We'll be okay... right?

It won't fully happen.  We will not reach a total general accident similar to The Flood via technology, "the waning importance of the time zones soon reproducing the disappearance of land above water level" (125) and all.  It won't happen for a number of reasons.  One of them is the good ole dollar sign.

There are still too many impoverished people in this world to think that we will fully bathe the earth in this form of time-light that will destroy the physical, the local.  There are folks struggling to pay their mortgages... struggling to pay for their DIAL-UP INTERNET.  We are not quite to Virilio's Doomsday.

Then again, I suppose even Noah survived with his family... as did some animals (some in 2s, some in 7s...).  The Flood forced a reBoot, but it did so amidst much pain.  Perhaps Virilio is warning us to try NOT take the hard route.

Though I really question the degree of the Virtual/Digital's reach.  Virilio writes that "just as the astronaut broke free of the reality of his native world in landing on the moon, the cybernaut momentarily leaves the reality of mundane space-time and inserts himself into the cybernetic strait-jacket of the virtual-reality environment control programme" (131).  But how many of us are astronauts??? Not many.  Virilio might say "That's the point - because you're not an astronaut but everyone has become a cybernaut - what an exponential increase in risk!"  But are we really all cybernauts?  One generation from now, will we be?  Or will the pendulum swing the other direction for some unforeseen reason?  Might Ulmer AND Virilio BOTH be wrong?  Could there be an upswing in the desire for the natural/organic/physical?

OR maybe that's not possible.  Virilio seems to connect appreciation for the physical with a reliance on the local.  If there's no need for the local, the desire to maintain the physical (natural environment) goes away.  Hmmm... Bummer... maybe there goes my hope for that return swing in the pendulum...

THIS IS ALL TO SAY THAT THIS IS REALLY DIFFICULT TO "PREDICT."  As such, perhaps lessons from Virlio and Ulmer are both necesarry in concert with one another.  A healthy skepticism and challenging of teletech, always keeping our hands on the plugs, while simultaneously working feverishly and profoundly creatively with the other hand to invent new and wondrous things out of the electrate world of possibilities before us.

Then again... maybe we don't have enough hands.