Limited Return in a Limitless Situation

After a three month hiatus, I've returned to talk about an incredibly interesting essay by Wednell Berry in Harper's Magazine. The essay, entitled "Faustian Economics", explores the ignorance most Americans have regarding the limited nature of our resources and the huge push that capitalism must make to maintain this myth. Our desire to continue to American way of life, Berry says, transforms our perception of science as a limitless field of knowledge that will solve all of our problems by figuring out new ways to convert different resources into energy -- a truly flawed perception that parallels the condescension that science usually presents toward religion: the notion that something will save us from our challenges and that we need not change our life to conform to the will of the time. Now, tragically, even the most enlightened among us rely on technology to "solve" the problems of global warming and resource reduction, spinning our capitalistic practices in various "low-impact" ways in order to lessen to dent on the sum total.

All this talk of limitlessness reminds me, of course, of Virilio and Baudrillard, and the way in which technology distances us from the problems that face us (and which are in part created by technology itself). What remains in the American mindset, says Berry, is a complicated notion of unity and freedom juxtaposed with a particular individuality inspired by late capitalism.

If we go back into our tradition, we are going to find a concern with religion, which at a minimum shatters the selfish context of the individual life, and thus forces a consideration of what human being are and ought to be.
This concern persists at least as late as our Declaration of Independence, which holds as "self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..." Thus among our political roots we have still our old preoccupation with our definition as humans, which in the Declaration is wisely assigned to our Creator; our rights and the rights of all humans are not granted by any human government but are innate, belonging to us by birth. This insistence comes not from the fear of death or even extinction but from the ancient fear that in order to survive we might become inhuman or monstrous.

This last line is powerful. Considering the distancing-effect of technology, the isolation of individuals in space against one another, the drive for survival constantly ignores the notion of becoming inhuman or monstrous because we are not fully aware of the consequences of our actions (or consumptions). Our national resources, depleted, are now imported through sketchy treaties and alliances with governments known to have heinous human rights records. Not only is our consumption monstrous, we are exponentially compounding monstrosity by the consequences of our consumption abroad -- not to mention destroying the world's ecosystem and encouraging global warming at an alarming rate. Berry's basic assertion is that we need to change the way we live in the world, and I agree. We cannot merely change the products we consume, we must change the way we understand consumption and our impact on the larger world. While this idea is almost cliched at this point, it needs to be driven home: through our ignorance of limitlessness, we are making the world ever more monstrous.

MUNI Drivers

There is a sign on the bus that is positioned directly behind the driver toward all of the passengers:

"Information gladly given but safety requires avoiding unnecessary conversation."

You can tell I've been reading a lot of Paul Virilio when I immediately find this sign ripe with meaning. It is incredibly telling of our disconnected present. Drivers, Who are necessarily (for now) human beings, are produced as computers -- able to communicate information but off limits as far a real, intimate connection goes. Safety is the reason given for this disconnection; it dictates that "accidents happen" when people connect, that casual conversation is "unnecessary" for the situation and should be avoided. Thus, the bus merely becomes a mode of transportation -- a very pragmatic conception -- instead of a social space where the city's inhabitants interact and coexist for several minutes a day. As mere transportation, individuals are isolated in a trajectory that simultaneously privileges and fears the accident: in order to preserve our precious, comfortable human lives in the age of technoscience, we must neutralize the spontaneous and potentially creative forces that we are capable of, silencing ourselves, locating ourselves in isolated seats, looking forward, alone.

More Virilio in a space with another purpose, which is currently unclear to me.

ABC/Facebook and National Politics

I came across this article today and found it interesting. The ability to "follow" reporters in the field and possibly respond to the way they portray an issue is a complicated issue. On the one hand, I like the idea that we have extended the breadth of communication through the internet to the point that we have "full coverage" of everything, thus allowing informed, nuanced positions to be made available to everyone. On the other hand, this sort of full coverage means a loss in the spirit of change: as we collapse extension and duration into mere communication, change cannot manifest in the world-shaping ways. We no longer experience revolution, only the continual reification of the present moment, a history forever paused in an extended modernness.

Google Maps Street View

Having recently moved to San Francisco, I've found that the housing market here is not only exceedingly competitive, but quite disheartening as well. That aside (I have another blog for emotions), today I found the wonderous/daunting Google Maps Street View.

San Francisco, being the darling cultural gem in gem in geeked out Silicon Valley, is one of the cities that Google has photographed so extensively as to offer a view of houses right at their front doors. Not all of the city has been shot so far, but I assume that will come shortly. Basically, one is able to view a Google map and, in some locations, shift the perspective to the street. Not only can I see where the house that I'm visiting is located, I can get a look at the outside of the place before I even take the time to go there.

Useful? Only sort of. But a good reminder that we must, from now on, be aware of the fact that vision is becoming total; its scale is widening, becoming more precise and having more depth of field -- which itself basically gives way to another moment of vision, as in Google Maps Street View. In the web 2.0 program, you can actually see people on the street who happened to be there the moment Google took the picture. They exist like some strange ghost-like presence, perpetually tagged into the landscape for the world to see. You can make out their faces, see their boredom, their hurrying steps, or a personal smile to themselves as they walk to work.

Diving in to see people heading to work, going about their day.

The map:


View Larger Map

The street:



Upclose, forever bonded to this simulacral space:

From Another Space

I am posting this older blog post that was the sole entry on my old blog Autotechnomy, dated Tuesday, September 26, 2006

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Finesse -- Virilio and Dance

"To me, dance is an extraordinary thing, more extraordinary than most people usually think"

--Paul Virilio


I need to outline my vision for the body's way of 'computing' technology in an attempt to set it outside of reducibility to technology. This is what I call finesse, the subtle and graceful movements of the body that can move and flow like a dance with the earth. It is a form of transcendence from the errors and misfiring that the mind can have when overwhelmed. It is conscious meditation, it is flirting, it is sex. It is the pulse you pick up on when you listen to music and can hear nothing else, the vision of god above the clouds during a sunset. It is the beautiful articulation of what it means to be inside your own body and mind.

But is it nostalgia? Finesse is what nostalgia wants to recreate. I don't rely on memories anymore. I rely on the movement of the body forward, to the experience when you start to speak and everything you say is perfect and completely coherent and everyone walks away beaming at you. It is the moment when you bring everyone to the same page in a book and learn from each other. It is, and has always been, love.

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and by love, I mean spirit

Simulation/Madness

"The first Gulf War was the first "live" war. World War Two was a world war in space. It spread from Europe to Japan, to the Soviet Union, etc. World War Two was quite different from World War One which was geographically limited to Europe. But in the case of the Gulf War, we are dealing with a war which is extremely local in space, but global in time, since it is the first "live" war. And to those, like my friend Baudrillard, who say that this war did not actually occur, I reply: this war may not have occurred in the actual global space, but it did occur in global time. And this thans to CNN and The Pentagon. This is a new form of war, and all future wares, all future accidents will be live wars and live accidents.
(Wilson: How will this removal affect people?)
Firstly, a de-realization, the accident of the real. It's not one, two, hundreds or thousands of people who are being killed, but the whole reality itself. In a way, everybody is wounded from the wound of the real. This phenomenon is similar to madness. The mad person is wounded by his or her distorted relationship to the real. Imagine that all of a sudden I am convinced that I am Napoleon: I am no longer Virilio, but Napoleon. My reality is wounded. Virtual reality leads to a similar de-realization. However, it no longer works only at the scale of individuals, as in madness, but at the scale of the world.

By the way, this might sound like drama, but it is not the end of the world: it is both sad and happy, nasty and kind. It is a lot of contradictory things at the same time. And it is complex."

--Virilio, Cyberwar, God and Television: An Interview with Paul Virilio
Conducted by Louise Wilson, from Digital Delerium


Virilio's comparison of madness with simulation is really interesting because if we've been taught as liberal academics to treat madness as an interesting singularity in personality, simulation must be able to divulge similarly interesting points. Of course, we may not seek out madness, but we do seem to seek out simulation, at least on some level. Taking, for example, Massive-Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs), the real player can become Napoleon consciously and willingly, interact with others as Napoleon. But perhaps the previous example is "active" simulation, whereas something like television and CNN is "passive" simulation because one does not choose the way in which it overtakes the body.