Brooke Marcy

 

Summery of Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm! by Paul Virilio

 

In his essay, Speed and Information: Cyberspace Alarm!,” Paul Virilio begins by examining how real space and geosphere have been taken over by real time, changing our ideas about the world.   He notes that humans have already broken the barriers of sound and heat, yet breaking the barrier of light is impossible, and if done, would discombobulate the living and history.  He examines how democracy is based on the stability of “the city” and how the dominance of real time will change our perspective, switching us from distance perspective to a contact or “tactile perspective.”  He sees the build-up of superhighways as causing a new “phenomenon: loss of orientation,” and how reality is being split into reality and virtual reality, threatening individual orientation.  Virilio notes that this loss of orientation is a negative with potential to dramatically affect democracy and society as a whole.

 

Virilio believes that “globalization” is a fraud and that what actually exists is the “perspective of real time,” which indicates, we are living in a “one-time-system.”  He defines “one-time-system” as being the same thing as global time. Virilio next examines how history no longer exists in a specific time or place and instead occurs instantaneously in universal time. Distances and surfaces are no longer boundaries, and cyberspace allows local time and global time to become one.  Virilio proposes that “such deconstruction of relationships with the world is not without consequences for the relationship among its citizens themselves.”  He believes that for every gain there is a loss, and if we are not aware of the loss, than the gains become obsolete.

 

Virilio believes that a loss of control over reason associated with human interactions with multi media and computers could cause the formation of an “information bomb.”  This “information bomb” will need some form of dissuasion to counter the unlimited information.  Virilio sees this dissuasion as coming in the possible form of an accident,  which the stock market crash can be seen as a precursor.  He believes that the problem is not the information but the interactivity, thus computers are not the problem, but rather computer communication.

 

Virilio points out that “ the suggestive power of virtual technologies is without parallel, “ and this build up of “ a computer communication narco-economy” has great potential to destabilize the economy. He also questions the advancements in entertainment and there effect on the population. He believes we need to “acknowledge that the new communication technologies will only further democracy if, and only if, we oppose from the beginning the caricature of global society being hatched for us by big multinational corporations throwing themselves at a breakneck pace on the information superhighways.”