of ecocatastrophic imaginaries. If a double logic of eco-eco disaster
overlaps with the epoch in deep time geologists now refer to as the
“anthropocene,” what critical re-orientations, today, contest what has been
characterized as a collective blind or psychotic foreclosure? Nor can one place the
blame at the feet alone of an accidental and evil ‘1%’ of corporate culture alone,
since an old style revolutionary model does not emerge from this exitless network
of systems. More interesting is the way that ‘theory’, with its nostalgic agendas for
a properly political world of genuine praxis or feeling has been complicit in its
fashion. How might one read the implicit, unseen collaboration that critical agendas coming out of twentieth century
master-texts unwittingly maintained with the accelerated trajectories in question? The mesmerizing fixation
with cultural histories, the ethics of “others,” the enhancement of subjectivities,
“human rights” and institutions of power not only partook of this occlusion but
‘we theorists’ have deferred addressing biospheric collapse, mass extinction
events, or the implications of resource wars and “population” culling. It is our
sense of justified propriety—our defense of cultures, affects, bodies and others—
that allows us to remain secure in our homeland, unaware of all the ruses that
maintain that spurious home. At the moment of writing it is common to point to the 2011 “occupy”
movement, viral and cloud-like, as the Bartlebyesque counter to a totalization of the systems of this control. Bartleby
has become the figure for a rejection of end-fixated production. Were one able to
speak of an occupy movement applied to critical concepts and twentieth century derived idioms
one might imagine a call to occupy critical theory and conceptual networks—but
with what interruption of received programs (“Sovereign debt”), what alternative materialities, what
purported “ethics” involving commodified futures (and the structure of debt), what mnemotechnics,
and with resistance to what power, if it is the oikos itself, the metaphoric chimera and
its capture of late anthropocene imaginaries that is at is- sue? This is one of the implications of
what this volume terms telemor- phosis, the intricacy by which referential regimes, memory, and
reading, participate in these twenty-first century disclosures. The occupy motif, at the
moment, sets itself against a totalization or experience of foreclosure—political,
mediacratic, financial, cognitive. Various strategies ap- pearing in this volume involve what
could equally be called a disoccupy logic or meme. Such a logic of disoccupation
assumes that the domain in question is already saturated, occupied in the militarist
sense by a program that, un- wittingly, persists in the acceleration of destruction and
takeover. Critical thought of recent decades would have walked hand in hand with
the current foreclosures. The explication of ecocatastrophic logics, accordingly, are not
found in Foucault nor, surprisingly, Derrida. Timothy Morton’s Ecology without Nature is
one such effort at disoccupation—seeking to void the two terms of the title, and in
the process disrupt the “revised organicisms” of contemporary critical schools
which, he argues, have managed to lapse into sophisticated pre-critical modes not
unrelated to a more general inertia. The meme of disoccupation resonates, for instance,
with what Rob- ert Markley in this volume proposes as a practice of “disidentification,” and is implied
by Timothy Clark’s tracking of a “derangement of scale” in the perpetual cognitive
disjunctures that come up against the ecocatastrophic present. One would disoccupy
the figure of subjectivity, refusing not only the comforting commodifications of “the
other” in cultural theory, but also the later moral appeals to other redemptive
beings, such as the animal (as Joanna Zylinska argues with regard to post-humanism and its “animal studies”).
What might be disoccupied would be the meta- phorics of the home, even where the
latter would sustain itself today in cherished terms like trauma, affect, alterity, embodiment,
or even culture. Yet a refusal of supposed redemptive ‘outsides’ to capitalism does
not lead to a place of critical purity beyond the implied moralism of ‘occupy’ but
the return of, and orientation to, a violence before which no model of sovereignty
can be sustained. To imagine that one might disoccupy by refusing all the supposed redemptive ‘outsides’ to
capitalism is not to find a place of critical purity beyond the moralism of ‘occupy.’ Occupation is never simply
takeover and appropriation, but always involves destruction of what it claims.
The viral migration of the “occupy” motif involves a premise of disoccupation
covertly. In the present volume this takes different forms. If one is now beyond tipping points in a
zone of irreversibility, what corresponds to this as a critical injunction? Catherine
Malabou sets aside the entire way the figure of trauma and the “always already” have organized time. Claire Colebrook
affirms, rather than accepting as tragic, extinction as a point of departure for
thought, which can be used to work against the organicist ideologies of the
present (such as sexual difference). Martin McQuillan shifts the referential spectrum of discourse to “other
materialities” in the hypothesis of a post-carbon thought, while Robert Markley tracks the influx of
geological times that displace human narrative matrices. Bernard Stiegler voids the
biopolitical model, which he sees as exceeded by “the third limit of Capitalism”
(when it impinges on the biosphere). From that point of excess he strategizes a counter-stroke
to the capture of attention by telecratic circuits, initiating a noopolitics. Joana Zylinska
disoccupies, to continue this motif, the covert model of soft “otherness” by which
animal studies has invented itself as an anthropo-colonianism. Like posthumanism
generally, Zylinska argues, animal studies sustains its subjectal hegemonies. Hillis Miller locates a source for the
ecocatastrophic imaginary in the blind insistence of “organicist” models of
reading that sustain the comforts of the oikos. Against this hermeneutics of
security Miller posits an “ecotechnics” that is at once machinal and linguistically
based (where language is not communicative, but literal and inscriptive in a manner
exemplified by Kafka’s Odradek). Justin Read displaces any biopolitical model, again, by
relinquishing trauma, the oikos, survival and interiorities of any manner, instead
describing the circulation of data (or the “unicity”) from which the only remaining
political gesture would be oriented to the ecocatrastrophic. Jason Groves shifts the
referential screen from, again, a human-centered index to the viral textualism of (alien) species invasion, the global
rewriting of bio-geographies. Mike Hill transitions to the
alteration of atmospherics under the
imaginary of climate war technologies in a new horizon of invisible wars (and
wars on visibility), which today include not only nanotechnologies but also the
“autogenic” turning of wars without discrete (national) enemies into suicidal
rages against the “homeland”—a sort of, again, auto-occupation that is accelerating. If it is possible to note
that theory’s retrieval of human and animal otherness against the horrors of capitalism is akin to political deferrals of the
future for the sake of saving the present, then we might ask what might open the reactive self-bound logics beyond
homeland security? What
has been absent to date is any shared or possible climate
change imaginary—or a critical matrix. The problem is that the other
materialities that constitute the forces of climate change would pulverize
whatever informs “imaginaries” in general, which have always been tropological systems. When a
recent critical query asks, for example, how to define “a political subject of climate
change” the authors focus on how the “climate crisis shapes particular
subjectivities,” properly putting any rhetoric of “crisis” itself to the side as
appropriable. The problem lies in the premise of defining a “political subject” or
subjectivities to begin with: “Unsurprisingly, much of the current discourse on climate change oscillates between
these two poles: most dramatically, between imminent catastrophe and the prospect of renewal; between unimaginable
humanitarian disaster and the promise of a green-tech revolution. As such the climate crisis regularly calls forth regimes
of risk” [Dibley and Neilson 2010: 144]. This Janus-faced algorithm, the “political subject of climate change” (147), arrives
as a form of cognitive disjuncture: “these two images. . . are alternative figures of the subjectivity of ecological crisis. They
are complimentary. . . . something like a dialectical image of the subjectivity of climate change” (146). On the one hand,
this theoretical intervention is typical of the cognitive reflex toward pre-emption of the worst in arguments focused on
mitigation, on sustainability, and on various “environmental” agendas—despite none of these answering to what science
would demand. Sustainability
has been angled to “sustain” the level of comfort and
acquisition that the economy of “growth” demands. On the other hand, there is a reflex of
occlusion. This straining for a “subjectivity” that would account for a political feature
of this new landscape comes up with two mutually canceling algorithms: a
desperate sense of imminent crisis and end, alongside a hope of something as
lulling as ‘subjectivity’. As a number of essays in the volume imply, one might proceed
otherwise: depart or begin from a subject without subjectivity (Catherine Malabou), or
an exteriority without interior (Justin Read). The aporia of an era of climate change
are structurally different from those that devolved on the torsions of Western
mestphysics. They are not the aporia explored by Derrida around the figure of hospitality, taken as an endless
refolding that keeps in place, while exposing, a perpetuated and lingering logics that defers the inhospitable. (One
mode of deconstruction as solicitation involves shaking the house or structure
within which one finds oneself, and this circuit might itself be disturbed by a
refusal to occupy.) As Masao Myoshi [2001] first suggested, the logics of extinction compromise
the aims of an emancipatory future along with all else. Any project of “formal
democracy” runs up not only against the twenty-first century post-democratic
telecracies that render that episode of 90’s thought transparently inscribed in the neo-liberal fantasy (or propaganda)
it would appropriate back for the then bruised “Left.” But it also faces the
transparency by which market democracy not only appears a Potemkin figure itself but, in fact,
guarantees planetary ruin by the demographic requirements of cars alone for any emerging middle class of
India and China (as Arundhati Roy argues).4 Any focus on global population control runs up
against feminist progressivism [Hedges 2009; Hartman 2009]; post-colonial narratives that
would restoratively mime the promise of 90’s neo-liberalism of a world of market
democracy would require three planets of resource materiel to allow dispossessed
others to reach our levels of prosperity. The profound 90’s investment in the
“otherness of the other,” an other who would be recognized, communed with,
raised into the polis, and colonized, appears today as a stubborn archaism and,
perhaps, as an epochal error, that maintained the sovereign trace of subjective
mastery. It would seem that both metaphysics and its deconstruction jointly participated in what is now disclosing
itself as the
“anthropocene”—an epoch of self-affirmation into which Enlightenment
ideologemes have played, as Dipesh Chakrabarty analyzes in the term “freedom.”5 The impasse between
today’s spellbound and rapacious present and supposed future generations, the rupture of any imagined moral contract to
or recognition of same, has been in circulation for a while. What
is interesting in the horizons
converging at present is not how a certain irreversibility impacts or is excluded
still by telecracies and cognitive regimes. Nor is the main point of interest how
sophisticated critical agendas have discretely served an agenda of institutional
inertia—especially in the guise of critique. What is interesting is not the shape this will take, the
variable catastrophes that are calculable or envisioned. What should be interesting is a logic of foreclosure or psychosis
that has become, in part, normatized, accommodated or confirmed by corporate media.9 This
psychosis takes
the form of excluding, occluding, or denying what is fully in the open and
palpable, whether in science or before one’s eyes. Latour assumes that a “Modernist parenthesis”
erred by its assiduous focus on rereading the past otherwise, but he misses the target of Benjamin’s cartoon. It is not
attention to the past but rather angelicism that constitutes a violent hermeneutic relapse. Perhaps an example of Latour’s
paralyzing ‘parenthesis’ would be Derrida’s injunction
against thinking the “future” in order to
keep open the incalculable and the “to come.” In fact, the current plunge in
economic and societal “prospects”—lost “sovereignty,” debt enslavement, banker
occupation, collapse of reserves, and so on—is not premised on an undue focus
on the past but is all about alternative time-lines. In this respect Latour’s “prospects” run into the
same capture of futures that occurs in the market, whether manipulated from above to defer reckoning (the “too big to
fail” logic) or bet against. Calculations
about future events, the forward narratives that
flood media and alternative journalism, suggest a time in which the
commodification of the “past” has flipped forward—marking both past and future
as fantasmatic projections. One is not, so to speak, nor have we been, outside of “literary”
constructions, least of all when we say something like system or reserves. What is called the market, now
technically rogue in the sense that it serves as a façade of manipulations to play for time, is all about bets on future
circumstance. Expanded to commodified futures and derivatives, and credit default swaps; wired through ingenious and
self-imploding “financial instruments”—said market parallels the global despoilment of future reserves and times
(generations). It would be indulgent to run through variations of this. Some
are familiar: the
consolidation of a new form of totalitarianism and internal security apparatuses;
new climate war technologies (applied internally) testing the “full spectrum
dominance” protocols that the Pentagon retains as its post-imperial template
(which Mike Hill explores in this volume). Some are becoming visible: untimed prognoses of
biospheric collapse (marine food chains), extreme weather disasters (megadrought, flooding, fracking induced quakes). Others hover at the edge of
recognizability: mass extinction events, the mathematics of global population
“culling.” These nonetheless, like hydo-carbons and oil itself, literally shape visibility and invisibility—no oil, no
hyper-industrial techno-culture, no photography as we know it, no cinema, no global transport. Is there an imperative, as
Martin McQuillan suggests, to rethink the histories of writing and cognition in relation to carbon and hydrocarbon culture
explicity—and to do so not only in relation to human mnemo-technologies? When Claire Colebrook converts
extinction from a tragic taboo to an affirmative perspective she deflates the
semantic boundedness that any angelicism has always sought to save. The problem is
not that the past draws human narcissism toward it in the latter’s critical revisionism and deconstructions; the problem is
that the more active “other temporalities” intervene, the more the artefacted present appears spellbound.
Simulacra
Unending proliferation of speed decimates the capacity for engaging
the world – the world becomes a series of images on a screen
Armitage 8 “Accelerated aesthetics: Paul Virilio's the vision machine”. John Armitage, Senior
Lecturer in Politics in the Division of Government and Politics, University of Northumbria. 4 Jun 2008.
PWoods.
Virilio's key theoretical innovation is the concept of dromology — the science or logic of speed. It is
dromology which is at the heart of his writings in such volumes as Pure War (written with Sylvere Lotringer, 1983);
Negative Horizon (1986); Speed & Politics (1986); War and Cinema (1989); Popular Defense & Ecological Struggles
(1990); The¶ Aesthetics of Disappearance (1991) and The Lost Dimension (1991). The Vision Machine is thus a treatise on
what I shall call accelerated aesthetics.¶ By invoking the concept of dromology, Virilio is basically involved with exploring
the links between speed and power in a world which, according to him, is currently
experiencing the disappearance of material space under the impact of what he
calls "intensive time." Dromocratic politics, then, is an abstract discipline.3 It blends ideas taken from sources
Buch as Einstein's relativity theory with others derived from post-modern conceptions of technology and critical theory.¶
Virilio argues that the human body no longer functions
according to biological, but according to technological time. Indeed, for him, the body
is constituted by various technologies and is thus fully penetrated by speed. It is for
this reason that he writes about the body as a "vector of speed," or as a "metabolic vehicle."4
Thus, whereas once Nietzsche spoke of the "will to power," Virilio speaks instead of
the "will to nothingness" and the advent of "bodies without wills" — a condi- tion brought
For instance, in Speed & Politics,
about in part by the invasion of the body by vision and other technologies. However, according to Virilio, the "hoarding of
metabolic vehicles*' by technologies does not take place automatically. Indeed, it is orchestrated by those sections of the
polity whose duty it is to determine material and aesthetic value in society - the military and the media. Hence, for Virilio,
the human body is now little more than a mechanism designed to carry out the
requirements of dromocratic society; a society which is dominated by something
close to Nietzsche's con- ception of "slave morality."5¶ Similarly, Virilio Bees the concepts of
relativity and time as crucial components of thePostmodern political and cultural condition. As he notes in Speed &
Politics, This loss of material space leads to the government of nothing but time. The
Ministry of Time sketched in each vector will finally be accom- plished following the dimensions of the biggest vehicle
there is, the State-Vector" (141).¶ Thus, unlike Marx who saw the realm of the political as being centrally focused around
questions relating to the accumulation and distribution of the economic surplus, or Foucault who envisaged it as being
bound up with new forms of subjectivity and models of existence that do not fully succumb to the dark side of reason,
Virilio alludes to its disappearance into speedfi For
Virilio, then, power is accelerated movement
in and through time. The latter point is significant for two reasons. Firstly, it explains why Virilio is so entranced
by war. War is literally power in movement and therefore the most acute form of
speed politics. Secondly, both Pure War and War and Cinema in particular can be viewed as precursory texts to
The Vision Machine. For example, it is in War and Cinema that we find Virilio's most accomplished work regarding the
dromological bodies are
by definition warring bodies. Bodies for which the will to power has been
translated initially into the "will to speed" and ultimately into the will to
nothingness by the "warrior priests'* who control the "war machine"; a machine which
increasingly relies on visual technologies to take up arms against time itself.
Furthermore, for Virilio, the omnipresence of wars waged increasingly through visual
technologies (the Persian Gulf War springs to mind) only serves to highlight the pervasiveness of such technologies
in society generally. Ultimately, then.Virilio is anxious to trace the gradual but continuing
disappearance of human subjectivity into technological systems. Specifically, The Vision
affinity between war-time and the logistics of perception. For, according to Virilio,
Machine is an essay on the incorporation of human perspective into imaging apparatus like cinema, television and video.
However, for Virilio, it is not how such vision technologies are used which constitutes new sources and sites of power but
as material space disappears
into intensive time, the guardians of dromocratic society — the police, the judicial
authorities, the military and the media - become ever more concerned with
patrolling the point of view from which individual subjects "see" the world. In
the nature of the technologies themselves. Virilio's argument here is that,
particular, Virilio is keen to draw out the implications for the body of the waning of both biological and historical time and
such ancient and human- centred experiences are being
progressively superseded by visual technologies which function in accordance
with what he describes as the logic of "speed-space"; a Space which, in effect,
conjures up techno- logically induced delusions of distance in the human
observer.? The apparently captivat- ing universe of so-called "virtual reality" is the
space. For, in his view,
sort of thing Virilio is trying to come to terms with.6¶ Without a doubt, Virilio's discussions of accelerated aesthetics and
power do have a certain panache. Moreover, his focus on dro- mology allows him to roam freely over pre- viously seeming
disparate subjects like tech- nical domination, the death of the subject, alienation, human perspective and the role of
vision machines in both war and peacetime. Virilio's philosophy of vision is also soundly based on an historical
understanding of the material development of imaging systems. His aesthetic sensibilities are therefore very much alive to
the political, not to say author- itarian, meanings inherent in the continuing advancement of such "regimes of the
visual."In essence, Virilio's rage is directed against the domination of monocular per- spective, that is, against the pivotal
place given to the eye of the human observer in Western rationalist aesthetic and visual sys- tems; systems founded on the
construction of cubic spaces regulated and co-ordinated from a single point of view. Now, Virilio is not the first French
philosopher to denounce either monocular perspective or its absorp- tion into vision technologies.^ He is, though, the
only one who links such concerns to a discussion of speed politics and the demate- rialisation of subjectivity. Indeed, one
need look no further than the events of the Persian Gulf War for confirmation of Virilio's theoretical analyses regarding
accel- erated aesthetics. As he put it in War and Cinema, "images
have become munitions"; warfare,
then, is increasingly conducted at the level of optical representation, across the
screens of vision machines. But the key ques- tion is, what prompted humanity to
dispense With its own eyes and come to rely, instead, on mechanical imaging
systems? For Virilio, the answer to this question is clear:¶ The moment they appeared on the scene, the first optical
devices ... profoundly altered the contexts in which mental images were topographically stored and retrieved, the
imperative to re-present oneself, the imaging of the imagination which was such a great
help in mathematics according to Descartes and which he considered a veritable part of the body, veram partem corporis.
Just when we were apparently procuring the means to see further and better the unseen of the uni- verse, we were about
to lose what little power we had of imagining it. The
telescope, that epitome of the visual prosthesis, projected
an image of a world beyond our reach and thus another way of moving about in
the world, the logistics of perception inaugurat- ing an unknown conveyance of
sight that produced a telescoping of near and far, a phenomenon of acceleration
obliterating our experience of distances and dimensions... (4) In Virilio's view, then, optical
devices not only change the way in which we experience the world visually. They also
speed it up and, in the process, destroy our powers of ocular imagination. Moreover,
he argues that, in their latest incarnations, such vision tech- nologies encourage us to perceive the world
as if it were entirely made up of nothing more then appearances on a screen. Thus
public spaces are increasingly turned into gigantic film Bets where unattended and sta- tionary video surveillance cameras
dissolve individuals into mere images:¶ This solemn farewell to the man behind the camera, the complete evaporation of
visual subjectivity into an ambient technical effect, a sort of permanent pancinema, which, unbeknown to us, turns our
most ordinary acts into movie action, into new visual mate-rial, undaunted, undifferentiated v: der... (47)
Alt
Chill
Just chill – speed exacerbates systems of semiocapital –
disinvestment in speed solves
Rosa 13 Hartmut Rosa, German sociologist and political scientist. “Social Acceleration: A New Theory of
Modernity”. Aug 20, 2013. PWoods.
Alongside the thought of an exhaustion of options appears a complementary
humanistic ideal of self-actualization (Bildung) that points in the same direction
and according to which the good life consists first and foremost in the most
comprehensive possible development of the talents and potentials of a subject .86
To the extent that, from this perspective, the divergence of the time of life and the time of
the world is a disparity
between the almost inexhaustible options available in the world and the limited number of possibilities realizable in an
individual life, the
principle of acceleration is rooted in the idea of exhausting as many
subjective and worldly possibilities as one can. The heightening of the pace of life is as it were a
natural consequence: because the faster one runs through the particular waypoints,
episodes, or events, the more possibilities one can realize, acceleration represents
the mo promising, indeed the only strategy that will tend to bring together again
the time of the world and the time of (one's own) life. She who lives twice as fast can realize
twice as many worldly possibilities, achieve two times as many goals, have twice as many experiences, and accumulate
twice as many lived events: she thus doubles the amount of worldly options that she exhausts.8' This
makes clear
how technical acceleration and the heightening of the pace of life are tied
together in a cultural logic of quantitative escalation and how growth and
acceleration are indissolubly bound together even from the cultural perspective.
He who lives faster can then in a certain way complete a variety of life projects in a single life span and make their
experiential possibilities accessible to himself. It is not difficult to see how the horizon of an "eternal life" can be won back
here by imagining an unlimited acceleration. One who lives infinitely fast no longer needs to fear death as the annihilator
It is this
connection that turns the heightening of the pace of life into the modern answer
to the problem of death and hence lends the idea of acceleration the eudaimonistic overtones that are
of options. Between such a person and the intrusion of death lie infinitely many "life projects." ¶
expressed as much in Marinetti's futurism as in the fascination of formula one racing or the advertising slogans of late
modernity ("all you need is speedl"). The observation of Friedrich Ancillon, cited at the beginning of chapter 1, to the effect
that in
modernity one seeks the "true life" in movement, "and only in it," thus gets
to the heart of acceleration's promise of happiness. It can be understood alongside the capitalist
organization of the economy as the second external "motor" of the modern dynamic of speed (external in that it drives the
Cultural patterns of meaning and subjective
action orientations are its causal foothold, which means that it drives the acceleration process
circle of acceleration, as it were, from the outside).
through the desire to heighten the pace of life in order to increase the number of episodes of action and experience per
From this perspective the capitalist
organization of the economy does not appear as a cause of the ideology of
acceleration but rather as its instrument. Entirely in line with this, Peter Heintel and Thomas Macho
remark: "Our economic system can be classified as a compensatory endeavor rooted in the will
to master death, the absolute limit, through the quantitative saturation [Erfullung) of
unit of time and hence to save time resources for this purpose.
time."88 Moreover, the linkage of this dimension of acceleration with technical acceleration and social change produces a
highly unwelcome and paradoxical consequence that turns the implementation of the modern program of acceleration
into a Sisyphean task and necessarily dooms the "promise of happiness" implicit in acceleration. The very same
inventions, techniques, and methods that permit the accelerated realization of worldly possibilities and hence the increase
of the total sum of options realized in a life also multiply the number and variety of realizable options of the time of the
One only needs to call to mind
the immense proliferation of options in the new media like cable television and
world—indeed, as we have already seen, often in an exponential way.89
especially the Internet,90 which not only accelerated previous information and communication processes but
also brought forth entirely new spaces of possibility regarding services, entertainment, and ways of communicating.
These are only two examples of the way the "degree of missing out" is
exponentially increasing in modern society.
Sousveillance
The alternative is a strategy of sousveillance – a critical reflexivity that reorients
us away from constant action and demands we ask ourselves “Do you like what
you see?”
Mann et al. 3 Steve Mann, Mann is a tenured professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, with cross-appointments to the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Faculty of Forestry, at the
University of Toronto, and is a Professional Engineer licensed through Professional Engineers Ontario. He is
also General Chair of the IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society and Associate Editor of
IEEE Technology and Society. Jason Nolan, Professor of Early Childhood Education, Director Experiential
Design and Gaming Environments Lab and Barry Wellman, also likely v qualified. “Sousveillance: Inventing
and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments”. 2003. Pgs. 331 334. PWoods.
VIDEO SURVEILLANCE and its regime of control… the banalization or
popularization of global surveillance, or to put it another way, the
DEMOCRATIZATION OF VOYEURISM on a planetary scale, has overexposed
even our most private activities. So doing, it has exposed us to a major iconic risk. In
the best case, only marketing specialists can gauge the amplitude of this risk; in the worst, the military, investigators
charged with tracking unlawful activities, political police, and automated systems for information collection… (Virilio
2002: 109). [They]
felt meaningless unless they were being observed and this was the
reason they all observed and took snapshots and movies of each other, for fear of
experiencing the meaninglessness of their existence… staggering along in mad
hope of somehow finding someone to be observed by somewhere… (Dürrenmatt 1988:
20). For decades, the notion of a “surveillance society” where every facet of our private
life is monitored and recorded has sounded abstract, paranoid or far-fetched to some
people. No more!… Yet too many people still do not understand the danger, do not grasp
just how radical an increase in surveillance by both the government and the
private sector is becoming possible … from a number of parallel developments in the worlds of
technology, law and politics. (Stanley and Steinhardt 2003: iv) These disparate observers are reacting to the pervasiveness
of surveillance in contemporary western society (Stanley and Steinhardt 2003). Such surveillance is everywhere but often
little observed. Organizations
have tried to make technology mundane and invisible
through its disappearance into the fabric of buildings, objects and bodies. The
creation of pervasive ubiquitous technologies—such as smart floors, toilets,
elevators, and light switches—means that intelligence gathering devices for
ubiquitous surveillance are also becoming invisible (Mann and Niedzviecki 2001; Marx 1995;
Lefebvre 1991). This re-placement of technologies and data conduits has brought new opportunities for observation, data
collection, and sur/sousveillance, making public surveillance of private space increasingly ubiquitous. All
such
activity has been surveillance: organizations observing people. One way to
challenge and problematize both surveillance and acquiescence to it is to
resituate these technologies of control on individuals, offering panoptic
technologies to help them observe those in authority. We call this inverse panopticon
“sousveillance” from the French words for “sous” (below) and “veiller” to watch. Sousveillance is a form of
“reflectionism,” a term invented by Mann (1998) for a philosophy and procedures of using technology to mirror and
confront bureaucratic organizations. Reflectionism
holds up the mirror and asks the question:
“Do you like what you see?” If you do not, then you will know that other
approaches by which we integrate society and technology must be considered.
Thus, reflectionism is a technique for inquiry-in-performance that is directed: a)
toward uncovering the panopticon and undercutting its primacy and privilege; b)
relocating the relationship of the surveillance society within a more traditional
commons notion of observability. Reflectionism is especially related to "detournement": the tactic of
appropriating tools of social controllers and resituating these tools in a
disorienting manner (Rogers 1994). It extends the concept of detournement by using the tools
against the organization, holding a mirror up to the establishment, and creating a
symmetrical self-bureaucratization of the wearer (Mann 1998). In this manner, reflectionism is
related to the Theater of the Absurd (Bair 1978), and the Situationist movement in art. Reflectionism becomes
sousveillance when it is applied to individuals using tools to observe the organizational observer. Sousveillance focuses on
enhancing the ability of people to access and collect data about their surveillance and to neutralize surveillance. As a form
of personal space protection, it resonates with Gary Marx’s (2003) proposal to resist
surveillance through
non-compliance and interference ‘moves’ that block, distort, mask, refuse, and
counter-surveil the collection of information. Reflectionism differs from those
solutions that seek to regulate surveillance in order to protect privacy (Rhodes, et al.
1999). Reflectionism contends that such regulation is as much pacifier as solution
because in a regulatory regime, surveillance information is largely exchanged and
controlled by external agents over which individuals have little power. For example, a
recent regulatory proposal from the American Civil Liberties Association suggests: surveillance cameras … must be subject
to force-of-law rules covering important details like when they will be used, how long images will be stored, and when and
with whom they will be shared” (Stanley and Steinhardt 2003: 2).
A2
FW
Politics of speed create the conditions for bare life – ethical decisionmaking is sacrificed in favor of faster decisions and technological
reasoning
Adams 3 Jason Adams, M.A. candidate in political science at Simon Fraser University, 2003. “Popular
Defense in the Empire of Speed: Paul Virilio and the Phenomenology of the Political Body”.
http://www.academia.edu/attachments/2058093/download_file. PWoods.
'bare life' is produced not so much by
sovereignty per se, but rather by the technologies of transportation, transmission
and transplantation, which in a time when we have suddenly attained the speed
of light, universally 'mediatizes' each and every body, turning them all into an
amorphous mass of bare life, fodder for the global transition from real space to
real time. Elaborating on this key concept, Virilio notes that prior to the 20th century, mediatization had been defined
Yet the difference for Virilio is that in his conception,
as the stripping of rights from one's person by a conquering imperial sovereign such as Caesar or Napoleon; as the era of
the conquering force in our own time has become that of the
media, which is far more thorough in its approach in that it strips entire political
bodies of their rights by uprooting, fragmenting and destroying them, only to
reconstruct the remains into a single 'globalitarian' body whose billions of
perceptual organs are then controlled directly through a global apparatus of
networked prosthetic devices. As he argues, human beings are able, through the
directly perceiving body, "to distinguish between what we think is real and
therefore true, and what perceiving body, "to distinguish between what we think
is real and therefore true, and what another individual might consider real and
true...'natural' communication therefore demands audiovisual proximity and fairly restricted intervals or territory; it
the tyrant is now receding,
also demands a limited number of communicants, each sharing the same vocalizations or other semantic signals".48 But
when the prostheses of perception finally conquer the body and make it its
subject, the overall effect is a 'mass mediatization', in which the
multiperspectivity of the ancient agora, with its thousands of uniquely situated
spectator-participants, and thus thousands of unique interpretations, gives way
to the uniperspectivity of 'e-democracy' with its uniformly situated spectatorparticipant and its singular 'optically correct' interpretation. Therefore it might be said that
Virilio's major contribution to the philosophy of the body has been to articulate the ontologies of being that together form
the ecology of the political body, the history of the empire of speed and its accelerating de-struction49 of this ecology
through the process of mediatization, and the implications that the intersection between the two might have for
contemporary politics; throughout his work then, there are three elementary bodies that, through their integration with
one another, make up the ecology of the political body; 1. The Animal Body: the man, the woman, the child, the dog, the
horse, the cow
2. The Social Body: the couple, the family, the group, the village, the city, the nation 3. The Territorial
Body: the island, the region, the continent, the ocean, the earth¶ The mutually dependent relationship between these
bodies makes abundantly clear the 'need for roots' spoken of by Simone Weil, since if the animal body of the individual
human being is removed from the social body of the couple and the family, not only will the number of births plummet,
but true political life will disintegrate into anomie, since it relies on each of these as its very basis.50 Similarly, if the social
body of the couple, the family or the group is removed from the territorial body of the city, the region or the continent, the
difference between here and there disappears along with it, resulting in a generalized sense of uniformity and
confinement; it is for reasons of this sort that Virilio is interested in the fate of the political body; as he elaborates, "to a
materialist, matter is essential: a stone is a stone: a mountain is a mountain: water is water: and earth is earth. As far as I
am concerned, I am a materialist of the body, which means that the body is the basis of all my work. To me, dance is an
extraordinary thing, more extraordinary than most people usually think. Dance preceded writing, speaking and music.
When mute people speak their body language, it is true speaking rather than handicap, this is the first word and the first
writing. Thus to me, the body is fundamental. The body, and the territory of course, for there cannot be an animal body
without a territorial body. Three bodies are grafted over each other: the territorial body - the planet, the social body - the
couple; and the animal body - you and me. And technology splits this unity, leaving us without a sense of where we are".51
In this formulation, Virilio has articulated a materiality rather different from that of the Marxist tradition, one that
escapes the split between materialism and idealism by focusing on what Ian Angus has called the 'living materiality' of the
body itself52 and its relationship with the technological extensions which it has fashioned, yet which also tend to uproot it
from the hic et nunc that is the very basis of its being, the unheard-of-center that draws the three bodies together into a
mutually beneficial system. Despite the seeming obviousness of the argument, the positing of the three bodies as a
political ecology that ought to be preserved runs surprisingly against the grain of much of Western thought, which tends to
argue from the dualistic perspective that humanity will only be free once it has escaped its animal, social and territorial
chains, and that we must therefore use 'whatever means necessary' to accomplish this unleashing. This is where Virilio
parts ways with the position taken by Plato, that the body is nothing more than a prison of the soul, that confuses its
attempts to understand the world, or that it is the body that is the root of social strife and warfare as a result of its
the body is the ecology in which the soul is
necessarily embedded, just as the body has a social and territorial ecology in
which it is embedded, a conviviality that is the very basis for the new political life
he looks forward to. Ironically, his argument is that the true 'prison', the true
basis for the 'confusion', 'social strife' and 'warfare' is nothing less than that
which has been constructed in the naive attempt to escape these ecologies
through the artificial prostheses of speed, those instrumental techniques whose
purpose is the mediatization of animal, social and territorial bodies so that they
will only come to know themselves within a technical ecology, a non-space
controlled by the military, the mass media or both. In his rejection of Plato's philosophy of the
body, Virilio embraced instead his teacher Merleau-Ponty's argument that since the soul and body are
one with each other and the world with which they form a system, there really is
no such thing as 'normal' space, since with the passing of events and the coming
into being of inventions, the perceptual regime of the animal body is reorganized
along with the values and perspectives of the social body. It is because of this
interdependent ecology of bodies that any attempt to divorce them would likely
end in a situation in which they would become instrumentalized as objects among
objects, as mechanical bodies-without-souls, as has certainly been the case in the
context of scientistic and totalitarian ideologies in general, and the empire of
speed in particular.¶ It is because of this focus on the political culmination of the animal, social and territorial
bodies that Virilio's phenomenology intersects so notably with that of Arendt, although he is considerably
more willing to articulate the unique forms of totalitarianism found in the 'liberal
democracies' than she, with her focus primarily being on the forms that emerged
under Hitler and Stalin. In fact his very critique of the technological splitting of the
political body seems to essentially replace her 'iron band of terror', which she
argues brings about a state of 'organized loneliness' through instrumental
alienation of animal bodies from the body politic, with his own concept of the
'empire of speed', whereby 'iron' becomes the 'technology' that facilitates the
implementation of what he calls 'multiple solitude'. He also elaborates on both her discussion of
the shrinking of the expanse of the territorial body by communications
technologies as an instrument of imperial control, as well as her critique of the
will to 'escape velocity' marked by the launch of the first satellite into space, each
of which he sees as working toward the de- struction of the political body and its
replacement by the speed body, an 'iron band' of organized loneliness on the
global level that will form the basis for a Global City of the 21st century to replace
the One Man of the 20lh century. Although he is certainly no antihumanist, poststructuralist or even late
structuralist; since the late 1970s Virilio has elaborated on the Foucauldian concepts of
uncontrollable 'appetites' - instead he argues that
surveillance and panopticism, modifying the discussion through an engagement
with Merleau-Ponty, reframing the Panopticon as a 'Perceptron'; in other words,
as a technical disciplining of the body made functional by way of a vast apparatus
of urban planning, surveillance cameras, web cameras, internet tracking and spy
satellites. Virilio sees this 'society of control' as functioning through a new
political anatomy whereby the military-information complex becomes the
symmetrical inversion of the 'information proletariat' subjected to it, through a
complex of cybernetic communications and instrumental techniques that make
the virtual soul the prison of the cyborg body, which has by that point taken over
from its organic counterpart.¶ In the final analysis then, Virilio's philosophy of the body is the primary basis
from which he develops his critical theory of science and technology, and thus his relevance to the discipline of political
science, in that it too takes a phenomenological rather than postmodern approach, true to the tradition as laid out by
Husserl. As we have seen, this
is demonstrated in his attempt to get behind the supposedly
'objective' veneer of technoscience that has progressively alienated the soul from
the animal body, the animal body from the social body, and the social body from
the territorial body, in order to return to the things themselves, in this case, the
living materiality of the political body. It is also for this reason that his critical theory of politics can be
characterized as anarchist, since not only does he self-identify as such throughout his writings, but like most anarchists
he is also deeply suspicious of attempts to impose massifying and globalizing
forms of political, economic or technical infrastructure onto diverse locally-based
populations. This 'phenomenological anarchist' perspective which we have outlined in this chapter carries him
through his larger analyses of both the empire of speed and the popular defense to its assault, in which Virilio
brackets the 'natural attitude' propagated by the cybernetic society, in order to
get at those things that have been uprooted and obscured by instrumental reason.
CHAPTER TWO EMPIRE OF SPEED
AND THE DEATH OF THE POLITICAL BODY¶ As we saw in the last chapter,
Virilio's critique of the mass mediatization that he sees as the effect of the transportation, transmission and
transplantation technologies of contemporary imperial power, begins with his
demand that the sanctity of
the political body be preserved, a body which he defines as an amalgamation of
animal, social and territorial bodies that together form a reciprocal system,
whether this refers to the ecology of the nomadic hunter-gatherer or that of the
sedentary polis. Of course, this is only possible if the totalizing effects of technical
mediation between bodies are kept to a bare minimum and the infinitizing ethic
of the face-to-face encounter with the Other is preserved, thus reinforcing the ancient
plurality that has always constituted the world.54 The first section of this chapter demonstrates that for Virilio, the
central problematic of our time is precisely this, the ever-increasing acceleration
of technology, which has solidified into an 'empire of speed' whose primary
purpose is to subsume whatever limited political space there once was with a new
form of totalitarianism in which decision-making becomes automatic and
instantaneous. The following three sections investigate individually how this imperial project results
in each of the three bodies becoming separated from their common political
ecology and thus from one another and from themselves, such that a single
apparatus of prosthetic perception replaces billions of organs of direct
perception. The final section considers the method by which the empire of speed is installed and then enforced over
and against all other possible systems, through the illegal but nonetheless pervasive strategy of ecological warfare, which
consists of the de-struction of any possibility of conviviality or sustenance.¶ 2.1 Empire of Speed¶ If the political body is the
basis of all of Virilio's work, then 'speed' is the categorical imperative of its de-struction and is thus the basis of empire in
speed consists of a synthesis of instrumental and technical
control that makes an object of every living body through an ideology of perpetual
acceleration, a project which has only come to the verge of 'perfection' in the age
of cybernetics. Speed has never been distributed evenly, but has always functioned in
the form of a hierarchy, such that the more powerful sectors of society are those that
move at faster speeds, while the less powerful sectors are those that move at slower
speeds, an observable phenomena from the Concorde Jet of the elite to the
Greyhound Bus of the poor. A considerably more vivid example of this hierarchy is
found in the American automatic responder system which has been set up to
launch retaliatory nuclear strikes within one second of an offensive launch by any
other country55; here, the tyranny of acceleration has taken over so completely that
the human despot that once ruled at the top of the social pyramid has been
replaced by a totalitarian robot. It is because of this increasingly authoritarian stratification of acceleration
that Virilio contends that, as is also the case with wealth, the essence of speed is power; as he elaborates,
"power and speed are inseparable just as wealth and speed are
inseparable...power is always the power to control a territory with messengers,
modes of transportation and communication. Independent of the economy of
wealth, an approach to politics is impossible without an approach to the economy
of speed".56 Just as Virilio rejects the Marxist privileging of economic power as prior to speed power, he also rejects
the Foucauldian privileging of knowledge-power, arguing that "before knowing-power there is always
moving- power",57 thereby demonstrating the uniqueness of his conception, which places speed at the center
our time. As he uses the term,
without denying the importance of either economic or knowing power.¶ The imperial form which speed takes is clear not
only in the disparity between the various 'speed-classes' but also in the differences in the degree of democratic control that
were possible in past times of technologies of relative speed, which, because they required the power of the animal body,
thereby guaranteed the population a greater degree of bargaining power, versus the current era of the technologies of
the animal body has been replaced by the technical power of
automation.58 Similarly, just as the epoch of relative speed had been based on the unity
of the political body in such a way that it could easily mount a popular resistance
if need be, whether in nomadic hunter-gather society or the sedentary society of
the polis; as Virilio points out, "the prodigious technical acceleration of means of
transportation and transmission disintegrated this social order and founded a
new hierarchy between rulers and masses. This was the hierarchy of high speeds of penetration"59 in
which bare life became dependent upon 'qualified life' for its defense. Thus we see that the
absolute speed in which
shift from a society of relative speed to one of absolute speed is also one in which there is a shift from the relative sharing
animal,
social and territorial bodies are rendered superfluous to the functioning of power
and are thus disintegrated into the mediatization of digital being.60 It is in this
process of mediatization of the political body that Virilio argues that the power
structure being imposed in the current epoch of absolute speed amounts to
nothing less than a high-tech totalitarianism, one that he labels the 'empire of
speed' since it extends so far beyond the continental realm of that criticized previously by Arendt; as he explains, "now,
through the single market, through globalization, through the convergence of
time towards a single time, a world time, a time which comes to dominate local
time...through cyberspace, through the big telecommunications conglomerates,
[there] is a new totalitarianism, a totalitarianism of totalitarianisms, and that is
of power, however marginal this may have been, towards a truly instrumental totalitarianism in which
what I call globalitarianism...and that's something infinitely more dangerous, even,
perhaps, than the Nazi or communist brands of totalitarianism"61 in that it has now
become so universal that every animal, social and territorial body is immediately
rendered its subject. Thus the concept of globalitarianism is one that extends his critique of the limits of
Marxian and Foucauldian conceptions of power, arguing against the idea that globalization can be so easily summed up as
either a new capitalist internationalism on the one hand, or that the 'Great Confinement' has already taken place prior to
the 'end
of the space' of a small planet held in suspension in the electronic ether of our
modern means of telecommunication",62 a confinement more universal and a
capitalism more total, than any seen thus far. The importance of understanding 'globalization' as
globalization on the other. To the contrary, he holds that "what is being revealed here are the beginnings of
being primarily about mass mediatization, according to Virilio, is that it assists in illuminating the fundamental
importance of the spatial and temporal dimensions of the terrestrial body to the orientation of the animal and social
bodies embedded within it; as he argues, "we
need to do this to come back to the Earth.. .to its
dimensions and to the coming loss of those dimensions... which only yesterday
still organized the politics of nations and their alliances".63 Indeed, it is not hard to see that
the 'lost dimension' of the local political body, which often had more to do with the time-lag
inherent in the relative speeds of transportation and transmission technologies than it did with political or physical
borders themselves, is
now being replaced with the virtual reality of the 'telecontinent'
and the 'global city' of absolute speed. This is a result of the fact that that in the current epoch, it is
technical bodies rather than living bodies that matter most to the functioning of empire; thus we grasp the weight of
Virilio's argument that "all
media basically form one single medium, from the telega in
the Ukrainian steppes to the transcontinental rail and the cinema motor city".65 It
is this single speed body that forms the infrastructure for the imperial apparatus
of control, which as Gandhi, Benedict Anderson and others have observed, has always required the instrumental
application of transportation and transmission technologies, even when earlier forms of empire were still based on
technologies of relative rather than absolute speed.66 As Virilio notes, the empire of speed has now reached such an
advanced stage that presidents are even declaring the end of the foreign policy/domestic policy opposition at the same
time that mayors are declaring that the borders of nations now run through the center of the city rather than outside of it.
For Virilio all of this grows out of the mass mediatization of the political body of the polis, in which " the
real city,
which is situated in a precise place and which gave its name to the politics of
nations, is giving way to the virtual city, that deterritorialized meta-city. Which is
hence to become the site of metropolitics, the totalitarian or rather globalitarian
character of which will be plain for all to see".67
Deliberation doesn’t exist in the way they understand it – Authentic
debate is stifled to create faster decisions
Glezos 11 Simon Glezos, Lecturer of Political Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia.
“The ticking bomb: Speed, liberalism and ressentiment against the future”. May 2011. PWoods.
This article uses the 'Ticking Bomb Scenario' as a starting point for a broader discussion of what I term the 'liberal
the accelerating
pace of events (and threats) in the world requires a transition of authority from
slow-moving, democratic legislative bodies, to energetic, efficient and unitary
executives. However, this article argues that the source of this transfer of power is not because of any structural
narrative of speed', the argument within liberal thought (laid out by William Scheuerman) that
misfit between democracy and acceleration (indeed, accelerative technologies can help make democratic deliberation
more efficient and effective). Instead, through an investigation of the ontology of speed (grounded in the work of Gilles
Deleuze and Felix Guattari and Henri Bergson) I argue that speed
produces not a functional threat to
democratic politics, but an existential one. Acceleration unsettles stable political
identities, and produces a time of uncertainty, in which people are wary of
engaging in democratic debate and compromise, preferring instead the certainty
of unitary executive leadership. In this regards the anti-democratic tendency of
acceleration is to be located in the way in which it inculcates a sense of
ressentiment against a future that is contingent and uncertainty. [PUBLICATION
ABSTRACT] The Ticking Bomb¶ It is called 'the Ticking Bomb Scenario': Imagine a terrorist has planted a
nuclear bomb somewhere in a major metropolitan center. The terrorist has been
captured, and knows where the bomb is, but the bomb is set to go off soon, and
torture is the only way to find its location. Do you torture the terrorist?¶ What is
significant about this thought experiment is not the extreme utilitarian calculus that it calls into
being, but rather its explicit temporal dimension. It is not just a bomb, but a ticking
bomb. The imminence of the threat precludes any action other than torture (or at
least so the scenario claims). Implicit in the narrative is the idea that the pace of
events can make following traditional moral prohibitions - not to mention due process dangerous and inefficient.¶ The scenario, like many thought experiments, is
absurd in its premise. It assumes absolute certainty on the identity of the culprit,
and yet absolutely no other information, or even avenues of acquiring
information. However, as a philosophical exercise, it leads to interesting questions about how urgency and speed
can trump ethical commitments and legal regimes of rights and protection (Bufacchi
and Arrigo, 2006, pp. 360-361).¶ Unfortunately, just because something is absurd does not mean it will lack political
efficacy (indeed, frequently it is the exact opposite). In recent years, there have been many invocations of the ticking bomb
scenario as a way of justifying torture. It has been brought up during US Senate subcommittee and appointment hearings.
It has been advanced by well-known legal scholars such as Alan Dershowitz, in defense of his plans for the establishment
of 'torture warrants' (Dershowitz, 2004, 2006). These arguments in favor of a right on behalf of either the executive or the
judiciary to authorize torture (or rather, revocation of the right not to be tortured) take the temporal element as their
justification. Torture is not to be used in most criminal cases because there is no urgent threat to disqualify the
(apparently) inefficient requirements of due processes. However, the 'new era of terrorism', inaugurated with the 9/11
attacks, has placed a premium on rapid, flexible responses, including torture. In a phrase, we no longer have time not to
torture.¶ The
ticking bomb scenario and the right to torture are simply the leading
edge of a much broader move within American politics to use an accelerating
pace of events (and threat) as justification for an abandonment of traditional
ethical constraints, legal structures of due process and political checks and
balances, in the name of a more efficient and unitary executive action. For example, in
a series of memos to the White House, members of the Department of Justice argued for an increased
scope of executive authority (such as the ability to wage wars, abrogate foreign
treaties and determine the status of foreign combatants), on the basis of, among other
rationales, the new pace of events and threats in the world. While justifying the executive's right to
torture enemy combatants, Department of Justice lawyer Alberto Gonzalez argued for a new need for speed
and flexibility in response to terror threats:¶ ... the war against terrorism is a new kind of war ...
The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the
ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors
in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians ...¶ Although these memos
were circulated in secret, the claim to increased executive authority in the face of an accelerating pace of threat has
become increasingly common, and public, in the last few years. John Yoo, author of an earlier Department of Justice
memo claiming increased presidential powers, wrote a book arguing there is constitutional support for expanded
At least part of his argument relies on the need for an increased
'flexibility' in executive decision making in the face of accelerating threats and
dangers (2005, pp. 8-9). In the new, post-9/11 world, he says, there is an increasing need for a unitary, autonomous
executive, unchecked by standards of divided government or constitutional
executive authority.
restrictions.¶
The cost of inaction, for example, by allowing the vetoes of multiple decisionmakers to block
warmaking, could entail much higher costs than scholars in the 1990s had envisioned. At the time of the Cold War, the
costs to American national security of refraining from the use of force in places like Haiti, Somalia, or Kosovo would have
appeared negligible. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, however, demonstrate that the costs of inaction can be
extremely high - the possibility of a direct attack on the United States and the deaths of thousands of civilians. (p. x )¶
In
a world of proliferating and accelerating threats, says Yoo, the greatest danger is
inaction. Decision-making processes must be streamlined, authority centralized,
and the executive freed of legal, political or ethical encumbrances which limit the
speed of his response. The novelty of this threat is not just the magnitude of the danger, but the pace with
which it materializes. Similar to the ticking bomb scenario, the problem is not the
utilitarian calculus, but the sense that we no longer have time to allow for
legislative consultation and constitutional restrictions. The executive must
respond quickly and authoritatively to whatever new threats might emerge.¶ At this
point, however, we might take yet another step backwards, and notice that the logic of the ticking bomb and its attendant
claim of the need for increased executive authority is not a new one. Although its application has unquestionably
intensified in the post-9/11 era, it has in fact grounded a steady transition of authority to the executive for years. What is
more, this
expansion of executive authority has extended beyond issues of national
security, although this has certainly been its strongest quarter. In the United States, the executive branch
has lobbied for, and received, increased ability to negotiate trade treaties,
conduct diplomacy and even influence domestic legislation (Lobel, 1989). What is more,
this is not a uniquely American experience. In democracies all over the world,
there has been a steady empowering of the executive on the basis of the
acceleration of the pace of events (Scheuerman, 2004, pp. 92-93, 108-109).¶ In this article, I will examine
the threat that speed supposedly poses to democracy. I will begin by investigating Scheuerman's account of what I call the
'liberal narrative of speed', the tradition within liberal democratic thought which I argue accepts the logic of the ticking
bomb, and believes that speed requires an expansion of the power of the executive against democratic legislatures.
However, I will then go on to argue that the liberal narrative is based on an inherently flawed account of acceleration, that
it ignores the way in which acceleration can also provide important tools to foster democratic practice. Then, through a
further analysis of speed, I argue that the move to expand the power of the executive in the face of acceleration is not a
result of the functional threat that acceleration poses to a political community, but rather itsexistential threat. I will argue
the push for increased executive authority is the result, of a resentment - a
ressentiment - against speed, against the uncertainty and destabilization that
acceleration brings to fixed narratives of political community and identity. It will
therefore be argued that we must attack this sense of ressentiment at its root. That we must
loosen our attachment to stable and certain identities, thus reaffirming our
commitment to democratic negotiation and mediation. The ticking bomb claims a kind of
that
necessity for itself, arguing for the increasing impossibility of democracy in period of acceleration. It will be the goal of this
article to challenge this necessity, to argue that the anti-democratic forces should be located not only in the ticking bomb,
but in ourselves.¶ It is worth taking a moment before I begin, however, to acknowledge that, although this argument is
pitched broadly at the question of liberalism, it draws its examples and ideas primarily from the American context. To
apply it more broadly would require taking into consideration the specifics of individual national political cultures of
liberalism. However, the problem of speed, and its underwriting of a shift of authority to executives is something which
liberal democracies worldwide are experiencing, and the arguments laid out here can give us some indication of how and
why.¶ Speed and Liberal Democracy¶ In his book Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time , Scheuerman
According to the
liberal narrative of speed, the central threat that speed poses to democracy is that
it enhances the power of the least democratic branch of government, the
executive. Within the liberal tradition, it is argued that the executive is best adapted to deal
with an accelerating pace of events, while the legislative branch is ill-equipped for
an environment of substantial instability and rapid change. The liberal narrative of speed
lays out how the issue of speed and acceleration has been dealt with in the liberal tradition.
argues that 'social acceleration often promotes executive-centered government and the proliferation of executive
discretion while weakening broad-based representative legislatures as well as traditional models of constitutionalism and
the rule of law' (Scheuerman, 2004, p. xiv).¶ This passage contains two mutually reinforcing claims about the relative
temporal capacities of the different branches of government. The first is that the liberal democratic tradition has always
assumed that the processes of democratic debate and decision making are necessarily cumbersome and slow, making the
legislature incapable of acting in the face of fast-moving events.¶ Legislative politics is typically conceived as resting on a
process of freewheeling deliberation involving a rich sample of public opinion, and liberal thinkers have repeatedly
emphasized the necessarily measured and unhurried prerequisites of a legitimate process of reasonable debate in which
participants possess a fair chance to express distinct political views and defend a multiplicity of interests. (p. 38)¶ In
contrast to this is the liberal narrative's belief in 'the widely endorsed conception of the unitary executive as an "energetic"
within liberal democratic thought, there
was always an understanding that there would be some events too rapid to be
dealt with by the legislative, and hence the executive was to be assigned some
power to act independently in response to unexpected occurrences (p. 38). The narrative goes on, however,
to argue that there has been a fundamental and general acceleration of the pace of
modern life, and that this acceleration has increased the number of situations in
which a rapid governmental response is required. This means that the legislative branch is
becoming increasingly incapable of managing the political sphere, leading to more and more
government action via independent executive order. Scheuerman says about this shift, 'The
entity best capable of acting with dispatch' (p. xiv).¶ Now,
dictates of speed cry out for flexible, rapid-fire institutional responses and the classical temporal portrait of the executive
will lead many political and legal actors to deem the executive best attuned to tackling the imperative of constitutional
adaptation' (p. 101).¶ And, says Scheuerman, this prediction is playing out. Increasingly, liberal democratic polities around
the world are seeing a steady transfer of authority, either de jure or de facto , from legislative to executive bodies. This is
sometimes lamented for the injury that it does to democratic process, but is more often accepted as necessary to ensure
Democracy - at least robust,
'free-wheeling' democracy - was a luxury of the past, which is impossible in
today's fast-paced, unpredictable world.¶ What is remarkable, however, is that, after laying out this
the government's continual effective responsiveness to crisis and catastrophe.
narrative, Scheuerman goes on to argue that it is, potentially, deeply flawed, saying 'perhaps the traditional contrast
the liberal
narrative of speed assumes that the general acceleration of modern life has
affected only the context in which the legislative and executive branches function,
but not the way they function. Scheuerman argues this is not true in the case of either branch.¶ First, the
between slow-going deliberare and high-speed agere no longer makes sense' (p. 101)? This is because
idea of the unitary executive, energetic and capable of acting quickly and efficiently is, in many ways, a leftover from the
early days of liberal democracy when the executive was a much smaller administrative organization. In response to this
image, Scheuerman argues¶ the
contemporary executive is a complicated institution, made
up of a rich variety of (oftentimes conflicting) bureaucratic units: the emphasis on
traditional reflections on the unitary and even solitary nature of the executive badly obscures the empirical executive
Even when the executive branch acts unilaterally, seemingly
straightforward undertakings can prove toilsome and time consuming, as anyone
familiar with the less-than-efficient operations of the modern executive can attest. (p. 101)¶ The United States
was given an unfortunate and chilling example of the potential slowness,
ineptness and inefficiency of executive action in the bungled response to
Hurricane Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans. Now, of course, one instance of bureaucratic
decision making.
incompetence does not necessarily disprove the thesis. But it does bring to the fore the various problems and
complications that the increased speed and scope of a political community can bring to the supposedly unitary, energetic
overlapping jurisdictions, ineffective lines of communication, poor
preparation and the lack of situational awareness. There are various efforts that can improve
executive:
these problems, but it is unlikely, given the character of modern governance, that they will ever be completely eliminated.
The image of the executive as custom-made for the challenges of modern acceleration is therefore more present in the
narrative than in real life. 1¶ Conversely, the
image of the slow, inefficient legislative branch is
also somewhat anachronistic, based as it is on the transportation and
communication technologies of centuries past. Scheuerman says¶ ... early modern discussions of
popular deliberation arguably presuppose underdeveloped forms of transportation and communication: well into the
nineteenth century, elected representatives were forced to engage in time-consuming travel to meet their colleagues, and
correspondence or news might require weeks or even months to reach its target. In
an age of instantaneous
communication and high-speed travel the temporal presuppositions of popular
deliberation are dramatically different than in the days of Hamilton, or even Mill, as new
technologies potentially allow huge numbers of people to exchange views at
unparalleled speed. The association of popular deliberation with 'slowness' no longer deserves the self-evident
character that it possessed for so many of our historical predecessors. (p. 102)¶ Here we see how
accelerative technologies can aid in the practice of democratic legislative politics
in key ways. Scheuerman later invokes the example of the anthrax scare that shut down congress
and several other buildings in Washington DC. Despite being physically
dispersed, congress continued to communicate and govern through the use of
mobile and handheld communication technologies. In addition, he discusses the way in which
high-speed media can provide an opportunity to change the 'sequential' character
of deliberation that supposedly slows down democratic legislative decision
making. In principle, the mass media can provide a useful forum for large-scale
debates on important social issues, allowing for increased opportunities to disseminate information and to sample
public opinion. Indeed, new accelerative technologies can provide opportunities for citizens to bypass representatives in
the legislative process altogether (as theorists of deliberative democracy have discussed (p. 209)) resulting in accelerative
New accelerative
technologies provide the legislative with the possibility of being, if not as
'energetic' as the executive, certainly a lot less sluggish than the Liberal narrative of speed takes
technologies not just making legislation faster, but also potentially more democratic.
for granted.¶ This argument does not suggest that the legislative will be able to handle all events that occur. But it does
the number and type of events beyond the reach of legislature is not
necessarily expanding, or at least not expanding as quickly as proponents of increased executive power would
argue that
have us believe. Nor does this argument deny that a general social acceleration of time poses specific challenges for the
a general social
acceleration of time provide at least as many possibilities for democratic activity
practice of democracy. The central point, however, is that accelerative technologies and
as pitfalls, and that a careful consideration of these possibilities can serve to foster democracy in spite of these changes, as
well as because of them. Acceleration, though a challenge to democracy, is not fundamentally opposed to it. ¶ However, if
we choose to reject the liberal narrative's technological pessimism, and instead argue that the 'assertion that social
acceleration undermines liberal democracy may rest on a historical myth' (p. 189), then why does this narrative still carry
so much weight in politics? Why is it that, in spite of all the new opportunities for democratic deliberation, the
accelerating pace of events is accepted as justification for the steady transfer of power to the executive branch, to be
this willingness to accept the
liberal narrative of speed primarily as the result of series of misunderstandings.
In addition to misunderstanding the various characteristics of the executive and
legislative branches (as described above), there is also, he says, a crucial misunderstanding of the actual pace of
wielded undemocratically via administrative fiat?¶ Scheuerman explains
threat. This misunderstanding has its roots in the uncritical acceptance of the rhetorical trope of the state-as-body.
Scheuerman's claim is that metaphorically identifying the state with the body necessarily raises the perceived stakes of (as
well as the necessary speed of response to) acts of violence and terrorism. As he puts it¶ ... when physically assaulted,
they
must move quickly to ward off immediate threats to their physical well-being,
and such moments call for action rather than deliberation, dispatch instead of
delay. If physical violence is imminent or already at hand, individual self-preservation can only be achieved by the
individuals lack the luxury of debating with their peers or allies about the best conceivable response. Instead,
imperatives of physical self-defense, where agility and swiftness are at a premium. In the political universe, the unitary
executive, and not a numerous deliberative assembly, is the most likely source of such agility and swiftness. (Scheuerman,
2002, p. 496)¶
Of course this metaphor is crucially faulty as, though a single violent
physical blow can be fatal to the human body, only in the most extreme, nuclear-
related circumstances would the same be true for a state. Therefore, the
necessary pace of response in political matters might not be as great as we tend to
believe.¶ I certainly agree with Scheuerman that these misunderstandings contribute greatly to the temporal politics of
the contemporary world. My concern, however, is that he explains the increasingly anti-democratic reforms of the liberal
the error of the liberal
narrative of speed is primarily in how it is applied, in the way that it
misunderstands the actual pace of events, and the speed of the various actors and
institutions involved. This is problematic, because it does not so much solve the problem of speed, as delay it.
democratic world in a purely exogenous way. This is to say that, on his account,
Its response to the liberal narrative of speed - and the anti-democratic sentiments it fosters - is to say that things have not
accelerated that much yet. Although this may be true, it leaves open the problem of what happens when things do reach
such a terminal velocity.
Progress Good
Progress is always symmetrical – for every development there is one
accident and for every person saved, someone dies.
Virilio 5 (Paul, “L'Accident original,” Jan. 29, 2005,
http://frenchphilo.tribe.net/thread/f09709c8-1c47-4c83-a9d8-67c6f77fc168)
LD: You keep saying that the greater the speed, the greater the effect of the accident. Do you mean that the more phenomena the
In the past, there were two types of
accidents: the natural cataclysm and the artificial accidents, like a fatal fall from a horse. However, in
the last century, this became continual. On top of the natural and artificial accidents, including the worst like
Chernobyl, Minamata or Seveso, we have the voluntary accident like the massive attack of the
World Trade Center. We bypass the big battle of the past for big attacks that cause more
harm than an entire battalion does. Pearl Harbor killed 2500 soldiers but 3000 died in
the Twin Towers, because of twenty suicidal men. LD: Do we have to fight more against fear? PV: We
have to fight more and more against panic. The Cold War period, which was the equilibrium of terror, gave way
to the Cold Panic period, which is the disequilibria of terror happening from natural accident or one inflicted by humans. Panic is
the big question of the politic of tomorrow. Every body knows that fear is a poor
adviser. We could pass from a substantial politic based on a common interest to an
accidental politic based on emotional community. In this regard, the 21st century and the
recent tsunami catastrophe have started a new public, globally synchronized and
ephemeral emotion. We cannot trust it. Public and global emotion is already a form of
tyranny. The manipulator, especially the political one, will not forget the tsunami effect
neither will the terrorists forget about the Twin Towers effect. LD: What do you recommend? PV:
more catastrophes? PV: What is new is the serial type of the catastrophe.
Face it. In history, humans had to confront the hostility of the natural world, the great invasions, the tyrants and different type of
terrors. Today,
we have to face the terror of our own progress. The other day, I was very sorry to see the
expressionist spectacle at the launch of the new Airbus A380. We celebrated that airplane, a marvel as a cult
object. However, nobody said that inventing an 800 seats airplane would create 800
dead, when it crashes. I will call upon a political intelligence about the end, a philosophy of the industrial eschatology.
Eschatology is the science of the end, of the world end, which is actually not at all the end of the world. The problem is that nobody
dare face that finitude. LD: How did you, as a specialist of human catastrophe, take the horrendous Asian tidal wave? PV: This
tsunami will have the same importance to ecology than the WTC attacks had on the politic. Those two events frame, in my mind, the
beginning of our 21st century: On one hand, the terrorist accident, on the other, the horrifying ecological drama. Each of them is in
fact a revelation. We
are passing from the revolution to the revelation era. The revolution era
was of ideology. It lasted two or three centuries. However, it is over. We are entering
now in the catastrophic revelation, which should encourage us to a better knowledge of
accidents, natural or artificial. Without this effort, we will not understand the complexity of the
accidental phenomena that are happening more and more under our eyes.
Science Good
Technological progress is pressing science to its limits and exhausting
the potential of the discipline to keep itself in check – technological
adventurism can only result in disaster.
Virilio 5 – (Paul, Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School in
Saas-Fee, Switzerland, “The Information Bomb,” Verso edition published in
2005, available online DH)
The civilianization or militarization of science? If truth is what is verifiable, the
truth of contemporary science is not so much the extent of progress achieved as the
scale of technical catastrophes occasioned. Science, after having been carried along for almost
half a century in the arms race of the East-West deterrence era, has developed solely with a view to the
pursuit of limit performances, to the detriment of any effort to discover a
coherent truth useful to humanity. Modern science, having progressively become
technoscience - the product of the fatal confusion between the operational
instrument and exploratory research - has slipped its philosophical moorings and
lost its way, without anyone taking umbrage at this, except for a few ecological and religious leaders. 1 Indeed, if
the 'experience of thought' does in fact lie at the origin of the experimental
sciences, we cannot but notice today the decline of that analogue mental process, in
favour of instrumental, digital procedures, which are capable, we are told, of boosting knowledge. Operational
reality of the technical instrument, resolutory truth of scientific thought - two
fundamentally distinct aspects of knowledge, which are fused here without anyone apparently
becoming alerted to the situation. Science, which is not so attached to 'truth' as
once it was, but more to immediate 'effectiveness', is now drifting towards its
decline, its civic fall from grace . . . . As a panic phenomenon - a fact concealed by the success of its devices and tools contemporary science is losing itself in the very excessiveness of its alleged progress. Much as a strategic
offensive can wear itself out by the scale of its tactical conquests, so technoscience is gradually wrecking the scholarly resources of all knowledge. Like an
Olympic sport in which the performance drugs, the anabolic steroids and such like, destroy the
meaning of the athletes' effort by an abuse of the pharmacopoeia, extreme science is
moving away from patient research into reality to become part of a phenomenon
of generalized virtualization. After having been drawn, against its own better nature, into
the planetary death race of the 'balance of terror', 'post-modern' science is now
engaging in a new type of competition that is equally insane: a race to achieve limit
performances in the fields of robotics or genetic engineering, which in its turn draws the various scientific disciplines on to
the path of a 'post-scientific extremism' that exiles them from all reason. Science, which was once a rigorous field
thriving on intellectual adventure, is
today bogged down in a technological adventurism that
denatures it. 'Science of the excess', of extremes - a limit-science or the limit of science? As everyone
knows, that which is excessive is insignificant. 'Science without conscience is mere
ruination of the soul' (Rabelais), and a techno-science without a consciousness of its impending end is, however
unwittingly, merely a sport. 'Extreme sports' - those in which one deliberately risks one's life on the pretext of achieving a
record performance. 'Extreme science' - the science which runs the incalculable risk of the disappearance of all science.
culture, the agent not, as in the past, of the acceleration of history, but of the dizzying whirl of the acceleration of reality and As the tragic phenomenon of a knowledge which has suddenly become cybernetic, this techno-science becomes, then,
as mass techno-that to the detriment of all verisimilitude. Only a few centuries after having been, with Copernicus and
Galileo, the
science of the appearance of a relative truth, techno-science is once
again becoming a science of the disappearance of that same truth with the
coming of a knowledge which is not so much encyclopaedic as cybernetic, a
knowledge which denies all objective reality. Thus, after having largely contributed to speeding
up the various means for the representation of the world, with optics, electro-optics and even the recent establishment of
the space of virtual reality, contemporary
sciences are engaging, a contrario, in the eclipsing of
the real, in the aesthetics of scientific disappearance. A science of verisimilitude, of
the plausible, still attached to the discovery of a relative truth? Or a sdence oj implausibility,
committed today to the research and development of a heightened virtual reality? This is the alternative we are offered. In
fact, the
only scientific horizon is authenticity, the experimental rigour of
researchers. Unfortunately, we know what media abuses surround certain 'discoveries'.
We know the promotional character of the premature announcement of the results
of a particular experiment, when what is really going on is litde more than an exercise in the conditioning of public
opinion by an extremist science. That science
is now concerned less with truth than with the
effect created by the announcement of a new discovery - though not, as used to be the case, a
genuine discovery serving the common good.
The aff views the technocratic system from one side – they ignore the
detrimental effects of technology.
Kellner 99 (George, Ph.D., Philosophy, Columbia University, “Virilio, War, and
Technology: Some Critical Reflection,” Theory, Culture & Society December 1999
vol. 16 no. 5-6 103-125 http://www.uta.edu/huma/illuminations/kell29.htm)
Virilio claims that every
technology involves its accompanying accident: with the invention of
the ship, you get the ship wreck; the plane brings on plane crashes; the automobile, car
accidents, and so on. For Virilio, the technocratic vision is thus one-sided and flawed in that
it postulates a perfect technological system, a seamless cybernetic realm of
instrumentality and control in which all processes are determined by and follow
technological laws (Baudrillard also, to some extent, reproduces this cybernetic and technological imaginary in his writings;
see Kellner 1989b). In the real world, however, accidents are part and parcel of technological systems,
they expose its limitations, they subvert idealistic visions of technology. Accidents are
consequently, in Virilio's view, an integral part of all modes of transportation, industrial
production, war and military organization, and other technological systems . He suggests that
in science a Hall of Accidents should be put next to each Hall of Machines: "Every technology,
every science should choose its specific accident, and reveal it as a product--not in a moralistic, protectionist way (safety first), but
rather as a product to be 'epistemo-technically' questioned. At
the end of the nineteenth century, museums
exhibited machines: at the end of the twentieth century, I think we must grant the
formative dimensions of the accident its rightful place in a new museum " (Virilio and Lotringer
1983).[5
Transhumanism
The idea that we can use technology to manipulate the human body
only ensures that individual people experience the same destruction
we are seeing on the earth as a whole.
Virilio 5 – (Paul, Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School in
Saas-Fee, Switzerland, “The Information Bomb,” Verso edition published in
2005, available online DH)
The international press, less changeable than it seemed, registered the painful completion of
the geographical conquest and anticipated, in alarmist despatches, the new major
event which might be said to be its direct consequence. That was the coming, five
years later, of a first world war which, by its very universalism, would become the
first total war of humanity against man thanks to the deployment of a militaryindustrial arsenal of mass destruction, which was soon to encompass a scientific complex ranging from
physics to biology and psychology.11 It was merely a question of time, then, for the transfer of
the West's expansionist drives from the exhausted geography of the terrestrial to
the human body - that last, still-unexplored corner of the planet, relatively
protected by the last cultural, social and moral prohibitions ... And for the solemn celebrations, such
as those which attended the end of slavery and the defence of human rights, to become merely sinister
masquerades - only poorly concealing the drift, from the 1940s onwards, of a colonial
savoir-faire towards a world-scale project of an endocolonial nature. One has only to
look to see this: with the rise of unemployment and cultural integration, the
abandonment of the nourishing countryside for the over-populated and
unproductive ghettos, and galloping pauperization, our post-industrial world is
already the spitting image of the old colonial world, examples of which we find in Africa, Latin
America or the Far East. And we can rest assured that, after the unrestrained exploitation
of the living Earth and its geography, the exploitation of the cartography of the
human genome is already well advanced. This is a project which tells us a great deal
about a booming industrial techno-biology, whose ambition is to reduce to the state of
specimen every member of a humanity which has had its day, every human being
who, like young Minik's father, might be said no longer precisely to be an individual, no
longer individuum-indivisible.
The cybernetic transformation alienates us from our own bodies and
destroys our humanity.
Adams 3 (Jason, Masters Political Science, Popular Defense in the Empire of
Speed: Paul Virilio and the Phenomenology of the Political Body,” November
2003)
For Virilio, the cybernetic society consists of the enveloping of the animal body within an
infrastructure of individualizing and totalizing technologies to such a great extent that
anxiety, once an emotion that occurred only at certain moments, becomes a generalized condition of
everyday life, an unprecedented form of life that is lived constantly 'on stage', under the watch of
satellites, surveillance cameras, electronic tethers, cell phones, email listservs and other'
such prostheses; as he sees it then, "the more the speed of movement increases, the more
control becomes absolute, omnipresent. The more speed grows, the more control tends
to supplant the environment itself, so that the real time of interactivity finally replaces the
real space of bodily movement".87 This netting of the territorial body under the circuitry of cybernetics is of
necessity also a netting of the animal body as well, with the result that in the near future, the human person "will no
longer throw himself into any means of physical travel, but only into another body, an
optical body; and he will go forward without moving, see with other eyes, touch with
hands other than his own, to be over there without really being over there, a stranger to
himself, a deserter from his own body, an exile for evermore.
The advent of the non-human destroys humanity and ends the
process of life.
Featherstone 1 – PhD in Social Theory at Staffordshire University, teaches
social theory and anthropology at Keele University (Fall 2000/Winter 2001,
Mark, “Speed and Violence: Sacrifice in Virilio, Derrida, and Girard”,
Anthropoetics – the Journal of Generative Anthropology 6, no. 2,
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.127.4057&rep=rep1&t
ype=pdf#page=53) MGM
Virilio’s example of the Philip Nitschke / Bob Dent case acts as a critique of the dangers of an
unquestioning acceptance of the technological / textual colonization of the human
body by allowing us to understand how the human / non-human relation reaches
critical mass and feeds into the technology / accident machine. For Virilio, the
Nitschke / Dent episode (Bob Dent, a terminal cancer patient, consented to
computer-aided euthanasia by taking advantage of a remote-suicide machine
developed by his doctor Philip Nitschke) shows how technology collapses the man /
machine bind and achieves total mastery over humanity through the sacrificial
accident. Writing on the conclusion to this zero-sum game, Virilio claims that the Nitschke / Dent episode suggests
comparisons with "Kasparov, the world chess champion, playing a game against a computer specially designed to defeat
him" (2000a: 5); both events
illuminate the onset of techno-domination, the condition
that allows the objective machine to progress at the expense of subjective
humanity. Following Oughourlian’s (1991) theory of mimetic desire, masters and slaves, and the
construction of the monadic self, one can see how at this terminal point the
machine possesses man. Here the accident, the collision between self and other,
renders humanity expendable and seals the fate of the victim. According to Virilio this
condition is caused by the over-reliance on technology, a situation which is itself predicated on
the ostensibly democratic nature of machine culture. As the Nitschke / Dent case illustrates, the empty form of
the technology leads one to assume its neutrality. As we have seen with Derrida and the advocates
of deconstruction (such as Beardsworth and Davies), to whom we may add the critics of the dominant ideology thesis
(such as Abercrombie, Hill, and Turner), this
position ignores the most powerful form of bias:
the ideological prejudice hidden deep within the complex structure of the
technological / textual form (Zizek, 1994). To extend this equation of technology /
textual form and ideology, just as Virilio’s theory of progressive technology
illuminates a mechanism that advances the ideological program of late capitalism
through the accident and its subsequent consumption of victims, Derrida’s
concept of différance mimes in the textual realm the post-industrial system’s
program of techno-scientific frontierism / exploration. Foregrounding this
relation between Virilio’s theory of technology and Derrida’s deconstruction
makes clear that the ideological prejudice that is hidden within technology is also
present within the form of progressive textuality. The effect of the ideological misrecognition
present at the formal level of technological / textual fundamentalism is two-fold. First, the ideology of the monadic self is
inflated as humanity attempts to assert its own position in the face of the increasing dominance of technology / text.
However, because this self-augmentation
is sought through technology / text itself,
the ideological process simply compounds the original problem of over-reliance
on non-human forms. In other words, because the components of the ideology of the
monadic self are embedded in the structures of technology / text, the attempt to
raise the value of humanity in relation to machines through non-human forms of
articulation is denied by the circular reasoning employed. Second, the dominance of
technology / text as a machine for the extension of the monadic self leads to both
a loss of historical memory and the end of political morality. With regard to the loss of
memory, Virilio refers to the concept of motion sickness or "kinetosis" to show how the
mimetic bind between humanity and technology leads to dizzying speeds that cause
the self to become disoriented and decentered. The disregard for political morality, which Virilio identifies as another
category of the crisis of technological high modernity, is an effect of this radical disorientation of the monadic self. For
Virilio this
condition, caused by the excessive speed of technology, leads to further
investment in non-human augmentation and consequently the increased popularity of
the political ideologies of the monadic self and the possessive individual. To illustrate
this process at work, Virilio considers how technology is able to both cripple and augment the body: Those disabled in war
or injured in serious road or work accidents, victims of terrorism and people who have lost arms, legs, their mobility,
sight, speech or virility are all afflicted at the same time by a forgetting, a paramnesia. On the one hand, they more or less
consciously repress the unbearable images of the accident which violently deprived them of their able-bodied state; on the
other hand, new visions force themselves upon their minds, in sleep or in half-sleep, as a compensation for the motor and
sensory privations that now afflict them (2000a: 39-40). Here we can see how the
technological accident
leads to the destruction of the body and its subsequent re-formation through
non-human augmentation. Virilio shows how, when we are crippled in the world, the
technological form re-presents an image of our former mobility. It becomes a
symbolic form which at once sustains a deterministic world system and
structures humanity’s relationship with progressive technology. This theory of cybernetic
tranquilization is similarly relevant at the level of textuality. Bandera’s critique of deconstruction shows how, in much the
same way that Girard’s notion of the scapegoat explains how the anesthetization of the social system is secured by the
death of the sacrificial victim, Derrida’s space of difference and indeterminacy is achieved at the expense of dissenting
voices, which are dismissed as totalitarian others.
Virilio = Crazy
Even if he seems paranoid, he’s right about a lot of stuff
Adams 3 (Jason, Masters Political Science, Popular Defense in the Empire of
Speed: Paul Virilio and the Phenomenology of the Political Body,” November
2003)
Indeed, the global spy satellite system that the Pentagon spent the last quarter of the 20th
century putting into place made a contribution of its own, since it has over time made it
impossible for national armies to function without being detected immediately ; a mass
mediatization of political bodies reflected also in the tendency of many Americans during the
events of September 11, to feel as though they were 'watching a movie' even amongst those
who saw it occur directly in front of them. Thus he argues, "on September 11, 2001 the Manhattan skyline became the front of the
new war. The anonymity of those who initiated the attack merely signals, for everyone, the rise of a global covert state - of the
unknown quantity of a private criminality - that 'beyond-good-and-evil' which has for centuries been the dream of the high priests of
an iconoclastic progress".'74 Just as was the case with the bombing of the World Trade Center, such developments as the
Department of Defense and CIA sponsoring of the recent film The Sum of All Fears and the sudden appearance of the propagandaoriented 'Office of Strategic Influence' each
have the common effect of "casting doubt on the truth of
the truth of the facts and in that way creating concern about diffuse threats, where
disturbance of the perception of events always works to heighten popular anxiety "'75since
the question of whether an event was an attack or an accident, or whether a news item was information or disinformation is left
wide open. This is only
amplified by such unsettling Pentagon projects as the High-Frequency
Active Aural Research Program which is said to be already capable of artificially
producing "floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes""6 which could be deployed as
'natural disasters', not to mention the even more disturbing Partnership for a New American Century's (PNAC) research into
the development of a 'genetic bomb' which Thom Hartmann has described as such; "imagine a bomb that only kills Caucasians with
Now imagine that this new bomb could be set off
anywhere in the world, and that within a matter of days, weeks or months it would kill
every person on the planet who fits the bomb's profile, although the rest of us would be
left standing. And the bomb could go silently, without anybody realizing it had been
released".177 When one considers that PNAC was once headed by Rumsfeld, Virilio's sometimes 'paranoid'
sounding arguments thus seem to have considerable weight behind them , just as many of his
red hair. Or short people. Or Arabs. Or Chinese.
other predictions have been borne out over time; what he concludes from all of this is that in an era in which "one man = total
the world must take seriously the threat of terrorism of all kinds, while also maintaining one's guard
against the instrumental use of these same emotions in order to inspire popular
anxieties, softening people up for manipulations of all sorts; as he puts it, to succumb to or to
unleash this sort of rhetoric in this way "is to forget, rather quickly, that fear is a poor
counselor, as all dictatorships have proven since antiquity".I7'
war"178
Aff
Alt fails
Virilio’s critique offers a one sided critical theory unable to
understand modern technology – no alt solvency
Stevenson 2 Nick, PhD in social sciences from Cambridge University, professor of social sciences at the
University of Nottingham, UK. “Understanding Media Cultures: Social Theory and Mass Communication.” 2002.
PWoods.
I. The most obvious limitation of Virilio's approach is his pronounced techno-phobia. To give one example amongst the many
available in his work. The development of what Virilio calls a political economy of speed is such that at times he sounds as
though the only way of resisting the totalitarian ambitions of technology is through technological abstinence. The political
trajectory of such a position is both conservative and reactionary. Unlike say Castells, Virilio's
politics and social
theory fail to appreciate the ways in which contemporary society and culture has
been unalterably transformed by the impact of new technology. There is then a lingering sense
within Virilio's writing of a possible return to a society with low levels of technological development. While such
views may indeed form part of a resistance to certain features of contemporary media and
social development, they can hardly be expected to generate a sustainable political
perspective working within the contradictions and ambivalences of the present.
Indeed Virilio's position on the information society often comes close to the nco-Luddism described by Castells (1998b).
Within this Virilio
misses the opportunity to think more constructively as to how new
technologies might become utilised by inclusive forms of social development. That is, if
a globally sustainable planetary economy is to become possible it will be built through the new information technologies, not
their abolition. The main problem here being that Virilio
offers an excessively onesided view of
technology which 'substitutes moralising critique for social analysis and political
action' (Kcllner, 2000). The development of the media of mass communications has gradually seen the decline of print as
the dominant form of communication and the rise of an audio-visual domain. Virilio links the visualisation of the media into
narratives of decline where our perceptions of reality are progressively undermined by a speed culture. As I have indicated,
Virilio tends to see progressive political possibilities in reversing this process, with
human populations better able to make contact with others through face-to-face
communication and print cultures. While there is much that could be said on the
superficiality of much visual culture and its progressive underming of literate
cultures, such an analysis is too sweeping. The popularisation of the media, which has accompanied the
rise of television and its increasingly visual nature of media cultures, has also made public cultures and associated debates
open to a greater number of people. While
the visualisation of media cultures can indeed be
linked into narratives of control and surveillance in the way that Virilio suggests, it
can equally be connected into a progressive democra-tisation of everyday life. The
visual bias of much media and communication provides social movements with considerable opportunities to interrupt the
flow of dominant media messages, by staging dramatic media events and engaging in image manipulation. We can make a
similar argument in respect of the development of the Net. As Dahlgren (2001) has argued the partial displacement of
hierarchical forms of information that the Net makes available confuses the boundaries between who is and who is not a
journalist. While these arguments have been carried too far by some Net enthusiasts the possibilities that 'ordinary" people
have for constructing their own sites of images, information and discourse is greatly enhanced by the arrival of new media.
Seemingly these and other democratic possibilities are missed by a critique which offers an overly one-sided view of new
media technologies. 3.
Virilio, as I have indicated, seeks to make a positive virtue out of his
pessimistic reflections on new media. His argument positions him firmly against those who would argue in
favour of the potentially liberating promise of the web. However Mark Poster (199S, 1996, 1997) argues that such
reflections actually spell the inability of critical theory to understand the
significance of new media. That is, critical theory is overwhelmingly concerned with
whether or not the media limit or foster autonomous social relations, rather than
investigating the ways in which media might constitute new subject positions. For
Poster (1995:24) what is at stake is not the way new media help foster domination or resistance, but 'a broad and extensive
change in the culture, in the way identities are structured'. That is virtual reality helps evoke new possibilities for the
imagination given its emphasis upon play, simulation and discovery. The enthusiasm for the Net. then, is not an escape
from reality, but from the dominant codes of modernity which sought to articulate a view of the subject as autonomous and
rational. Within virtual com-munities subjects are able to explore the boundaries of different identity formations while
pleasurably entering into previously unexplored imaginary worlds. It is new media's relatively decentralised structure that
potentially turns everyone into a producer and a consumer of information that constitutes subjects as multiple and unstable.
These possibilities dispense with the opposition between a 'real' and fictitious' community and enable participants to express
themselves without the usual visual clues and markers. Such a siruation encourages the proliferation of local narratives, the
experience of different realities and a diversity of knowledges. Again if i t is the unfixing of subject positions that excites
Poster it is the escape from reality that seems to bother Virilio. The problem being that such is the strength of Virilio's
repudiation of new media he leaves unexplored the positions of those who have become its most enthusiastic advocates.
Notable here is Virilto'sdismissal of cyberfeminism. The limitations of this particular mixture of theoretical and political
concerns aside, Virilio argues that cyberfeminism is a dead-end, given that it seems to celebrate 'the replacement of emotions
by electrical impulses' (Armitagc. 2000b: 51 >. What is notable here is Virilio's
resistance to the idea that
cybercultures could impact upon modern identity formations in ways which are not
always reducible to humans being invaded by the destructive logics of technology.
Such a position, then, fails to engage with the more ambivalent and more culturally
complex features of identity politics in respect of the Net. 4. Finally, missing from
Virilio's argument is an account of the way in which new media may become linked
into the contestation of cultural identity. Virilio's analysis offers a picture of human subjectivity
increasingly limited and crippled by the impact of technology. Here there is a strong family resemblance between Virilio and a
host of cultural critics who argue that humanistic sensibilities are currently under attack by a technologically determined
present (Roszak, 1986). Such perspectives offer specific narratives of decline, where more 'authentic' cultures are gradually
replaced by technologically induced sensibilities. The development of what Postman (1993) calls a technopoly is ushered into
place when common cultures arc progressively shaped by the requirements of technology. A technopoly displaces questions of
cultural value and quality by championing efficiency, objective measurement and quantity. Virilio's radicalness comes in
taking these arguments further by suggesting such is technology's dominance over culture that it is actually pushing global
societies ever closer to their own destruction. Without wishing to dismiss these perspectives out of hand, such viewpoints
have a conservative bent and often underestimate the extent to which popular cultures are capable of sustaining a diverse
range of tastes and sensibilities. Indeed, if we follow these critical points we might ask what is the social basis for
technophobiar Andrew Ross (1994) argues that technophobia amongst intellectuals and experts can be connected to a fear
that the development of technology wilt erode their traditional status and store of cultural capital. This fear (which is not
without basis) is that the knowledge economy requires the creation of an obedient, instrumental and efficient knowledge class.
While these arc important considerations. Virilio
does not demonstrate sufficient reflexivity in
attempting to position his analysis within a wider social field. Put differently, we
might argue that because Virilio fails to consider how his concerns can be linked to a
traditional knowledge class, he thereby neglects to analyze different identity
formations to his own.
Virilio’s theory isn’t grounded in reality or history; his negativity in
his philosophy creates a future without humanity.
Kellner, 2003 – critical theorist in the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of
Education in the GSEI at UCLA (Douglas, “Virilio, War, and Technology: Some Critical Reflections”, illuminations: the critical theory
project, http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell29.htm) //BZ
Shrilly technophobic and consistently hysterical, Virilio demonizes
modern information and communication technologies, suggesting that they are
do irreparable damage to the human being. Sometimes over-the-top rhetorical, as in the passage just cited,
Virilio's 1990's comments on new information technology suggest that he is deploying the same model and
methods to analyze the new technologies that he used for war technology. He speaks
regularly of an "information bomb" that is set to explode (1995a, 1995b, 1995c, 1997a, and 1997b), evoking the specter of "a choking of the
senses, a loss of control of reason of sorts" in a flood of information and attendant disinformation. Deploying his earlier argument
concerning technology and the accident, Virilio argues that the information superhighway is just waiting for a major accident to happen
(1995a and 1995b; 1997a and 1997b), which will be a new kind of global accident, effecting the whole globe, "the accidents of accidents"
(Epicurus): "The stock market collapse is merely a slight prefiguration of it. Nobody has seen this generalized accident yet. But then watch
out as you hear talk about the 'financial bubble' in the economy: a very significant metaphor is used here, and it conjures up visions of some
kind of cloud, reminding us of other clouds just as frightening as those of Chernobyl..." (1995b). In a 1995 interview with German media
theorist Friedrich Kittler (1995c), titled "The information Bomb," Virilio draws an analogy between the nuclear bomb and the "information
Virilio comes
off as exceedingly technophobic in this exchange and illicitly, in my view, deploys an
amalgam of military and religious metaphors to characterize the world of the new
technologies. In one exchange, Virilio claims that "a caste of technology-monks is coming
up in our times," and "there exist monasteries (of sorts whose goal it is to pave the
way for a (kind of) 'civilization' that has nothing to do with civilization as we
remember it." These monks are avatars of a "technological fundamentalism" and
"information monotheism," a world-view that replaces previous humanist and
religious worldviews, displacing man and god in favor of technology. [This worldview] comes into being in a totally independent manner from any controversy. It
is the outcome of an intelligence without reflection or past. And with it goes what
I think as the greatest danger (of all), the derailment, the sliding down into the
utopian, into a future without humanity. And that is what worries me. I believe that
violence, nay hyperviolence, springs out of this fundamentalism. Virilio goes on to claim that fallout from
bomb," talking about the dangers of "fallout" and "radiation" from both. In contrast to the more dialectical Kittler,
the "information bomb" will be as lethal for the socius as nuclear bombs, destroying social memory, relations, traditions, and community
with an instantaneous overload of information. Thus, the technological "monks" who promote the information revolution are guilty of "sins
One wonders, however, if the
discourse of "sin," "evil," and "fundamentalism" is appropriate to characterize the
effects and uses of new technologies which are, contrary to Virilio, hotly and
widely debated, hardly monolithic, and, in my view, highly ambiguous, mixing what
might be appraised as positive and negative features and effects.
in technical fundamentalism, of which we witness the consequences, the evil effects, today."
Virilio’s critique offers a one sided critical theory unable to
understand modern technology – no alt solvency
Stevenson 2 - PhD in social sciences from Cambridge University, professor of social sciences at the University of Nottingham,
UK (Nick, “Understanding Media Cultures: Social Theory and Mass Communication.” 2002) //lf
I. The most obvious limitation of Virilio's approach is his pronounced techno-phobia. To give one example amongst the many available in his work. The
development of what Virilio calls a political economy of speed is such that at times he sounds as though the only way of resisting the totalitarian
ambitions of technology is through technological abstinence. The political trajectory of such a position is both conservative and reactionary. Unlike say
Virilio's politics and social theory fail to appreciate the ways in which
contemporary society and culture has been unalterably transformed by the
impact of new technology. There is then a lingering sense within Virilio's writing of a possible return to a society with low levels
of technological development. While such views may indeed form part of a resistance to certain
features of contemporary media and social development, they can hardly be expected to generate a
sustainable political perspective working within the contradictions and
ambivalences of the present. Indeed Virilio's position on the information society often comes close to the nco-Luddism described
by Castells (1998b). Within this Virilio misses the opportunity to think more constructively as to
how new technologies might become utilised by inclusive forms of social
development. That is, if a globally sustainable planetary economy is to become possible it will be built through the new information
technologies, not their abolition. The main problem here being that Virilio offers an excessively onesided view of
technology which 'substitutes moralising critique for social analysis and political
action' (Kcllner, 2000). The development of the media of mass communications has gradually seen the decline of print as the dominant form of
Castells,
communication and the rise of an audio-visual domain. Virilio links the visualisation of the media into narratives of decline where our perceptions of
Virilio tends to see progressive political
possibilities in reversing this process, with human populations better able to
make contact with others through face-to-face communication and print cultures.
While there is much that could be said on the superficiality of much visual culture
and its progressive underming of literate cultures, such an analysis is too
sweeping. The popularisation of the media, which has accompanied the rise of television and its increasingly visual nature of media cultures, has
also made public cultures and associated debates open to a greater number of people. While the visualisation of media
cultures can indeed be linked into narratives of control and surveillance in the
way that Virilio suggests, it can equally be connected into a progressive democratisation of everyday life. The visual bias of much media and communication provides social movements with considerable
reality are progressively undermined by a speed culture. As I have indicated,
opportunities to interrupt the flow of dominant media messages, by staging dramatic media events and engaging in image manipulation. We can make a
similar argument in respect of the development of the Net. As Dahlgren (2001) has argued the partial displacement of hierarchical forms of information
that the Net makes available confuses the boundaries between who is and who is not a journalist. While these arguments have been carried too far by
some Net enthusiasts the possibilities that 'ordinary" people have for constructing their own sites of images, information and discourse is greatly
enhanced by the arrival of new media. Seemingly these and other democratic possibilities are missed by a critique which offers an overly one-sided view
. Virilio, as I have indicated, seeks to make a positive virtue out of his
pessimistic reflections on new media. His argument positions him firmly against those who would argue in favour of the
potentially liberating promise of the web. However Mark Poster (199S, 1996, 1997) argues that such reflections actually spell
the inability of critical theory to understand the significance of new media. That
is, critical theory is overwhelmingly concerned with whether or not the media
limit or foster autonomous social relations, rather than investigating the ways in
which media might constitute new subject positions. For Poster (1995:24) what is at stake is not the way
of new media technologies. 3
new media help foster domination or resistance, but 'a broad and extensive change in the culture, in the way identities are structured'. That is virtual
emphasis
reality helps evoke new possibilities for the imagination given its
upon play, simulation and discovery. The enthusiasm for the Net.
then, is not an escape from reality, but from the dominant codes of modernity which sought to articulate a view of the subject as autonomous and rational.
Within virtual com-munities subjects are able to explore the boundaries of different identity formations while pleasurably entering into previously
unexplored imaginary worlds. It is new media's relatively decentralised structure that potentially turns everyone into a producer and a consumer of
information that constitutes subjects as multiple and unstable. These possibilities dispense with the opposition between a 'real' and fictitious' community
and enable participants to express themselves without the usual visual clues and markers. Such a siruation encourages the proliferation of local narratives,
the experience of different realities and a diversity of knowledges. Again if i t is the unfixing of subject positions that excites Poster it is the escape from
reality that seems to bother Virilio. The problem being that such is the strength of Virilio's repudiation of new media he leaves unexplored the positions
of those who have become its most enthusiastic advocates. Notable here is Virilto'sdismissal of cyberfeminism. The limitations of this particular mixture
of theoretical and political concerns aside, Virilio argues that cyberfeminism is a dead-end, given that it seems to celebrate 'the replacement of emotions
Virilio's resistance to the idea that
cybercultures could impact upon modern identity formations in ways which are
not always reducible to humans being invaded by the destructive logics of
technology. Such a position, then, fails to engage with the more ambivalent and
more culturally complex features of identity politics in respect of the Net. 4. Finally,
missing from Virilio's argument is an account of the way in which new media may
become linked into the contestation of cultural identity. Virilio's analysis offers a picture of human
by electrical impulses' (Armitagc. 2000b: 51 >. What is notable here is
subjectivity increasingly limited and crippled by the impact of technology. Here there is a strong family resemblance between Virilio and a host of
cultural critics who argue that humanistic sensibilities are currently under attack by a technologically determined present (Roszak, 1986). Such
perspectives offer specific narratives of decline, where more 'authentic' cultures are gradually replaced by technologically induced sensibilities. The
development of what Postman (1993) calls a technopoly is ushered into place when common cultures arc progressively shaped by the requirements of
technology. A technopoly displaces questions of cultural value and quality by championing efficiency, objective measurement and quantity. Virilio's
radicalness comes in taking these arguments further by suggesting such is technology's dominance over culture that it is actually pushing global societies
ever closer to their own destruction. Without wishing to dismiss these perspectives out of hand, such viewpoints have a conservative bent and often
underestimate the extent to which popular cultures are capable of sustaining a diverse range of tastes and sensibilities. Indeed, if we follow these critical
points we might ask what is the social basis for technophobiar Andrew Ross (1994) argues that technophobia amongst intellectuals and experts can be
connected to a fear that the development of technology wilt erode their traditional status and store of cultural capital. This fear (which is not without
basis) is that the knowledge economy requires the creation of an obedient, instrumental and efficient knowledge class. While these arc important
Virilio does not demonstrate sufficient reflexivity in attempting to
position his analysis within a wider social field. Put differently, we might argue
that because Virilio fails to consider how his concerns can be linked to a
considerations.
traditional knowledge class, he thereby neglects to analyze different identity
formations to his own.
Virilio’s totalizing criticism gives individuals no agency or politics. By
critiquing technology, Virilio is only a doomsayer that isn’t open to
see that information and speed is key to the economy and the
military.
Kellner, 2003 – critical theorist in the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of
Education in the GSEI at UCLA (Douglas, “Virilio, War, and Technology: Some Critical Reflections”, illuminations: the critical theory
project, http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell29.htm) //BZ
Virilio misses a key component of the drama of technology in the present age and
that is the titanic struggle between national and international governments and
corporations to control the structure, flows, and content of the new technologies
in contrast to the struggle of individuals and social groups to use the new
technologies for their own purposes and projects. This optic posits technology as a
contested terrain, as a field of struggle between competing social groups and
individuals trying to use the new technologies for their own projects. Despite his
humanism, there is little agency or politics in Virilio's conceptual universe and he does
not delineate the struggles between various social groups for the control of the
new technologies and the new politics that they will produce. Simply by damning,
demonizing and condemning new technologies, Virilio substitutes moralistic
critique for social analysis and political action, reducing his analysis to a lament
and jeremiad rather than an ethical and political critique la Ellul and his tradition of Catholic
critique of contemporary civilization, or critical social theory. Virilio has no theory of justice, no politics to
counter, reconstruct, reappropriate, or transform technology, no counterforces
that can oppose technology. Thus, the increasing shrillness of his lament, the rising
hysteria, and sense of futile impotence. While Virilio's take on technology is excessively negative and
technophobic, his work is still of importance in understanding the great transformation
currently underway. Clearly, speed and the instantaneity and simultaneity of
information are more important to the new economy and military than ever
before, so Virilio's reflections on speed, technology, politics, and culture are extremely relevant. Yet he seems so far to
have inadequately conceptualized the enormous changes wrought by an
infotainment society and the advent of a new kind of multimedia informationentertainment technology. If my hunch is correct, his view of technology and speed is
integrally structured by his intense focus on war and the military, while his entire
mode of thought is a form of military-technological determinism which forces
him not only to overlook the important role of capital, but also the complex
ambiguities, the mixture of positive and negative features, of the new
technologies now proliferating and changing every aspect of society and culture
in the present era.
Speed good
Speed is good—we must accelerate warfare to win the war on
terrorism and reduce casualties on both sides
Peters 6 Ralph, former US intelligence officer and best-selling author. “Never Quit the Fight”. Pgs. 154156. PWoods.
Everything American soldiers do is portrayed as an atrocity.
World opinion is outraged, no matter how judiciously we fight. With each
passing day—sometimes with each hour—the pressure builds on our government
to halt combat operations, to offer the enemy a pause, to negotiate…in essence, to give up. We saw
it in Fallujah, where slow-paced tactical success led only to cease-fires that
comforted the enemy and gave the global media time to pound us even harder.
Real atrocities aren’t required.
Those cease-fires were worrisomely reminiscent of the bombing halts during the Vietnam War—except that
everything happens faster now.
Even in Operation Desert Strom, the effect of images trumped reality and
purpose. The exaggerated carnage of the “highway of death” north from Kuwait City led us to stop the war before we had
sufficiently punished the truly guilty—Saddam’s Republican Guard and the regime’s leadership. We’re still paying for that
In Fallujah, we allowed a bonanza of hundreds of terrorists and insurgents
to escape us—despite promising that we would bring them to justice. We stopped because we were worried about
what already hostile populations might think of us. The global media disrupted the U.S. and Coalition
chains of command. Foreign media reporting even sparked bureaucratic
infighting within our own government. The result was a disintegration of our
will—first from decisive commitment to worsening hesitation, then to a “compromise” that returned Sunni-Arab
mistake.
Ba’athist officers to power. That deal not only horrified Iraq’s Kurds and Shi’a Arabs, it inspired expanded attacks by
Muqtada al Sadr’s Shi’a thugs hoping to rival the success of the Sunni-Arab murderers at Fallujah. We could have won
militarily. Instead, we surrendered politically and called it a success. Our enemies won the information war. We literally
didn’t know what hit us. The implication for tactical combat—war at the bayonet level—is clear: We
must direct
our doctrine, training, equipment, organization, and plans toward winning low-level fights much
faster—before the global media can do what enemy forces cannot do and stop us
short. We can still win the big campaigns. But we’re apt to lose thereafter, in the
dirty end-game fights. We have to speed the kill. For two decades, our military has
concentrated on deploying forces swiftly around the world, as well as on fighting
fast-paced conventional wars—with the positive results we saw during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
But at the infantry level, we’ve lagged behind—despite the unrivaled quality of our troops. We’ve
concentrated on critical soldier skills but ignored the emerging requirements of battle. We’ve worked on
almost everything except accelerating urban combat—because increasing the pace is dangerous
and very hard to do. Now we have no choice. We must learn to strike much faster at the
ground-truth level, to accomplish the tough tactical missions at speeds an order
of magnitude faster than in past conflicts. If we can’t win the Fallujahs of the
future swiftly, we will lose them. Our military must rise to its responsibility to reduce the
pressure on the National Command Authority—in essence, the president—by rapidly and effectively executing orders to
root out enemy resistance or nests of terrorists. To do so, we must develop the
capabilities to fight within the “media cycle,” before journalists sympathetic to
terrorists and murderers can twist the facts and portray us as the villains. Before the
combat encounter is politicized globally. Before allied leaders panic. And before such
reporting exacerbates bureaucratic rivalries within our own system. Fighting
faster at the dirty-boots level is going to be tough. As we develop new techniques, we’ll initially see
higher casualties in the short term, perhaps on both sides. But we should have learned long ago, if
we are not willing to face up to casualties sooner, the cumulative tally will be
much, much higher later. We’re bleeding in Iraq now because a year ago we were
unwilling even to shed the blood of our enemies. The Global War on Terror is
going to be a decades-long struggle. The military will not always be the appropriate tool to apply. But
when a situation demands a military response, our forces must bring to bear such
focused, hyperfast power that our enemies are overwhelmed and
destroyed before hostile cameras can defeat us. If we do not learn to kill
very, very swiftly, we will continue to lose slowly.
Increases in information is good, it opens up spaces for politics and
social interactions for alternative perspectives. This creates a more
inclusive community that wouldn’t be possible with Virilio’s
demonizing criticism.
Kellner, 2003 – critical theorist in the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of
Education in the GSEI at UCLA (Douglas, “Virilio, War, and Technology: Some Critical Reflections”, illuminations: the critical theory
project, http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell29.htm) //BZ
while there are still threats to world peace and even human survival from the
dark forces of military capitalism, one of the surprising events of the past decade
is the emergence of a new form of Microsoft capitalism, of less lethal and more
decentralized new technologies, of new modes of peaceful connection and
communication. The project of this new form of technocapitalism is the
development of an information-entertainment society that we might call the
infotainment society and which is sometimes described as the "information
superhighway." This form of capitalism is a softer capitalism, a less violent and
destructive one, a more ecological mode of social organization, based on more
flexible, smaller-scale, and more ludic technologies.[6] The differences between
hard military capitalism and a softer Microsoft capitalism are evident in the
transformation of the computer from a top-down, highly centralized, specialized
machine controlled by big organizations to the smaller scale, more flexible, and
more ludic personal computer (see Turkle 1996 for elaboration of this distinction). Moreover, the surprising
development of the Internet opens up new public spheres and the possibility of
political intervention by groups and individuals excluded from political dialogue
during the era of Big Media, controlled by the state and giant corporations (for
But
elaboration of this argument see Kellner 1995, 1996, and forthcoming). Of course, Microsoft capitalism has its own dangers ranging from
economic worries about near-monopoly control of economic development through software domination to the dangers of individuals
getting lost in the proliferating terrains of cyberspace and the attendant decline of individual autonomy and initiative, social relations and
infotainment society promises more connections,
interactions, communication, and new forms of community. The project is in far
too early stages to be able to appropriately evaluate so for now we should rest
content to avoid the extremes of technophobia which would reject the new
technologies out of hand as new forms of alienation or domination contrasted to
technophilic celebrations of the information superhighway as the road to a
computopia of information, entertainment, affluence, and democracy.
Speed is good—we must accelerate warfare to win the war on
terrorism and reduce casualties on both sides
interaction, and community. Yet the
PETERS 2006 (Ralph, fmr US intelligence officer and best-selling author, Never
Quit the Fight, 154-156)
Real atrocities aren’t required. Everything American soldiers do is portrayed as an atrocity.
World opinion is outraged, no matter how judiciously we fight. With each
passing day—sometimes with each hour—the pressure builds on our government
to halt combat operations, to offer the enemy a pause, to negotiate…in essence, to give up. We saw
it in Fallujah, where slow-paced tactical success led only to cease-fires that
comforted the enemy and gave the global media time to pound us even harder.
Those cease-fires were worrisomely reminiscent of the bombing halts during the Vietnam War—except that
everything happens faster now.
Even in Operation Desert Strom, the effect of images trumped reality and
purpose. The exaggerated carnage of the “highway of death” north from Kuwait City led us to stop the war before we had
sufficiently punished the truly guilty—Saddam’s Republican Guard and the regime’s leadership. We’re still paying for that
In Fallujah, we allowed a bonanza of hundreds of terrorists and insurgents
to escape us—despite promising that we would bring them to justice. We stopped because we were worried about
what already hostile populations might think of us. The global media disrupted the U.S. and Coalition
chains of command. Foreign media reporting even sparked bureaucratic
infighting within our own government. The result was a disintegration of our
will—first from decisive commitment to worsening hesitation, then to a “compromise” that returned Sunni-Arab
mistake.
Ba’athist officers to power. That deal not only horrified Iraq’s Kurds and Shi’a Arabs, it inspired expanded attacks by
Muqtada al Sadr’s Shi’a thugs hoping to rival the success of the Sunni-Arab murderers at Fallujah. We could have won
militarily. Instead, we surrendered politically and called it a success. Our enemies won the information war. We literally
didn’t know what hit us. The implication for tactical combat—war at the bayonet level—is clear: We
must direct
our doctrine, training, equipment, organization, and plans toward winning low-level fights much
faster—before the global media can do what enemy forces cannot do and stop us
short. We can still win the big campaigns. But we’re apt to lose thereafter, in the
dirty end-game fights. We have to speed the kill. For two decades, our military has
concentrated on deploying forces swiftly around the world, as well as on fighting
fast-paced conventional wars—with the positive results we saw during Operation Iraqi Freedom.
But at the infantry level, we’ve lagged behind—despite the unrivaled quality of our troops. We’ve
concentrated on critical soldier skills but ignored the emerging requirements of battle. We’ve worked on
almost everything except accelerating urban combat—because increasing the pace is dangerous
and very hard to do. Now we have no choice. We must learn to strike much faster at the
ground-truth level, to accomplish the tough tactical missions at speeds an order
of magnitude faster than in past conflicts. If we can’t win the Fallujahs of the
future swiftly, we will lose them. Our military must rise to its responsibility to reduce the
pressure on the National Command Authority—in essence, the president—by rapidly and effectively executing orders to
root out enemy resistance or nests of terrorists. To do so, we must develop the
capabilities to fight within the “media cycle,” before journalists sympathetic to
terrorists and murderers can twist the facts and portray us as the villains. Before the
combat encounter is politicized globally. Before allied leaders panic. And before such
reporting exacerbates bureaucratic rivalries within our own system. Fighting
faster at the dirty-boots level is going to be tough. As we develop new techniques, we’ll initially see
higher casualties in the short term, perhaps on both sides. But we should have learned long ago, if
we are not willing to face up to casualties sooner, the cumulative tally will be
much, much higher later. We’re bleeding in Iraq now because a year ago we were
unwilling even to shed the blood of our enemies. The Global War on Terror is
going to be a decades-long struggle. The military will not always be the appropriate tool to apply. But
when a situation demands a military response, our forces must bring to bear such
focused, hyperfast power that our enemies are overwhelmed and
destroyed before hostile cameras can defeat us. If we do not learn to kill
very, very swiftly, we will continue to lose slowly.
Critiquing the social forces around technology encourages Luddism
and rejection of progress—they throw out the good with the bad
HUGHES 2006 (James, Ph.D., Public Policy Studies at Trinity College, “Democratic Transhumanism 2.0,” Last Mod Jan 26,
http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/DemocraticTranshumanism.htm)
left Luddism inappropriately equates technologies with the power relations
around those technologies. Technologies do not determine power relations, they merely create new terrains for
organizing and struggle. Most new technologies open up new possibilities for both expanded
liberty and equality, just as they open new opportunities for oppression and
exploitation. Since the technologies will most likely not be stopped, democrats need to engage with them, articulate policies that
maximize social benefits from the technologies, and find liberatory uses for the technologies. If biotechnology is to be
rejected simply because it is a product of capitalism, adopted in class society,
then every technology must be rejected. The mission of the Left is to assert
democratic control and priorities over the development and implementation of
technology. But establishing democratic control over technological innovation is
not the same as Luddism. In fact, to the extent that advocates for the democratic
control of technology do not guarantee benefits from technology, and attempt to
suppress technology altogether, they will lose public support.
First,
Technological advancement solves its own impact—accelerated
progress will make us more likely to prevent accidents
BOSTROM 2003 (Nick, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University, “Transhumanism FAQ,” October,
http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/faq21/68/)
Superintelligence is an example of a technology that seems especially worth
promoting because it can help reduce a broad range of threats. Superintelligent
systems could advise us on policy and make the progress curve for
nanotechnology steeper, thus shortening the period of vulnerability between the
development of dangerous nanoreplicators and the deployment of effective
defenses. If we have a choice, it seems preferable that superintelligence be developed before advanced nanotechnology, as
superintelligence could help reduce the risks of nanotechnology but not vice versa. Other technologies that have
wide risk-reducing uses include intelligence augmentation, information
technology, and surveillance. These can make us smarter individually and
collectively or make enforcement of necessary regulation more feasible. A strong prima
facie case therefore exists for pursuing these technologies as vigorously as possible. Needless to say, we should also promote nontechnological developments that are beneficial in almost all scenarios, such as peace and international cooperation.
We have already developed maximum capacity for destruction—
further progress can only be good
WALKER 2009 (Mark, assistant professor at New Mexico State University and holds the Richard L. Hedden Chair of
Advanced Philosophical Studies, “Ship of Fools: Why Transhumanism is the Best Bet to Prevent the Extinction of Civilization ,” The Global
Spiral, Feb 5, http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10682/Default.aspx)
there is a limit to the downside of creating
posthumans, at least relatively speaking. That is, one of the traditional concerns about increasing knowledge is that
it seems to always imply an associated risk for greater destructive capacity. One way this
This line of thinking is further reinforced when we consider that
point is made is in terms of ‘killing capacity’: muskets are a more powerful technology than a bow and arrow, and tanks more powerful than
muskets, and atomic bombs even more destructive than tanks. The knowledge that made possible these technical advancements brought a
we have almost hit the wall in our capacity for
evil: once you have civilization destroying weapons there is not much worse you
can do. There is a point in which the one-upmanship for evil comes to an end—
when everyone is dead. If you will forgive the somewhat graphic analogy, it hardly matters to Kennedy if his head is blown
off with a rifle or a cannon. Likewise, if A has a weapon that can kill every last person there is
little difference between that and B’s weapon which is twice as powerful.
Posthumans probably won’t have much more capacity for evil than we have, or are
likely to have shortly. So, at least in terms of how many persons can be killed, posthumans will
not outstrip us in this capacity. This is not to say that there are no new worries with the creation of posthumans, but the greatest
evil, the destruction of civilization, is something which we now, or will soon, have. In other words, the most significant
aspect that we should focus on with contemplating the creation of posthumans is
their upside. They are not likely to distinguish themselves in their capacity for
evil, since we have already pretty much hit the wall on that, but for their capacity
for good.
concomitant increase in capacity for evil. Interestingly,
Speed is good—every minute of technological delay kills a million
people
BOSTROM 2003 (Nick, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University, “Transhumanism FAQ,” October,
http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/faq21/72/)
From this perspective, an improvement to the human condition is a change that gives increased opportunity for individuals to shape
It is important that people
be aware of what they choose between. Education, discussion, public debate,
critical thinking, artistic exploration, and, potentially, cognitive enhancers are means that can help people
make more informed choices. Transhumanists hold that people are not
disposable. Saving lives (of those who want to live) is ethically important. It would be
themselves and their lives according to their informed wishes. Notice the word “informed”.
wrong to unnecessarily let existing people die in order to replace them with some new “better” people. Healthspan-extension and cryonics
The transhumanist goal is not to replace existing humans with a
to give human beings (those existing today and those who will be born in the future)
the option of developing into posthuman persons. The non-disposability of
persons partially accounts for a certain sense of urgency that is common among transhumanists. On
average, 150,000 men, women, and children die every day, often in miserable
conditions. In order to give as many people as possible the chance of a
posthuman existence – or even just a decent human existence – it is paramount
that technological development, in at least some fields, is pursued with maximal speed.
When it comes to life-extension and its various enabling technologies, a delay of
a single week equals one million avoidable premature deaths – a weighty fact
are therefore high on the transhumanist list of priorities.
new breed of super-beings, but rather
which those who argue for bans or moratoria would do well to consider carefully. (The further fact that universal access will likely lag initial
availability only adds to the reason for trying to hurry things along.)
Speed is good—every day of technological progress we lose denies
perfection to 150,000 people
BOSTROM 2005 (Nick, Oxford University, Faculty of Philosophy, “Transhumanist Values,” Last Mod Sept 17,
http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/values.html)
The full realization of the core
transhumanist value requires that, ideally, everybody should have the opportunity to
become posthuman. It would be sub-optimal if the opportunity to become posthuman were restricted to a tiny elite. There
are many reasons for supporting wide access: to reduce inequality; because it would be a
fairer arrangement; to express solidarity and respect for fellow humans; to help gain support for the
transhumanist project; to increase the chances that you will get the opportunity to become posthuman; to increase the
Wide access. It is not enough that the posthuman realm be explored by someone.
chances that those you care about can become posthuman; because it might increase the range of the posthuman realm that gets explored;
to alleviate human suffering on as wide a scale as possible. The wide access requirement
underlies the moral urgency of the transhumanist vision. Wide access does not argue for holding back. On
the contrary, other things being equal, it is an argument for moving forward as quickly as
possible. 150,000 human beings on our planet die every day, without having
had any access to the anticipated enhancement technologies that will make it
possible to become posthuman. The sooner this technology develops, the fewer
people will have died without access. Consider a hypothetical case in which there is a choice between (a) allowing
and
the current human population to continue to exist, and (b) having it instantaneously and painlessly killed and replaced by six billion new
human beings who are very similar but non-identical to the people that exist today. Such a replacement ought to be strongly resisted on
moral grounds, for it would entail the involuntary death of six billion people. The fact that they would be replaced by six billion newly
Human beings are not disposable. For
analogous reasons, it is important that the opportunity be become posthuman is
made available to as many humans as possible, rather than having the existing population merely
supplemented (or worse, replaced) by a new set of posthuman people. The transhumanist ideal will be
maximally realized only if the benefits of technologies are widely shared and if
they are made available as soon as possible, preferably within our lifetime.
created similar people does not make the substitution acceptable.
Science turn
Virilio misses the liberating nature of technology that enhances
humanity. His negative dogmatism ignores the importance of
technology for humanity.
Kellner, 2003 – critical theorist in the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of
Education in the GSEI at UCLA (Douglas, “Virilio, War, and Technology: Some Critical Reflections”, illuminations: the critical theory
project, http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell29.htm) //BZ
Virilio has a flawed conception of technology that is
excessively one-sided and that misses the emancipatory and democratizing
aspects of new computer and media technologies. My argument is that his vision of
technology is overdetermined by his intense focus on war and military technology
and that this optic drives him to predominantly negative and technophobic
perspectives on technology per se. However, precisely the one-sidedness and
extremely critical discourse on war and military technology, as well as his
reflections on war, cinema, technologies of representation and vision machines,
constitute some of the most valuable aspects of his work. Consequently, in the following pages I will
follow Virilio in pursuing what he calls the "riddle of technology" and interrogate his attempts to elucidate this conundrum. Nowhere,
however, does Virilio directly theorize technology in any systematic or sustained way ,
Yet I want to argue in this study that
although reflections on it permeate his analyses. Thus, I want to probe Virilio's perspectives on technology to determine the extent of his
Virilio emerges as one
of the major critics of war, technology, and vision machines in our time, albeit with
excessively negative and even technophobic proclivities.
insight and use-value, and to indicate what I see as the limitations of his perspectives. In this reading,
Virilio is steeped in the idea of military technology that is mired in
dystopia of accidents without considering the positive parts of
technology.
Kellner, 2003 – critical theorist in the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of
Education in the GSEI at UCLA (Douglas, “Virilio, War, and Technology: Some Critical Reflections”, illuminations: the critical theory
project, http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell29.htm) //BZ
Virilio has so
far not adequately theorized. He remains, in my view, trapped in a mode of
technological determinism and a perspective on technology that equates
technology with military technology and pure war. For Virilio, technology drives
us, it impels us into new modes of speed and motion, it carries us along
predetermined trajectories. He believes that: the question, "Can we do without technology?" cannot be asked as such. We
are forced to expand the question of technology not only to the substance produced, but also to the accident produced. The riddle
of technology we were talking about before is also the riddle of the accident" (Virilio
and Lotringer 1983: 31-32). Virilio claims that every technology involves its accompanying
accident: with the invention of the ship, you get the ship wreck; the plane brings on plane crashes; the automobile, car accidents, and
so on. For Virilio, the technocratic vision is thus one-sided and flawed in that it
postulates a perfect technological system, a seamless cybernetic realm of
instrumentality and control in which all processes are determined by and follow
technological laws (Baudrillard also, to some extent, reproduces this cybernetic and technological imaginary in his writings;
see Kellner 1989b). In the real world, however, accidents are part and parcel of technological
systems, they expose its limitations, they subvert idealistic visions of technology.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War, we are, as I argue below, in a new historical era which
Accidents are consequently, in Virilio's view, an integral part of all modes of transportation, industrial production, war and military
organization, and other technological systems. He suggests that in science a Hall of Accidents should be put next to each Hall of Machines:
"Every technology, every science should choose its specific accident, and reveal it as a product--not in a moralistic, protectionist way (safety
first), but rather as a product to be 'epistemo-technically' questioned. At the end of the nineteenth century, museums exhibited machines: at
the end of the twentieth century, I think we must grant the formative dimensions of the accident its rightful place in a new museum" (Virilio
Virilio is fascinated as well by interruptions ranging from sleep to
day dreams to maladies like picnolepsy or epilepsy to death itself (1991a and Virilio and
Lotringer 1983: 33ff). Interruption is also a properly cinematic vision in which time and
space are artificially parcelled and is close to the microscopic and fragmented
vision that Lyotard identifies with "the postmodern condition" (Virilio and Lotringer 1983: 35). For Virilio, the
and Lotringer 1983).[5]
cinema shows us that "consciousness is an effect of montage" (Virilio and Lotringer 1983: 35), that perception itself organizes experience
into discontinuous fragments, that we are aware of objects and events in a highly discontinuous and fragmented mode.
Even if they don’t explicitly reject technology, their argument
undermines public faith in tech
RAMAN 2009 (Varadaraja, Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the University of Calcutta
before doing his doctoral work on the foundations of quantum mechanics at the University of Paris Global Spiral, Jan 23,
http://www.metanexus.net/Magazine/ArticleDetail/tabid/68/id/10678/Default.aspx)
there are philosophical reasons for the anti-science movements, formulated by
thinkers who bring their full logical prowess to show that a framework based on logic alone is
untenable. They explore the flaws in the foundations of scientific thinking, and
question science's claim to hold monopoly for a correct interpretation of the
natural world. These are interesting perspectives in the academic arena, but when they spill over to the
general public and uproot the public's respect for science, they can cause serious
damage to the framework of reason and rationality in which science operates in its
interpretation of the world. When reason and rationality are devalued or are equated with
unreason in our pursuit to explain the world, superstition and mindless magic
can take over with serious adverse impacts on society. Societies which are
persuaded that rationality can be dispensed with can do immense harm to their
peoples. In this sense philosophical anti-science is perhaps the most dangerous of
all.
Next
We should use technology to remake humanity—solves all other
impacts
BOSTROM 2009 (Nick, Oxford University, Faculty of Philosophy, The Global Spiral, Feb 5,
http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10687/Default.aspx)
The prospect of posthumanity is feared for at least two reasons. One is that the
state of being posthuman might in itself be degrading, so that by becoming posthuman we might be
harming ourselves. Another is that posthumans might pose a threat to “ordinary”
humans. (I shall set aside a third possible reason, that the development of posthumans might offend some supernatural being.) The
most prominent bioethicist to focus on the first fear is Leon Kass:
Most of the given bestowals of nature have their given species-specified natures: they are each and all of a given sort. Cockroaches and
humans are equally bestowed but differently natured. To turn a man into a cockroach—as we don’t need Kafka to show us—would be
dehumanizing. To try to turn a man into more than a man might be so as well. We need more than generalized appreciation for nature’s
gifts. We need a particular regard and respect for the special gift that is our own given nature.5
Transhumanists counter that nature’s gifts are sometimes poisoned and should not always
be accepted. Cancer, malaria, dementia, aging, starvation, unnecessary suffering,
cognitive shortcomings are all among the presents that we wisely refuse. Our own
species-specified natures are a rich source of much of the thoroughly unrespectable and unacceptable—susceptibility for
disease, murder, rape, genocide, cheating, torture, racism. The horrors of nature
in general and of our own nature in particular are so well documented6 that it is astonishing
that somebody as distinguished as Leon Kass should still in this day and age be tempted to rely on the natural as a guide to what is desirable
or normatively right. We should be grateful that our ancestors were not swept away by the Kassian sentiment, or we would still be picking
Rather than deferring to the natural order, transhumanists maintain that we
can legitimately reform ourselves and our natures in accordance with humane
values and personal aspirations.
lice off each other’s backs.
Critiquing technology based on the social forces that surround it still
amounts to total rejection
HUGHES 2006 (James, Ph.D., Public Policy Studies at Trinity College, “Democratic Transhumanism 2.0,” Last Mod Jan 26,
http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/DemocraticTranshumanism.htm)
left Luddism inappropriately equates technologies with the power relations
around those technologies. Technologies do not determine power relations, they merely create new terrains for
organizing and struggle. Most new technologies open up new possibilities for both expanded
liberty and equality, just as they open new opportunities for oppression and
exploitation. Since the technologies will most likely not be stopped, democrats need to engage with them, articulate policies that
maximize social benefits from the technologies, and find liberatory uses for the technologies. If biotechnology is to be
rejected simply because it is a product of capitalism, adopted in class society,
then every technology must be rejected. The mission of the Left is to assert
democratic control and priorities over the development and implementation of
technology. But establishing democratic control over technological innovation is
not the same as Luddism. In fact, to the extent that advocates for the democratic
control of technology do not guarantee benefits from technology, and attempt to
suppress technology altogether, they will lose public support.
First,
Virilio’s technophobia doesn’t appreciate the positive parts of
technology, which stops the optimistic progression of society
Kellner, 2003 – critical theorist in the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of
Education in the GSEI at UCLA (Douglas, “Virilio, War, and Technology: Some Critical Reflections”, illuminations: the critical theory
project, http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell29.htm) //BZ
Yet Virilio has never really theorized technology per se, and uses the same model and categories to analyze war technology to characterize
new information technology. Thus, he has not really unravelled the riddle of technology which would have to interrogate its fascination,
Virilio criticizes the discourses of technophilia, that
would celebrate technology as salvation, that are totally positive without critical
reservations, but he himself is equally one-sided, developing a highly
technophobic and negative discourse that fails to articulate any positive aspects
or uses for new technologies, claiming that negative and critical discourses like
his own are necessary to counter the overly optimistic and positive discourses. In a
sense, this is true and justifies Virilio's predominantly technophobic discourse, but raises questions concerning the
adequacy of Virilio's perspectives on technology as a whole and the extent to
which his work is of use in theorizing the new technologies with their momentous
and dramatic transformation of every aspect of our social and everyday life.
power, and complexity, and not just its negativity.
Perm
Virilio’s essentializing criticism fails without a connection to politics.
Without openness to technology, his flawed assumptions overlook the
value of the military and innovation in technology.
Kellner, 2003 – critical theorist in the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, George Kneller Chair in the Philosophy of
Education in the GSEI at UCLA (Douglas, “Virilio, War, and Technology: Some Critical Reflections”, illuminations: the critical theory
project, http://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/Illumina%20Folder/kell29.htm) //BZ
By eschewing critical social theory, Virilio does not have the resources to theorize
the complex relations between capital, technology, the state, and military in the
present age, substituting a highly elusive and evocative method for systematic
theoretical analysis and critique. Virilio himself acknowledges his elusive and suggestive approach to writing, noting:
"I don't believe in explanations. I believe in suggestions, in the obvious quality of the implicit. Being an urbanist and architect, I am too used
to constructing clear systems, machines that work well. I don't believe it's writing's job to do the same thing. I don't like two-and-two-is-
Virilio's
style is extremely telescopic, leaping from topic to topic with alacrity, juxtaposing
defuse elements and themes, proliferating images, quotes, and ideas which
rapidly follow each other, often overwhelming the reader and making it difficult
to grasp the thrust of Virilio's argument. One could argue, in fact, that the speed which Virilio so well theorizes
four-type writing. That's why, finally, I respect Foucault more than I like him" (Virilio and Lotringer 1983: 38-39). Indeed,
enters into the very fabric and substance of his writings. Virilio's texts move along quickly, they catch their topics on the run, they
overwhelm with detail, but rarely develop a topic in systematic and sustained fashion. His style thus reflects his themes with speed,
fragmentation, and complexity the warp and woof of his work. One wonders, however, whether a critic of speed, war, and technology should
not occasionally slow down and more carefully and patiently delineate his theoretical position. To some extent, Virilio exemplifies Walter
Benjamin's theory of illuminations and fragments, that constellations of ideas and images could illuminate specific phenomena and events.
Like Benjamin, Virilio circles his prey with images, quotes, often startling and original ideas, and then quickly moves on to his next topic.
Virilio believes in the virtue of breaks and interruptions, of gaps and absences, eschewing systematic theorizing. But although Virilio
pursues some of the same themes as Benjamin, deploys a similar method, and cites him frequently, there are major differences. Whereas
Benjamin (1969), in the spirit of Brecht, wanted to "refunction" new technologies to make them instruments of progressive social change
and developed political strategies to exploit the potentially progressive features of new technologies, Virilio is relentless critical, eschews
Virilio is
highly one-sided and does not develop a dialectical conception of technology or a
progressive technopolitics. So far, Virilio has produced no master oeuvre that will pull together his ideas and
developing a technopolitics, and nowhere speaks of using or refunctioning technology to serve positive ends. Thus,
perspectives, that will provide a synthetic overview. His long interviews with Sylvere Lotringer (1983) and John Armitrage (in this issue)
but it remains to be seen whether he will
attempt to develop a critical theory of technology for the present age. In addition, as a
critical philosopher, Virilio is quite ascetic, never articulating his normative position from
which he carries on such a sustained and ferocious critique of technology. He
seems to assume something like a religious humanism, that human beings are
significant by virtue of their capacity for speech, reason, morality, political
deliberation and participation, and creative activity, while technology is seen as
undermining these human capacities, taking over human functions and
rendering humans subservient to technological rationality. But Virilio himself does
not adequately articulate the humanist or religious dimension of his critique and,
as noted, describes himself as a materialist and abstains from developing the
normative perspective from which he carries out his critique.
contain the best overview of what I take to be his most valuable work,
A2: t/ case
Even if some technologies fail this doesn’t mean the plan will—tech
change is good even if it’s only partial
BOSTROM 2003 (Nick, Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University, “Transhumanism FAQ,” October,
http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/faq21/88/)
Success in the transhumanist endeavor is not an all-or-nothing matter. There is
no “it” that everything hinges on. Instead, there are many incremental processes
at play, which may work better or worse, faster or more slowly. Even if we can’t
cure all diseases, we will cure many. Even if we don’t get immortality, we can
have healthier lives. Even if we can’t freeze whole bodies and revive them, we can
learn how to store organs for transplantation. Even if we don’t solve world hunger, we can feed a lot of
people. With many potentially transforming technologies already available and
others in the pipeline, it is clear that there will be a large scope for human
augmentation. The more powerful transhuman technologies, such as machinephase nanotechnology and superintelligence, can be reached through several
independent paths. Should we find one path to be blocked, we can try another
one. The multiplicity of routes adds to the probability that our journey will not
come to a premature halt.