-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.en.monde-diplomatique.fr/2001/05/14idleness
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IN THRALL TO THE COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY
Slaves of idleness
Internet, cell phones, videophones, virtual reality devices, computers,
modems,
data banks: the communications industry is taking over.
Productivity, utility,
management are the watchwords. But are we masters
or servants of our devices ?
by LUCIEN SFEZ *
Information highways, despite the hype, are no more than a combination of telephone,
video and computers, as are the gadgets telecom engineers devise for the future.
They are all really just cell phones plugged into the internet, linking with fixed
stations, videophones, virtual reality devices, computers, modems, data banks,
tradesmen, managers, repairmen. All are logged in to technical, social or
professional networks.
There are no black holes, no negatives, no opposites in this joined-up world.
Everything runs smoothly in electronic silence. Even the occasional audible signal
can be turned off. Communication is easy when all it involve
s is using machines to connect with machines. If you want to stop communicating, to
enjoy your own company, all you have to do is put down the handset and switch off the
screen.
Anyone using such machines is free and happy in a world of instant communication,
without time to think ill of himself or of anyone else. The long term doesn't exist in
this world, only short-term gains. The communication
s industry dreams of productivity, utility and management, the watchwords of homo
communicans.
Homo communicans is inseparable from his communication devices. They are his life and
he takes on their characteristics. He is their servant as much as their master, but he
is unaware of his chains because he believes him
self to be in control and as powerful as the machines. They make his life easy.
Everything is positive, everything in its place. There is no price to pay and no other
side of the coin in what Douglas Coupland, in his nove
l Microserfs (1), calls the "flatland of cyberculture". Cyberculture uses the language
of clans and communities but it does not share their reality, for to join the clan,
you have to make sacrifices. And in cyber flatland
the only thing to fear is the loss of the machines: breakdown.
When I asked Martin Landau, an eminent researcher in organisation science at Berkeley,
California, about theories of communication, he replied: "Do you know why the 747 is
the safest aircraft in the world? Because it has
four separate control systems, one for each engine. And the pilot also has a manual
control system separate from those four" (2). It seemed a strange answer. In
aviation, breakdown means death. But breakdown in communication, loss of
relationships or position, is also a kind of death, the end of homo communicans, who
lives by communication and is defined only by the links his machines give him to
other machine-bound human beings. Think how people panic when their computer or
television breaks down or their phone is out of order. The gap in their lives causes
real distress. These machines have become part of us; we have become part of them.
When they break down it is like being in pain, the fear of it is a nightmare.
That is the system's only contradiction, the only conceivable misfortune. The fear
of breakdown has replaced the old apocalyptic fear of the devil, and it is only the
threat of that breakdown which gives life and feeling to a system that has none.
This is the communication system's last vital opportunity. In his book Anatomy of
Criticism (3), Northrop Frye shows that the Apocalypse is a text that advocate union
between the city, the individual and God. And just as fear of the Apocalypse exists
to serve the Christian faith, so fear of breakdown exists to consolidate the cult of
the computer.
But homo communicans, ignorant of the sacrifices of communication, does not know
this. He thinks he is always on the winning side, not knowing that in order to win
you also have to lose. He doesn't know what he is losing.
Driving for you
Machines are created for productivity and efficiency, and have unexpected
consequences: they make men into idle and superfluous creatures who no longer do
much on their own initiative. Men are assisted in everything, even getting to work,
since with their self-guided cars they can dream at the steering wheel until the
device tells them they have arrived. The old hauliers' slogan "driving for you" now
applies to us all. As technology continues to develop, homo communicans faces a
future of total, profound idleness. And the first signs of this are already visible
in our daily lives.
We let machines remember things for us, from our address books complete with
telephone numbers and email addresses to the management of bibliographies, texts,
business meetings, accounts, planning. Our voice, or better still a synthetic one,
answers for us, recorded once for all time. We open doors and change channels on the
TV remotely. We are not far from spending our entire lives in a semi-dormant state.
Our listlessness is encouraged by the sense of security we derive from all the
surveillance devices that surround us. Idleness goes hand in hand with freedom from
fear, a sense of comfort, of being safe, warm and protected. With sophisticated
devices to watch over us, there are no enemies to worry about. Voice and face
recognition, digital fingerprints and cameras with access codes free us from fear of
intruders.
If they do not need to defend themselves, people's existence begins to seem
pointless. As if they are present by accident and might as well not exist. Machines
do human work to perfection, while people are clumsy and hesitant and make mistakes,
trying falteringly to follow a pattern. The idea of the human brain as the poor
relation of the all-powerful computer has lead to a sense of powerlessness and
futility. Our memories have grown unretentive but we don't care; the business of
remembering is being safely managed.
Contrary to common belief, homo communicans of the future will not suffer from
pressure and stress. Why should he? His mistakes will be corrected by machines.
Society with its faults of inequality, poverty, war and death, will be corrected by
technology. This world where communication is all will not be fast-moving, but slow,
inactive, contemplative, full of play. Not the slowness advocated by Pierre Sansot
(4), the slowness of taking time out to enjoy life and savour the pleasures of
fruit, fresh air and dreams, but an enforced slowness, reassuring and with no place
for expectancy or surprise.
Homo communicans is good at dreams and contemplation, and his dreams will probably
generate new ideas for communicating machines, more invention and innovation. That
may be the real work assigned to human beings in the future of communication since
the rest, engineering and production, will be done by machines.
Plato warned young philosophers against books, which he likened to dead memories
that replaced living ones on the pretext of being more convenient. He said that
writing and books make for idleness, making the reader passive. His advice seems
archaic (today's educators would give anything to get people to read). But although
the medium has changed, Plato's message has not. We are still handing our
obligations over to an external device. From Plato's viewpoint, the idleness
resulting from freedom from work done by machines idleness would be evidence of
enslavement unworthy of human beings.
* Professor at the University of Paris I � Sorbonne
(1) Douglas Coupland, Microserfs, Flamingo, London, 1996
(2) Critique de la communication, Seuil, Paris, 1988, third edition 1992.
(3) Penguin, London, 1990.
(4) Pierre Sansot, Du bon usage de la lenteur, Payot, Paris, 1998.
Translated by Malcolm Greenwood
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED � 1997-2001 Le Monde diplomatique
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The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
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