Having recently finished Paul Virilio's 1998 text on the nature of science in the age of the Internet, The Information Bomb, as well joining Facebook, we could not help our Facebook experience inform our reading of Virillio, nor could we prevent Virillio from colouring our views of Facebook, for the two make an interesting pairing.
On one hand, and at the simplest level, Facebook does nothing that email does not, except that Facebook would be an email program that allows one to search other people's address book as well as letting you spy on other people's notes to each other. The increasing popularity of the social networking site, however, has led to the development of numerous applets and widgets that people can use to customize their Facebook pages. In this sense, Facebook appears to be more of a synthesis of many singular aspects of the Internet. They've even added a marketplace option.
The Information Bomb, while not necessarily easy to follow, nor concise in it's thinking, was the French philosopher's take on the whole Internet experience. Given the apparent failure of various space exploration endeavours of the 1990s, Virilio became convinced that we were entering a period of internal colonisation. He was also concerned that the American government had not abandoned all of its designs for the military origin and applications of the Internet. Indeed, this is where the title comes from, for he ominously suggests in the closing pages of his book, that perhaps the marketing campaign and push for publicizing the Internet was just another avenue to ensare the citizens of the globe in an American net. As soon as one established an online presence and became dependent on it for access or exchange of information, one became vulnerable to any American attempt to disrupt or limit service.
However, there is also an intriguing sort of sidebar story to The Information Bomb that Facebook clearly illustrates. Virillio was somewhat fascinated with the introduction of webcams and declared that the ability to peer at live events any where in the world marked the collapse of "local time". Many earlier commentators have mentioned how the rise of the twenty-four news channels had shrunk the world, but for Virillio the web cams were something different. First of all, they were incredibly mundane, but more importantly, the user/viewer had more control over what to watch. One did not have to wait for a particular point in the news cycle to find out what was going on, one simply went online and watched it live.
With Facebook, we find out instantly what is happening among our friends and family. Where Virilio talked about the telescoping effect of technology, we can see that the sixteen hours and thousands of kilometers between Calgary, Canada and Sydney, Australia, are no barriers to the immediate flow of information. We can find out instantly what is going on anywhere in the world provided we have a Facebook friend online. Granted, Facebook does not seem to have to capacity for live video (yet), but with the ability to post immediate photos and captured video, it's pretty close.
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In order to make an educated criticism on Virilio you must first understand, or at least not admit to not understanding, what it is Virilio is trying to point out.
The information bomb is a fear tactic used in order to inspire fear and panic in the general public through a shotgun blast of images and information on a television screen. On any given news station one can view the stock market, sports scores, news analysts arguing, current events, what’s up next, exactly who you’re watching, a looped image in the corner of a recent bombing, the president waving, brought-to-you-by’s, and anything else that can be jammed on a blue-screen with just enough room left over to catch the host’s sorry weave and splotchy make-up.
At viewing such a sight the mind is immediately saturated with information and keeps them in an overwhelming feeling of numb panic. The viewer isn’t quite sure of everything going on but keeps an aware sense of tragedy when viewing. The information spreads like fallout and none of it is actually digested in the mind of the viewer. With constant, instantaneous coverage of the action, the motive of a terrorist is no longer to destroy navel bases or a weapons hoard, it becomes images. The destruction of a famous skyline becomes more personal and detrimental then a thousand soldiers in print. To bomb a coffee shop and have it on every television screen in the world in a matter of seconds would be more devastating then sinking a battle ship. With the help of CNN, Fox News, C-Span, MSNBC, etc. the world stays paralyzed with fear and a looming trepidation that the horrific is just around the corner at a Starbucks.
Facebook is a perfect example of the information bomb Virilio is talking about. to say Facebook is just like email with added features would be simple and contrived. It appears to be similar to email but with an overloading of information, programs, images, music links, etc. it becomes the simulacra that Virilio is talking about.
Images on a screen can be reproduced over and over alerting the viewer of some tragedy, news event, celebrity marriage, African village or a horse being saved from broken ice in a matter of seconds. The problem with this break down in time is that the information lost becomes immediate and filtered through an objective interpretation. Along with the short cuts and horrific images the on-the-scene broadcasters can give an array of false opinions and interpretations with the proper editing cuts (see Fox News).
In Paul Virilio’s chapter entitled “Twilight of Place” in his book "City of Panic", he identifies a “trinity of bodies that joins the trinity of persons.” (Virilio 124)These bodies are the territorial, the social and the animal. The territorial he refers to as the desert, the last expanse of land that is inhabitable by man and nigh void of reusable resources; the last frontier, so to speak. The social body is identifiable as the interaction of human with one another, our basic need of connection with sentient beings. The last is the animal body, the being that comes to life when incorporated with the other two, an instinctual and reactionary being that requires both space an intimacy to survive. Among these three bodies is type of “energy” connecting all to one another; Virilio refers to this as “GRAVITY”. Along with this comes a deterritorialization with an influx of the simulation, the image, the copy.
With the rise of the technological and “virtual community” there is a disintegration of this connection, this energy. This disintegration Virilio refers to as a “gravitational collapse”. This breakdown comes when the deserts have been inhabited bringing a death to the territorial body, globalization of the virtual community brings on death of the social body, and lastly, since the animal body requires both of the former to survive ii “is rendered obsolete in its creative and procreative faculties by the progress of transgenic technologies.” Human life becomes an individually identifiable statistic that is predictable and acquiescent.
Thanks for the insights. Virilio has only recently entered in from our periphery, especially given his earlier history of design in oblique structures (like parkades). We are particularly interested in Crepuscular Dawn and, given your recommendation,City of Panic. His emphasis on the use of time, as opposed to space, appears to echo some of our thoughts.
Facebook certainly seems to satisfy Virilio's criterion of global interactivity, which allows effects to be felt "everywhere simultaneously", albeit in an increasingly distorted way with the proliferation of interpretive lenses.
See my overview with some commentary at: http://thecombedthunderclap.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/paul-virilio-information-bomb.html
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