Date: Thu, 04 Feb 1999 14:05:23 +0100
From: dcotte <dcotte-AT-nordnet.fr>
Subject: Re: Totalitarianism is latent in technology


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> Thee question I'll pose is whether this sort of analysis remains true for
> communication technologies. Is it possible that in the act of mediation itself
> that the possibility exists for *improved* moral decisions? Further, how do we
> then differentiate between communication and information technologies?.
>
> > steve.demos wrote that Paul Virilio wrote:
> >       "Totalitarianism is latent in technology. It was not merely
> >       Hitler or Mussolini who were totalitarian, or the Pharaohs as
> >       far as I am concerned. Totalitarianism is already present in
> >       the technical object."
> >
>
> Solidarite,

Hello,

This is my first intervention on technology, but since six months I have been
reading yours.
Let me present  first : I have 28, and I teach philosophy in a technical and
industrial college. French is my natural langage ; I'll try to be clear in
english, it is not easy : so I apology by anticipation.
      The greatter problem in Paul Virilio's text is : "What is totalitarism ?"
Nobody here has answered this question. Let me try :
     Totallitarims may be a political system which imposes to the citizens to have
a certain kind of behaviour ; in that way the word "Dictature"  express  it very
well (something wich is dictated.
      In anather way we can find in totalitarism the word "total". In that way all
things or all thinking wich doesn't let us escape from its frames can be
considered as totalitarian. This may be the sense of the usage by Paul Virilio. So
the technology by herself is not the totalitarian thing but the way of thinking
and making sense and analysing the nature is the totalitarian thing, that is :
logic and non-contradictory argumentation.
     What Heidegger fight against may be this, the man who has a logical way of
thinking cannot escape from it, he just considers the thinkink and the invention
within these frames. So he don't develops a contradictory thought wich we can find
into the religious aspiration and  the poetical aspiration (see Godard's
Alphaville for instance)
Thank you for your attention

David

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