Real-time “live” technologies, cyberreality, will permit the incorporation of the world within oneself. One will be able to read the entire world … And I will have become the world. The body of the world and my body will be one. Once again, this is a divine vision; and this is what the military are looking for. Earth is already being integrated into the Pentagon, and the man in the Pentagon is already piloting the world war … as if he were a captain whose huge boat would have become his own body. Thus the body simulates the relationship to the world … What will prevail is this will to reduce the world to the point where one could possess it. All military technologies reduce the world to nothing.
Predictor: Virilio, Paul
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 interview with Louise Wilson for CTheory, Paul Virilio, the emblematic French theorist of technology and author of “Pure War, Speed and Politics,” and “War and Cinema: the Logistics of Perception,” says: ”If you look at the Gulf War or new military technologies, they are moving toward cyberwars. Most video-technologies and technologies of simulation have been used for war. For example, video was created after the Second World War in order to radio-control planes and aircraft carriers; thus video came with the war … Similarly, television was first conceived to be used as some kind of telescope, not for broadcasting … the inventor of television, wanted to settle cameras on rockets so that it would be possible to watch the sky … Video is originally a de-corporation, a disqualification of the sensorial organs which are replaced by machines…The eye and the hand are replaced by the data glove, the body is replaced by a data suit, sex is replaced by cybersex. All the qualities of the body are transferred to the machine … We haven’t adjusted yet, we are forgetting our body, we are losing it. This is an accident of the body, a de-corporation. The body is torn and disintegrated … 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 … this war may not have occurred in the actual global space, but it did occur in global time. And this thanks to CNN and The Pentagon. This is a new form of war, and all future wars, all future accidents will be live wars and live accidents … Real-time ‘live’ technologies, cyberreality, will permit the incorporation of the world within oneself. One will be able to read the entire world, just like during the Gulf War. And I will have become the world. The body of the world and my body will be one. Once again, this is a divine vision; and this is what the military are looking for. Earth is already being integrated into the Pentagon, and the man in the Pentagon is already piloting the world war – or the Gulf War – as if he were a captain whose huge boat would have become his own body. Thus the body simulates the relationship to the world … What will prevail is this will to reduce the world to the point where one could possess it. All military technologies reduce the world to nothing.”
Biography:Paul Virilio was a French technology theorist and author of “Pure War, Speed and Politics” and “War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception.” (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: October 21, 1994
Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics
Subtopic: Peacekeeping/Warfare
Name of publication: CTheory
Title, headline, chapter name: Cyberwar, God and Television: An Interview with Paul Virilio
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=62
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney