Date: Tue, 17 May 94 01:06:11 CST
From: "tiel0001-AT-student.tc.umn.edu" <tiel0001-AT-gold.tc.umn.edu>
To: technology-AT-world.std.com
Subject: Paul Virilio


I don't have much to say about the Virilio article itself, but Malgosia's 
last post made me want to put a few comments and questions.
    
What Malgosia writes about cars is well-taken, because I grew up in the 
sort of small city that feels more like a suburb and has no 
public transportation, even precious few sidewalks.  (Our next door 
neighbor--I am not making this up--used to drive his trash in the trunk of 
his car from the back of his house to the curb for pick-up.)

She also asks, "Is our esteem for the philosophers' 
motionlessness so enormously high that we want to use it as the new 
paradigm of what it means to be human, and define the body out of the 
human equation?"  Wouldn't this just be a reversion to Descartes' 
position?  For that matter, did we ever really leave this position?  Alan 
Turing's test for intelligence suggested to me that he thought there would 
be no morally relevant difference between a human being and a machine 
that could masquerade as a human over the Internet (although I may be 
reading way too much into him here).  When philosophers try to define 
personhood, as in the context of debates over abortion or whatnot, there 
is usually a divide between those who want to define it in terms of the 
sorts of things the AI people think they could in principle
get a computer program to do, and those who define it in terms of the 
body, i.e. anything and only a thing with the human genetic code is a 
person.  My impression is that the mental gets a lot more respect than the 
physical in these debates. 

Malgosia, I'm curious to know whether you think that the television and the 
telephone are extensions of bodily modes of thinking or not.  On one view 
they are just extensions of our eyes and ears and voices, but on the other 
hand one can be said to be in two places at once when using the phone.  I 
think Virilio even says as much, although to be honest I found the whole 
piece incerdibly confusing.  (Reading you and Steven has helped me some I 
think.)  But when I think of the telephone I am sympathetic to Steven's 
viewpoint and feel that this technology has expanded my ability to act in 
the world.  I don't think we give up a whole lot by using the phone.  But 
that isn't inconsistent with the things you wrote.

I think that some of the expanding "rendering helpless" of ourselves is 
political in nature.  Few of us take seriously any more the idea that we 
should educate our own children or (except a few NRA spokespersons) defend 
our own lives and property from criminal depredation.  (I've heard of a few 
earth nuggets out there who live in the country, grow their own food, 
produce their own power from solar & wind, draw water from their own wells, 
and are pretty self-sufficient, but that's a long way from where I live; 
it's even a long way from where most farmers and ranchers live these days.  
But it was the education and police angles that I wanted to draw attention 
to.)

That's all.

                                                    Erik Tielking