p e n g u i n d e v i l

Lacking anything intriguing in my pack to read and sadly mourning the recent (yet not at all sudden) death of my loyal iPod of nearly 5 1/2 years, I needed something to sooth my walk home (and distract myself from being irritated with the traffic), so I printed out a little document to read. Now, I’ve always been a fan of the concept of philosophy, and the years that I spent purchasing (and dare I say, nicely expanding) the Philosophy section at the old City of Books were quite enjoyable. But you know, I’ve never had much interest in actually reading any of it. Today though, while pondering the word crepuscular, I looked up Paul Virilio, who I knew little about aside from that he was someone whose books I needed to keep in stock, and I’d always thought that Crepuscular Dawn was one of the most intriguing book titles I had seen.

Anyway, I ended up printing out a short article called “The Coming Crisis in Real-Time Environments: A Dromological Analysis” (by Ronald E. Purser). I must say, I found it quite intriguing and I may need to pick up some Virilio soon. While my adult life I have always been firmly anti-television, and though I’d always thought that recreational use of the computer was equally unneeded, I’ve always felt that the computer was a still a better way of wasting ones time than watching the television (and I greatly appreciate Jerry Mander and his Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television for its clarity and sensibility in pointing out the psychological, cultural and sociological damages of the medium of television). With the expansion of the, um, “social” aspects of the Internet (especially in the hands of children), I have started thinking that maybe the computer has become a more harmful influence than I generally considered it.

This paper delves into the effects of what Virilio calls Dromospheric Pollution, which is bascially the sociological, psychological and ecological effect of people living in the instantaneous gratification of the virtual data world. He has the premise that people become cut off from spatial and geographical realities and begin to lose track of the unfolding of time as a past-present-future cycle and instead become focused on “abrupt and discontinuous irruptions of various intensities” and that Viriolio “claims that real-time technologies have an effect of narrowing our time sense, refocusing our attention exclusively on the present” and “screen or cut out concern for the past and future”. Some choice bits:

“Dromospheric pollution of our temporal economy is degrading our relationship with the natural and social environment and radically altering the tempo of lived experience”

“in what amounts to a fundamental con-fusion of natural, collective and technological horizons, Virilio posits that Dromospheric pollution, if left unabated and unregulated, will lead to a sharp loss of cultural memory and a degradation of collective imagination… A live (live-coverage) society that has no future and no past…”

“perhaps the greatest danger and threat to our temporal ecology is the erosion of human judgment”

Anyway, for someone like me who is always looking for weak spots in how we live, it was quite interesting and inspiring, even if its relevance is purely theoretical. And you can read the whole thing here The Coming Crisis in Real-Time Environments.

But all in all, what I am really shocked by is that the ‘Sox traded Manny! I mean what? Why? And why to an old New York team? Even the ‘Sox need to have players that the public gravitates towards, and Manny was the best.