Kittler:Virilio Convo

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The information bomb a conversationPaul Virilio

a, Friedrich Kittler

b& John Armitage

c

aEcole Speciale d'Architecture, Paris, France

bSeminar fuer Aesthetik, Sophienstr. 22a, Berlin, D10178, Germany E-mail:

cDivision of Government & Politics, University of Northumbria, Northumberland Building,

Newcastle upon Tyne, NE18ST, UK E-mail:

Version of record first published: 04 Jun 2008.

To cite this article:Paul Virilio , Friedrich Kittler & John Armitage (1999): The information bomb a conversation , Angelaki:

Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 4:2, 81-90

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09697259908572036

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Angelaki: journalofthe theoretical humanities4:2 1999

n theedited conversation below, conductedandbroadcast on the German-French culture televi-sion channel ARTEinNovember 1995,theFrenchcultural theorist Paul Virilio and the Germanphilosopher Friedrich Kittler critically discussthephysicist A lbert Einstein's conceptof the informa-tion bomb. 2 Although theexchangeisguidedinpart by the philosophical, literary, and scientificwritingsofMichel Fou cault, Gregory Bateson, AlanTuring,and the later Norbert Weiner, VirilioandKittler's theoretical concerns are also comparablewith thoseof other cultural theoristsinthis issue.3Evenso, it istrueto saythat thedialogue mostlyprefigures Virilio's recent work, La bombe infor-matique, and echoes K ittler's important text,Gramophone, Film, Typewriter.*

But why would Virilio andKittler wanttofocusa conversationon theideaofthe information bomb?Back in the 1950s, Einstein claimed that humanitywould haveto face three kindsofbomb.Thefirstbomb,theatomic bom b,wasmanufacturedby theUnited States during the Second WorldWar anddropped onHiroshimainJapanin1945. The secondbomb was the information bomb.Thethird bombwas the population bomb, set to explode in thetwenty-first century. Consequently, Virilio andKittler centre their attention on thenotionof theinformation bomb becauseit iscurrently exploding.

Thus,in thefollowing discussion,the twotheo-rists characterise the information bombas a tech-

nological and political weapon that uses thesynthesis of microelectronics, virtual realityandcybernetic telecommunicationsnotsimplytogener-ate prodigious amountsof cyberhype but toaccel-eratetherateof information transmissionand themonopolisation of the Internet by multinationalcorporations. For the information bomb, liketheatomic bomb beforeit, islargelytheproductoftheUS military and American-owned multinationalfirms. Moreover, unlikethefirst atomic b omb ,theinformation bombis notbeing droppedon asinglecitybut on theterritoryofthe entire planet. Today,therefore, theinformation bom b consistsof infor-mation and communications networks thrusttogetherby atechnological explosiontoformamili-tary, economic, and political mass, in whichanunhindered chain reaction occurs around theglobe.A chain reaction that, after Virilio andKittler,ispresently resulting in the acceleration of world

paul viri l ioand fr iedrich ki t t le redited andintroduced byJohn armitage1

THE INFORM TIONBOMB convers tionhistory and unprecedented technological conver-gence together with theappearanceof real time,the disappearanceofphysical space,and theriseof technological fundamentalism and social cyber-netics. .

The exchange that ensues has no prearrangedplan and theabsenceof athird interlocutor permitsthe twotheoriststocommunicate openlyand to settheirownquestionsandanswers.Inthis conversa-tion, then, Virilio andKittlerareallowedtherareopportunity tospeakas they wishon theculturaland socio-political fallout followingtheexplosionofthe information bomb.

speed,war, and p oliticsPaul Virilio:At themoment, arewe not wit-nessing a tremendous hype around theInternet, cyberspace,and thevirtualisationofeveryday life? Concepts suchas"tele-shop-ping,"forexample, mean that people willnolonger meet face to face, as in thecity centresof old,but instead stay athomeandshop

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the information bombfrom there. How do you respond to such devel-opments? For me, as an urbanist, it is allpro-

foundly disturbing.Friedrich Kittler: Such developments look likethe outcome of a very remarkable and hiddenstrategy, one that is only now coming tofruition, after having been in the preparationstage for well over fifteen years. 1982, forexample, saw the distribution of the first per-sonal computers. That was their name eventhen. Lonesome cowboys you'd put on anoffice table. However, they could do only onething: write text. I emphasise the latterbecause somehow these devices have becomebetter and better over the past few years andnow they're going to swallow up all othermedia: the telephone, the telegraph, the fax,and, before long, images, sound, and CDs too.And on top of that, you can wire them alltogether, worldwide, thanks to those wonderfulnetworks. Thus that very modest investmentthat sits on every third desk in the developedcountries m etamorphoses in a flash into a glob-al information network. T hat's a really big spi-der and scares all other media to death.PV: But doesn't the em ergence of globalinformation netw orks also mean that we havereached, in all possible senses, the frontiervelocity ofelectromagnetic waves?

By this I mean that we have not onlyachieved theescapevelocity that enables us toshoot satellites and people into orbit but alsothat we have hit the wall of acceleration. Thismeans that world history, which has con-stantly acceleratedfrom the age of the caval-ry to the age of the railway, and from the ageof the telephone to the age of radio and tele-vision, is now hitting the wall that stands atthe limit of a cceleration. The question is,what happens to a society that stands at thelimit point of acceleration? In past societies,for example, progress was predicated on thenature and development of their acceleration.Acceleration was not only related to speeds ofmemo ry and calculus, but also of action.

Today, though, on e can no longer speakonly of "tele-vision. One must also speak of"tele-action." To be "interactive" means to be

here, but to a ct somewhere else at the sametime. And yet, I doubt whether the questions Iam concerned with are being raised at alltoday. H ow many people, for instance, realisethat a global historical accident has been trig-gered as consequence of this situation? Forevery time a new type of velocity is invented anew type of specific accident occurs. I'malways stating that when the railway wasinvented, derailment was invented too. Ships,like theTitanic,sink on a given day at a givenplace. H owever, since the invention of "realtime," we have created the accident of acci-dents, to speak with Epicurus. That meansthat historical time itselftriggers the accident,as itreachesthe frontier of the speed of light.

My impression is that what is beingbandied about as theprogressofcommunica-tion is in fact merely a step backward, anunbelievable archaism. T o reduce the world toone unique time, to one unique situation,because it has exhausted the possibility todevise new systems o f a cceleration, is anaccUdent without precedent, a historical accidentthe like of which has neveroccurred before.Indeed this is what Einsteincalled veryjudi-ciously, "the second bomb." Th e first bombwas the atomic bomb, the second one is theinformation bomb, that is, the bomb thatthrows us into "real time." I believe that w hatpeople say about the performance of comput-ing also applies to the faculty of looking attheworld to the faculty of shaping the worldof steering it, but also of living in it.FK: Th en probably the two dangers describedby Einstein go hand in hand, historically andsystematically. For instance, one of the trendyideologies at the present time is that the newinformation technologies like the Internet aregood for fast, efficient, and global communi-cation. But the truth is that both computersand atomic bombs are an outcome of theSecond World War. Nobody ordered them. Itwas the strategic and military situation of theSecond World War that brought them intobeing. Hence, they were not devised as com-munication tools but as a means of planningand conducting total war. And yet, none of

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this is currently admitted by thecyberspaceideologists inthe USA, Europe,orJapan.

Even so, unlike you,Ido not believe that thelimitofacceleration has already been reached.For me, the catastrophe,so tospeak, liesinthefact that whilethecurrent speedsoftransmis-sion and calculation cannot b e upped much fur-ther,it isstill possibletoextract strategic andeconomic advantage from thepossessionof asystem that isfaster than one's co mpe titor's.There is still a difference between secretmachines and the machines sold on the market,and this difference is about performanceandvelocity. Andit isstill unclear where things areheaded. The speed of light is indeed anabsolute limit. But that is in a vacuum.However,inreal existing technologies, electric-ity goes much slower than in a vacuum.Consequently, there stillliehuge battles aheadin therealmofacceleration, with opticalcir-cuits replacing silicon andsoon. These devel-opments are goingtomean acceleration withafactorofmillions. H ence,Ihave some difficul-ty inseeing the accident develop already.

Yet Ido believe that time asarelevant inputis indeed eluding some people.To me, theurgent question is: how are culture and politicsgoingtoreact to theslow demotion oftheirpower? For both are predicated upon everydayspeech and the normal hu man nervous system,which are both slow. However, neither speechnor thenervous system can behandledanymore without machines preparing, assisting,and,in theend, even assum ing someoftheirdecision-making processes. How does one reactto these developments,as aphilosopher,as apolitician?

interactivity, information Chernobyl,and imperialismPV: You are totally right in pointing out thatthe originof these technologies lies in theSecond World War.Indeed onemust statethat with theinventionofthe atomic bomb,something completely different gotinventedtoo,something tha t is presentlyincrisis by theway,andthat isnuclear deterrence . Shouldwe not say the same todayinconnection with

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virilio kittlerthe informationbomb?Should we not say thatinteractivity isinsome w ay a formofradioac-tivity? This is not amere metaphor;it is avery concrete thing. Shouldwetherefore con-sidera different form ofdeterrencefor thenext century?I don't mean military deter-rence, which w as about preventing the useofthe atomic bomb, but social deterrence, whichwould be about preventing the damage causedby the progress of interactivity. Why?Because,forme ,aglobal society foundedon"real time" is simply unthinkable...

And ye t, isn't interactivity already happen-ing, sofaras our working and hom e environ-ments areconcerned?Shouldwe notattemptto prevent theconsequencesofthis immediacyof action andinformation exchange? Howwill it affect the poorand theweak?Is asocial deterrenceof theglobal informationsociety conceivable?For me such develop-ments carry the same risks asa Chernobyl-likecatastrophe, with damag ing consequencesforpeople's wayof life andforsocial relations.Aren't there signs already today ofsocial dis-integration? For instance, isn't structuralunemploymentaneffect, oratypeoffallout

following theexplosion,of the informationbomb?Andthisisonlythe beginning. Whatis your opiniononthese social dimensionsofthe information bomb?FK: Sure,thepresent mass unemploymentiscausedbythe automationofproduction.Ijusthave this vague feeling that sociologistsandpoliticians are alsotoblameforthe fact the reis so much unemployment. For example,information technologyisthe only technologyI know ofthat is radically reprogrammable.That is,itcan constantly turnoutnew things,as opposed to theassembly line Henry Forderected inDetroit, whereonesingle makeofautomobile passed through for dozens of years.Thus, with this basic technology, whichwasreally inventedforthe purposeofinnovation,one could invent all the rest. However, our cur-rent conceptions of society and educationmean that many people aresystematicallydenied access to this technology. Thereis,then, an endemic c om puter illiteracy being


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the information bombcreated in society, through propaganda, adver-tising, and m arketing strategies, and these pre-vent many people getting access to the tech-nology. I am sure that today's hackers wouldnot be able to find a job.

But that is an incomplete answer to yourquestion. So far as an information-Chernobylis concerned, it might already have happenedonce, in a primitive version, with the crash ofthe stock market in 1987. For such crashesshow what the consequences are of the factthat, today, business takes place on a world-wide information network. To counter suchdevelopments measures are, of course, beingtaken. But what all this means is that the goodold days when everybody could do whateverthey wanted with their own computers are nowfirmly behind us.

We are all being controlled through ourmachines, and the more networked thesemachines become, the stricter the m echanismsof control and the safeguards will get. And thisalso holds true for the bureaucracies that arebuilt into that system. At best, the Internetwill remain a space of freedom for a year ortwo,but, within a few years, it will most prob-ably have fallen into the hands of big capital,and then the controls will be put in place. Theother danger is that, along with the controlmechanisms, the informational bureaucraciesprecisely in order to avoid an information-Chernobyl will also expand. Thus, together,big capital and the informational bureaucraciesmay well simply scuttle the liberalisation ofinformation. In other words, it is highly likelythat a new hierarchy will be set up as counterto the danger of system collapse, and it will bestructurally the same as the one that currentlyexists between the computer-literate and thecomputer-illiterate. Consequently, on one sidethere will be those who understand the codes,like the cryptographers and cryptologists inthe Second World War. B ut, on the other side,there will be the masses in their billions whoare shut out for security reasons.PV: Of course,and every time technologieshave been m ade speedier,economicaccumula-tion and concentration have also taken place.

Today, for example, we are witnessing a con-glomerate gigantism, w hether it is in the formof Time Warner or Bill Gates. We see monop-olies arising from the demise of antitrust leg-islation, and all these developments con-tribute to the centralisation of command. Atthe very moment we are being told that theInternet is bringing us freedom in term s ofplace and time, w e see that by sheer coinci-dence information trusts are emerging,world-wide c onglomera tes, which, incidentally, areno longer simple multinational corporations.

I am also wondering whether it is not thecase that throug h this illusion of information'induced freedom a new uniform ity is beingimplanted in amaskedform. S omething that,thanks to its multiformity, its way of think-ing, and its culture, is implanted very easily.We know, for instance, how the med ium, inwhatever circumstan ces, deva lues the informa-tion in thetransferfrom written text to screentext. We also know that the computer is mak-ing us poorer in spirit. For example, whetherwe want it to or not, the computer synthesisesinformation. Now, anyone who uses a synthe-siser in musiclet us say as a stand-in for aviolinknows very well that a real violin hasa com pletely different sou nd from that of asynthesised violin. And yet, the computer isnothing but an information synthesiser. Thecontent of information is being semanticallyreduced, something cognitivists know verywell, by the way, and this, it seems to me, issomething we should take note of.Unfortunately, these things pass unnoticed.

As usual, everything negative remainsuntold yet it is, interestingly enough, alwaysthere, in an embryonic form. How is it possi-ble to state that technologies are being devel-oped without any attempt being made atlearning abo ut the very specific accidents thatgo with them? And while this obviously holdstrue for the television, it also holds true formultimedia technologies too.FK: Probably one should act as Bill Gatesdoes and sell things as if they were not whatthey are. You sell computers, but you tellpeople that they are desks, or desktops, or

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you tell them that they are television sets,thetelevision sets of thefuture. That way,youcan throw a thick mist around these devicesand their system-specific shortcomings,andsell many of them. This is very muchanAmerican marketing strategy, and one maysurmise from itthat thedrive towards trustsand conglomeratesispossibly the last historicchance availablefor theAmericans tomain-tain PaxAmericana on the technologicalroad.Forexample, after it hadlooked as ifthe technological advantage hadmoved toJapaninthe 1970s, America succeededin theearly 1990s. But only byvirtueofits edgeinelectronics andcom puters,andmost promi-nently in itsefforts todefine thestandardsunder which we are now communicating overthe Internet and with other networkedmachines; Thequestion is: are these stan-dards the bestin ahumanor amathematicalsense? Thesearetwo very important aspects.For example, standardisation andunificationare absolutelyin tune with globalisation,anditisquite baffling th at n obodyinEurope- noexpert,noindustry- isattempting, evenin asmall way, to question thesenewstandardswhich arecoming the waythey do, and asthey are, over the great pond.

te rrit or y, tim e, and technologyPV: For me, the new technologies make spacedisappear intoavoid in itsextent andin itstime. This is aprofound loss, whether oneacknowledgesitor not. Thereisalsoapollu-tionof the distancesandtime stretches thathitherto allowed onetoliveinone place andto have relationships with other peopleviaface-to-face contact,and notthrough media-tioninthe formoftele-conferencingo r on-lineshopping. What isyour opinion about thisprofound loss? Arewe notcallinganendtoourselvesand to thespatial andtemporaldimensions ofthe world this way?FK: There isindeedalossofspace, becauseeverything now takes placein thediminutivespaces of electronic circuits. But theironicthing aboutallthisisthatIstill have difficul-

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virilio kittlerty inrealisingit, thefact tha t timehasdefi-nitely contracted. Oneofmy favourite gamesis to play with computer graphics. I takeasmall pieceofthe world,avery simple centralperspective, writeaprogram, and let it run.One picture, which takesaphotographerthefamous one-thirtiethof asecond, will take fiveor sixminutesofcomputation timeon averyadvanced computer. That is, it sonly afterthose fewminutes that thenext picture willappear. Thesimulation, or synthesis,of theimagesofthe worldisstill not taking placein real time atall. Lookatthe problem s facingpeople who produce computer-generated films:they need twenty hoursof computation timefor onedinosaur, andthen the thing walksacrossthescreenfor a measly three seconds.Here time is still very much aproblem,andthe historic moment, where thetimeof theworld will really have been overtaken, lies far,far ahead. That's whatallthese controversiesare about.

As for thelossofproximity, I could livewith that,intime. Let's takeanexample fromreal life again.It s no fun to spend your lifewith just three commands under the MS-DOSoperating system, so youopen directories,move them around anddelete them.But assoon asyou're under UNIX , from thestartyou're merely oneperson amidst three hun-dred programs,ofwhich you know tenatbest.So during th e first few m onths you get to knowtwenty programs, then forty, finally a hun-dred. You then discover that you're not aloneany more. Rather, you live with ahundred pro-grams, ofwhich youonly need twenty,andthen you also find that there are twoorthreeprograms you never needed tolearn, becausethey're runninginthe background. These pro-gramsarecalled daemo ns, by theway, andthey haveavery bizarre proximitytothe user.You never see them, and yet they're constant-ly doing somethingforyou, liketheangelinthe medievalAngelo Loci.Indeed,Ihave thisfeeling that we should slowlyletgoofthat olddream ofsociologists,the onethat says thatsociety is bynature madeuponlyofhumanbeings. Today andtomorrow - theterm society should include people and programs.


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the information bombThere are, I think, already possibilities ofproximity. Programs are not stupid. After all,it's why they were written in the first place.They are often more intelligent than yourneighbour around the corner.PV: Yes, but every new technical advanceinvolves a loss of something. F or example, theloss of social bonds is linked to the demise ofthe proximate human being. That is, someonewho ha s a material existence, someone whomight even smell bad, who might even be aboring nuisance. Now, though, one can simplyzap such people away. The loss of proximityis one of the ca uses of the currentcrises in ourcities. And yet there is always a n actual placewhere one lives. But, today, it is not what isnear that is privileged but what is far away.Indeed it'seemsthat the person on the com-puter screen is preferred to the person who isclose athand.Th is even extends to marriage.In so-called "living apa rt together" relation-ships, for instance, men and women live inseparate houses, as if they w ere alreadydivorced. And the children get to learn, as akind of aside, how to commute constantlybetween their mother and father. And that isonly the beginning. Through "cybersex" onecan now have intercourse at a distance too.But aren't all these examples metaphors ofdecay? Are these not already an effect of theinformation bom b? This is how it seem s to me,even if I am exaggerating. But who wouldn'texaggerate when faced with such develop-ments?

I am con vinced that, as w ith pointillismand divisionism in the arts of the nineteenthcentury, nuclear physics, the decay of matter,and, of course, fractal geometry have socialconsequences. That is, the decay of matter notonly affects the social structure of the indi-vidual but also the reflexive relationship ofthe couple, the latter of which is the true basisof the evolution of human history. Why?Because demograph y is the founding elementof history. This is significant, isn't it? I donot ob ject to com puter programs, but I wishthe programmers would speak more of menand women. What is your opinion?

FK: Fractal geometry was invented with the aimof making Euclidean geometry somewhat morecomplex. Suddenly, we have a world that is nolonger made up exclusively of straight lines andcircles, but one consisting of curvatures andclouds. And all these beautiful things are verysimilar to human flesh, unlike, for example, theangular buildings of Le Corbusier or the some-what complicated lines of Phidias of Athens.However, although fractal geometry has alwaysexisted in principle, it only became calculableafter the invention of the computer.Nevertheless, its complexity is nearer to humanbeings than Euclidean geometry. Euclid's ideasresemble the process described by Foucault andyourself, in which young recruits were drilledand formed into battle lines in the eighteenthcentury. However, the new mathematics ofchaos might very well turn out not to be a modelthat will necessarily break up couples but,rather, will attend to the complexities of theindividual. Similarly, the feedback theory could,potentially, attend to the relations within cou-ples. Put bluntly, it seems to me that Freud'stheory about the relationship between men andwomen is sillier than the theory Bateson elabo-rated on the grounds of feedback chains. To beable to show th at a two-way conversation is infi-nitely malleable seems to me to be a consider-ably more sophisticated description of sociallinkages than a description that relies on inter-nalised images involving an incessant and life-long struggle. Thus Bateson's feedback-baseddescription of informational relations is evident-ly grounded in the techniques of message dis-patching. And, when it was first advanced, itcould not be derived from psychology.

The models that are available nowadays todescribe complexity are better than the previ-ous models. But why people - and I includemyself here would rather sit in front of acomputer than do other things such as have aconversation is difficult to explain. Perhaps itis a fascination with power. For example, inearlier times, some people directed their loveaway from their wives and families and direct-ed it instead towards an image of Jesus orMary. Today some people direct their lovetoward new technologies. But whether it is the

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technology itself that sucks away our Eros, ourlihido, or whether it is the handiwork of thepeople who market it, I am not so sure.

technological fundamentalism,integra tion, and social cybernetics

PV: I believe that a caste of "technologymonks" is being created in our times, and thatthere exist monasteries of sorts whose goal itis to pave the way for a new kind of "civili-sation"; o ne that has nothing to do with civil-isation as we remem ber it. The w ork of thesetechnology monks is not carried out in theway that it was in the Middle Ages. Rather,it is carried out through the revaluation ofknowledg e, like that achieved for Antiquity.The contribution of monks to the rediscoveryof Antiquity is well known. But what is notwell known is that we now have technologymonks, not mystics, but monks who are busyconstructing a society without any points ofreference. Indeed we are confronted withwhat I call technological fundamentalism."That is, fundame ntalism in the sense of amonotheism of information. No longer themonotheism of the Written Word of theKoran, of the Bible, of the New Testament,but a monotheism of information in thewidest sense of the term. And this informationmonothe ism has come into being not simply ina totally independent manner but also freefrom anycontroversy. It is the outcome of anintelligence without reflection or past. Andwith information monotheism comes what Ithink of as the greatest danger of all, theslide into a future without hum anity. Ibelievethat v iolence, and even a kind of "hyper-vio-lence," springs out of technological funda-mentalism.

For example, at present, there is a lot oftalk about the problems posed by the resur-gence of militant Muslim fundamen talism.Bomb s are planted and so on. But I believethat at the same time almost as much work isgoing into the developm ent of the informationbomb; a bomb that will have the same destruc-tive effects on society's capacity to rememberits past, a past that has a structure of its own

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virilio &kittlerand sh apes the present. We are merely theproduct of what w as. And whoeverforgets thepast is condemn ed to live it anew, as the say-ing goes. And yet this is exactly what is hap-pening with new information and communi-cations technologies. Thatsaid I am not atall inimical to information. It is simply thatthere is not enough debate about the totali-tarian dimensions of information. On theotherhand I do not'think that it isapproprirate to blame the technologymonksfor the sinsof technolog ical fundamen talism just becauseno one else takes respo nsibility for them. Thetechnology monks do not always know aboutthese sins. What's you r opinion on the funda-mentalist dimension of information?FK: I totally agree. Of course, the people whoare programming the whole thing are blissful-ly forgetful of the history of Europe , and theinvention of printing and modern calculuswhich made it all possible. Both came more orless contemporaneously into being around1450-1500. Book printing made it possible tocopy and disseminate everything, and algebramade it possible to calculate everything. Butthese two things did not happen together.What was written still had the need of policeaction or the force of love to compel people todo what was described. But when you pro-gram, a real kind of integrism appears. Onedoes not simply write: what one writes, theprogram performs - period. And the finalcoming together of the promises of the print-ing press and those of modern mathematics,after five hundred years of latency, representsinfinite power: a true kind of integration inthat all previously separated technologies -metallurgy, semiconduc tors, and electricity -now merge together. It is difficult to saywhether there is a limit to these developments.Indeed, I think this is the burning question ofthe moment.

Basically, there are but a few far-seeing sci-entists who say that the principle of digitisa-tion in itself is quite wonderful, but that thereare inherent limits to its performance, which,therefore, gives the lie to all the marketinghype. These limits consist in the unrem arkable


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the information bombfact that nature is not a computer, and that,therefore, a number of highly complex humanphenomena, by their very nature, fall outsidethe scope of the current processing paradigms.This is, in fact, the only rational hope I havethat we have not arrived at the end of history.Because if the digital calculators did not havea kind of internal limitation, they would trulybring world history to an end, in all the aspectsthat you have mentioned: time would nolonger be human time, space would no longerbe human space, but merely a corridor withinthe circuits of these wonderful little machines.But if these little miracles themselves haveconstraints, then we can envisage without dif-ficulty a twenty-second and a twenty-third cen-tury in which the principles of digital machineswould not be discarded, but would instead becomplemented by some sort of new - yet to beinvented - principle.PV: Isn't it time for those who build thesemachines, and who praise the ir merits, to gettogether and examine the damaging effects ofinformation monotheism? For example, in1888, the inventors of the European railwaysystem met in Brussels. Why? Because thedevelopment of steam engines wasprogressingapace, and because the performance of loco-motives was increasing rapidly, and the engi-neers were building more and morefantastictunnels and more and more stable metallicbridges. But there was a problem: the traindispatching system could not kee p pace withthe increasingperformancesof the mach ines.That's why they met in Brussels and also whythey created what is now adays called con-trolled traffic manage ment. The so-called"block system" was devised there. Thus, if theTGV runs smoothly nowadays, it is becausethere is an automatic block system andbecause the position of the signals is repeatedin the train driver's cab. This m eans that thereare hardly any train accidents any more. Thestarting point of the discussions in Brusselswas on the negative, on what did not func-tion. Contact switches and signals weredevised and these became the basis of a verysophisticated form of data man ageme nt. But

why are there noconferencesnow adays on thedamaging consequences of unemployment?On the wrong turns taken by urbanism? Onthe ob verse side of technical progress? Whydon't w e busy ourselves today, just like theengineers of the ninetee nth century did, withthe specific accidental risks of the railways,that is, the derailment. Why don't we busyourselves with the spec ific albeit, I admit,immaterial danger posed by the data net-works and the arrival of socialcybernetics?IfI am not mistaken, I think that both AlanTuring and NorbertWienerfeared the appli-cation ofcybernetics on society? And now weare being told by politicians like Ross Perotthat socialcyberneticsis not onlyprogressb utthe apex of democracy

It seem s to me that it is about time that thepeople w ho are working on those programsstart implementing acounter-programalso, inorder to put a limit to these sorts of develop-ments. W hy, for examp le, don't they applytheir intelligence to the negative aspects oftechnological development? Why do theyalways conceal the original sins of these tech-niques, whereas shipbuilding was furtheredby making shipswaterproof and the aeronau-tic industry was furthered by making enginesand the mon itoring of air space more reliable.Why don't we have such people in the realmof digitisation?FK: I have only one answer and it is a totallyidiosyncratic one. As is often revealed whenaccidents take place, many firms are made upof half engineers and half nontechnical salespeople, such as marketing executives andlawyers. The spokespersons for such firms arealways attorneys, with a sma ttering of MIT pro-fessors every now and then. I do not know ofany large company where things are in thehands of the people who devise the computerprograms. Thus the people who devise the pro-grams, and who also know what is wrong withcomputer systems, are basically treated as pro-gram-slaves. I am sorry to use this term butthat is what they are called in the industryitself.However, the people who are in charge ofcorporate propaganda, the people who actually

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own the firms, like Bill Gates at Microsoft,have written maybe five pagesinthe last twen-ty years, and that isit.Thi s social division pre-cludes discussions about negativity.The peo-ple whom youquoted earlierare infact freeacademics. They think like physicists but theydon't work for the computer industry.Nevertheless,it is very important todiscussthese m atters with the people who plan, build,and operate computer systems.

information, catastrophe, andviolencePV: Whynotdiscuss theminBrussels then?After all theblock-system conference tookplace inBrussels.I think thatyouhaveputyour finger onwhat this is allabout: com-mercial enterprise.Butinformation c annotbeallowedtobecomeacommercial enterprise.Itis the stuff the worldismade of. For example,whatweare doing right now h as nothingtodo with entrepreneurship; it is adialogue,aconversation. How can one possibly limitthequestionof information to therealmofthecommercial enterprise? Worse still, toenter-prises that are evolving into absolute monopo-lies? We are facing thetyrannyofreal-timeinformation. But information should be aproductofeverydayusage, like electricity.Weareaphenomenonofmatter,ofits mass andenergy. That is, we constitute,sui generis,his-tory and e xistence. To beisto speak.Isnot theLatin wordfor infant "the one who doesnotspeak"?Now information is being turnedintoaproductof global enterprises.It is atragedy thatisbeing soldtous as progress.Itmakes me angry, especially when I think thatEuropeis nottaking anyaction ontheseissuesat themoment. Forinstance, whenthose who areresponsibleforthe licensingofnew computer.products met in Brusselsin1994, they w ere totally enthusiasticfor thenew systemsandproducts.Andthose whowent thereinorder to plead foramore scepti-cal approach were treatedas if they wereanuisance. And that happens in theplacewhere European information p olicies a re sup-posed to be created and implemented.

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virilio kittlerFK: That is thecatastrophe.For are we nottalking abouttheamalgamationof an old def-initionofcopyright, dating from thetimesofGoethe, withtheproperty rightsofintellectu-al products which have arrived with the inven-tionofthe new digital machines?Infact, thismost recent definition ofcopyright notonlydoes away with any kind ofauthor's rightbutalso with anyform of spiritual property.Why? Becausethenew machinescanimitateany other machine, and that includes us,in sofarasthey can imitate our thinking. Thinkingmachines were,ofcourse,a gift from Englandand invented shortly before the war by Turing.His ideas were then imported into theUnitedStates, and the big question there was: how canwe makea profitable propositionout ofthis?Well,itlooks like they have been tremendous-ly successful overthepast fiftyorsixty ye ars.

The most scandalous pieceofnews thathasreached me recently isthatithas become pos-sibleinthe USAtopatent mathematical equa-tions.Fortwo thousand years such acts wereprohibited. Indeed, mathematics was the freestof allsciences andfell outside thescopeofpatents.But if American concerns succeedinhaving the European author's right modifiedto suit their own ends, then exactlythe oppo-site will have been achieved than whatwasintended bypeople like Turing. T hisis arealmenace. Information cannotbeallowed to beprivatised. However,I do notbelieve thattheprivatisation strategy will holdout in the longrun. Thisisbecausethemachines are prolifer-ating outofcontrol. Consequently, the softwarecannot, in theend, beprotected bypatents.And nor shouldit be inthe long run. Sofar asthe hardware is concerned, themachinesassuch, well, everybody knows that the manufac-turing costsaregoing downall thetime.Theresult of this willbethat, in tenyears time,whatarenowtheabsolute topnotch machineswillbe had foralmost nothing.Inshort,wemay not get informational democracy rightaway,butwe maygetzero-cost property soon.

PV: P erhaps, then, insteadoflooking at theseissues from a pessimistic standpoint,weshould conclude our conversationbylooking


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the information bombat them from a mo re optimistic one? But thisis difficult. For have we not attempted,amidst all the cu rrent enthusiasm for tele-technologies, to formulate our critical think-ing a bout their future? How ever, let us not

focus here on the future of the marketisationof these products, or on the future of informa-tion monopolies, but, rather, on the futuredevelopment of the machine. Why? Becauseits developm ent does not run parallel with thesale ofcomputersbut with the evolution of itsown performance. And the evolution ofmachine performance, as you said is predi-cated upon the recognition of the damagingeffects of negativity. We should therefore,warn people against the arch aic instincts ofthose who pretend to create a global realm ofinformation without bothering to analyse towhat extent the reduction of content hasdestructive consequences. Of course, these con-sequences not only impact upon small firmsand on the millions of people who remainunemployed. They impact upon the actual cre-ation and historical development of humanbeings themselves, not to mention the devel-opme nt of social thought. And therein lies thekey regulative element. For the human memo-ry is not merely the dead memory of the com-puter hard drive but the living memory ofhuman beings. And without liv-ing hum an memory there is onlythe violence revealed by theexplosion of the informationbomb...

Translated by P atrice Riemensnotes1 The story of the publicat ion of this conversat ionis far too long and complex to recount here.Ho wev er, I wo uld l ike to express my grat itude toPaul Virilio and Friedrich Kitt ler. Thanks are alsodue to Ge ert Lovink for the or iginal German t ran-script and to Patrice Riemens at nettime. A tAngehki Gerard Greenway persevered waybeyond the call of duty. Thanks Gerard. Finally, Iw ou ld also like to thank Patrick Crog an, JamesDer Derian, and Douglas Kellner for their helpfuleditor ial comments on ear l ier draf ts.

2 The issue edito r and the ed itors o fAngehkigrate-fully acknowledge Professors Paul Virilio andFriedr ich Kit t ler for their wr it ten permission toreproduce an edited account of their conversationin MachinicModulations A number of efforts havebeen made to secure a reply from AR TE as to publi-cation h ere, but the y have not been successful.3 See, fo r exa mple, Michel Fou cault,Discipline andPunish: The Birth of the Prison(Londo n: Penguin,1975); Gregory Bateson,Steps to an cologyo f theMind (Ne w Y ork : Ballant ine, 1975). Alan T uringproposed the co ncept of wha t has become know nas the Tu ring Machine in 1936. I t is a theoret icalcomput ing machine that is of ten used to predictwhether a specific mathematical puzzle can beexplained by a computat ion procedure. Themachine represented a significant development incompu ter log ic . No rbe r t Wein er was a US math-ematician. However, he is most ly rememberedtoday as the fou nder of cybernet ics, and, after theSecond Wo rl d W ar , as a social cr itic of automa-t i on .4 See Paul Virilio, La bombe informatique (Paris:Galilee, 1998); Friedrich Kitt ler, Gramophone FilmTypewriter(Ne w Y ork : Br inkman and Bose, 1986).

Paul VirilioEcole Speciale d'ArchitectureParisFranceFriedrich KittlerSeminar fuer AesthetikSophienstr. 22aD-10178 BerlinGermanyE-mail: [email protected] ArmitageDivision of Government & PoliticsNorthumberland BuildingUniversity of Northumbria at NewcastleNewcastle upon TyneNE18STUKE-mail: [email protected]

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