"hegemonic influence of technological culture"

Boy oh boy... the more I read Virlio ("Open Sky"), the more I find him persuasive.  Sure, he's a bit "out there" in terms of the way he utilizes light-speed, etc., but the core ideas he proposes seem to have solid nuggets of truth in them.


In what ways does the "hegemonic influence of technological culture" (32) actually confine our way of thinking?  Have we been programmed to only operate pseudo-satisfiedly through instantaneous "real-time" prosthetic tech?  In what ways is our creativity being channeled only through those avenues?


This is a very important question for our culture at large, but also for the RCID program in particular.  I have heard a couple different faculty members raise the question recently, asking whether or not RCID prompts us to be truly creative, or whether or not it is reinscribing certain institutional constraints of "flexibility" within the system.  


In a 2007 TED Talk, Sir Ken Robinson raised this very issue, asking whether or not schools actually kill creativity.  He demonstrated the importance of this question, saying, "Children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065.  Nobody has a clue, despite all the expertise that's been on parade for the past four days, what the world will look like in five years' time, and yet we're meant to be educating them for it."  (YouTube video HERE)


In what ways are we as a culture, we here in RCID, succumbing to the dromological culture of hegemonic technology?  Virilio forces us to ask some Serious Questions.


Let's think of the possible negative ramifications beyond a controlling of creativity (an oxymoron?) --- for instance, pollution.  Virilio writes, "At the end of the century, there will not be much left of the expanse of a planet that is not only polluted but also shrunk" (21).  This shrinking occurs through our light-speed real-time telepresence that transports us anywhere in less than an instant.  In that world, we are plugged in to the natural resources stripped from the earth, but are physically connected to manufactured prosthetics, not the earth itself.  Why care about the pollution of the world if we're not actually experiencing the physical world?


Some would say that the Virtual spaces are just as "Real" as the Physical ones.  While that may have SOME truth on a social level (though one should remember that while it may be "real," it is not the SAME as the physical social world), it does not mean that is has the same ramifications.  Constructing a beautiful world in SL does not require maintenance of the beauty of the physical world.  At least not in the short run ---- and that's all one cares about in this light-speed dromological world.  There is no future.  Only the instantaneous now.  Future requires waiting.  Who would want to wait?


And what of the relationships?  What will society look like 30 years from now, having experienced so much telepresence?  What will happen to our notions of service (18)?  What will happen to our physical interpersonal relationships?  Virilio boldly states, "getting closer to the 'distant' takes you away proportionally from the 'near' (and dear) - the friend, the relative, the neighbour - thus making strangers, if not actual enemies, of all who are close at hand" (20).   


.... And before I leave this post....... what of our telepresence via military drones?  


There's so much Virilio has gotten me thinking about.  Perhaps I should take some time to mull it over.