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HUMAN BECOMINGS: TIMEMACHINE
Personal recollections:
[ aDiary ]
I noticed it, and -- I got a sense of my life. I discover life when I got a sense of time. Not mortality, but the passing through me time ( = life). Death wasn't on my mind but the death of this very minute... When was it? When I noticed myself in the mirror? When I stared at myself for first time? Eye to eye. Everything else around suddenly acquired mortality; the day, the people I met, the events. I remember, I still this picture. At midnight the radio would go silent. But before the silence they would play the Soviet national anthem. I knew that after that pompous funeral music the silence would come to every home in big Russia. The lyrics is forgotten by now. The new Russian anthem has no worlds. Five years and five thousand submissions later the new Russians couldn't make their mind about what they want to hear. The Stalin's anthem written by a funny man, Mikhalkov, a children poet, begins with "The unbreakable Union of the Soviet Republics..." The sounds would come first before the chorus would get in. "... molded in forever by the Great Russia..." What was in the music or the words that would make cry over myself.
Unbreakable "Forever"? "Great Union"? Or the wait for the
silence? I knew that the radio would go dead. I lived not far
away from the place from were the Central Radio transmitted
Russia's voice. At this moment they were about to turn it off. As
there was no hope, no me, no people left alive. My friend, you
don't know what is does to me to know that the radio and TV in
America are always on. I don't care if it's a music station,
religious or talk show. I need to know that I can turn it on and
there's life! How could they put the country to sleep? Let me ask
you a question, did you believe that a nuclear war is possible? I
did. I cried at this moment of dead silence. I felt that I'm
dead. Later, reading Solzenitsin, I recognized the sense -- all
of us could be turn off at any point. I could sleep, I would
wait for hours hoping that some sound would come out of the
little box. (Not real radio but a Russian cable; it was a special
outlet in the wall, very much like an electric one, I burned the
radio once plugging it into an electric socket). Well, sometimes
I would get up and turn it out before the music begins. Almost
like a suicide. I was rather kill myself than to wait to be
killed...
All of that is gone. Is it? It's me. It's here. Nothing is
lost. We keep it. Stalin isn't dead. "Lenin is more alive that
all the living," says another Soviet song. That's the nature of
human time. To remember.
Historical notes:
[ Father-Russia files ]
"We stand on the last promontory of the centuries!... Why should we look back, when what we want is to break down the mysterious doors of the Impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed." (Marinetti)[2]
Modernism made a temporality into our main focus (remember,
futurism appeared at the time of "presentism.") That's how the
postmodern began. Time and Space died in a car accident.
"Now" and "tomorrow." This "Now" began a century ago. No
wonder that we see modernism as a rapture, breaking away from the
past. Past has no absolute power over us. No power at all. Not
anymore. After making time a centerpiece of our world, we
ourselves has to become a main subject. We are "after the
modern." Our present, our "now" and time are different. Our time
is ours. Our time depends on us. Our time is us.
POMO can't departure from modernism, it still caries the
name of what it rejects.
I. ARCHITECTURE OF TIME
Time is only half real.
Time is our construction. Time is a human received message
(text) expressed in space. Time was very modern invention
(discovery)3 in its practical applications, not very long ago
even a fashionable, an American "thing." In PM it became old
news: "postmodernism as a condition in which temporality becomes a problem."[4] Time is always personalized; American time, Russian, Chinese. It is no less concrete than any form of material nature. (Time gives a shape to space? Space is a material expression of time). Is a mass matter -- anti-time?
Time in space is space.
Time is angelical matter; one-dimensional and multi-dimensional. It turns real into unreal. Time is a terminator of reality.
Time is a space of light.
We made measurable the immeasurable: the time.
Time Architecture is dynamic, fluid, dramatic -- emotional.
Feelings are attributes of time, ideas -- trajectory of
time.
Angelic world was invisible because it exists in time only,
not in space. It doesn't occupy any space, light as thought.
Time is ideological, too human to be neutral.
Knowledge is a captured time.
We're the objectivisation of the subjective. And the opposite. We make our wishes into reality, things, stuff. Ourselves. History, the second nature, is us, we live in OUR, made universe. First, we alienated ourselves (understanding) to create human universe.
The world is our will and perception. [There are no negative
experiments in science, even in such science as history.] Sensing
the time makes us human (mind, memory, imagination are based on
time).
Time is the best proof of God's existence.
Consciousness was borne of a realization of time's
existence.
History was a memory of time.
So far we were fighting for our lives (survival of the
fittest), now time came to win the immortality, to concur the
time, to make it into our "material." Recording time became
time-producing. Arriving to this point was a matter of time.
History = (re)constructing "natural[5] time." "Crude time"
(time-material): human existence (slave economics were the first
recognition of value of human time, time was noticed -- time is
always a "noticed time"). Capital = time (use and exchange
value). Time could be traded even in its potentiality, time
credit (new banking). Life (time) exists for production purpose.
Animals time? The domestication period. Systems of using labor
(time = begining of history.)
II. MANUFACTURED TIME: disciplined and controlled time.
Manufacturing time, we have to have a big enough reservoir
of potential time (human race), because only humans are time
producing machines (time organisms). Immortality of soul is the
source of time. (Time belongs to life only; the more ALIVE I am
-- the more I live in time). Time production is a by-product of
my existence.
Virilio in _Vision Machine_[6] writes: "space and time are
forms of intuition." (V 22) That's a new, pm time, time of
Einstein. Kingdom of speed asks for a depth of time,
concentration and conservation of human energy, new technologies
-- TIMEMACHINE. Everything "human too human" gives time a new
dimension. Extensive time died, Intensive time was born. In
addition to static and kinetic energy Virilio proposes the third
type -- Image Energy. "Kinematic energy, energy resulting from
the effect of movement, and its varying speed, on ocular, optical
or optoelectronic perception."[7]
Energy of perception?
Human = the life of time: "the intensive time of human
perceptiveness." (Virilio) How to measure this time's intensity?
Foucault literally equated knowledge with power, Virilio
gives actual energy to image. Does a thought have energy?
Any form of life measured by (human) time. Taming of time
done through SPEED (speed is controlled through acceleration).
Controlling time is controlling death.
Time is a Psychology of Matter: Bergson and Einstein were
contemporaries.
Time is a potentiality of power? Energy of time. Does
universe moves only for one purpose -- for time to be? Or maybe
presence of time forces the movement?
Physics of death: death is the end of time. Fast enough
(light) speed stops time (not the insider's time). Being and
Nothing? Time!
If Einstein's universe is the event-oriented space, than a
VIEWPOINT (observation) is an event. Time becomes a material for
space, a space of such "I-present-world." "The space of sight is
accordingly not Newton's space, absolute space, but Minkovskian
event-space, relative space." (V 62) Seeing creates time, or time
is waited for us to arrived? One way or another, through time man
and universe comes together, becomes one. That is the real Real,
Super-Real, according to Virilio's reality principle. Without an
observer's time everything could only potentially real; "the age
of intensive time demands a better resolution the reality
principle" (V 74).
Oh, the tyranny of time!
Time is "unstoppable" -- irreversible. What does it mean?
Time is dangerous, it's mortal, it's lethal. If time is a
potential of life, it has to be loaded with death.
Time is a constant self-negation, that's how it lives --
only in present.
Time is easy to negate. Negation of time doesn't remove the
previous dimensions but incorporates them within a new frame. (It
feels like a distortion).
Deconstruction is a natural attribute of existence (in
time); time is nothing less than a constant self-negation,
permanent self-distraction. Anything which isn't growing is
getting rotten -- vector. It's always directional. Even to keep
the "status quo" energy is needed, an effort. Resistance to
changes is also a hard work. {"Presence" produces time, or is it
the time's presence produces everything?} The matter is very dark
and conservative, in image and likeness of a human soul.
Existence-in-time asks for a different psychological
constitution of man (v. space beings). "Space people"8 look for
stability in the time universe, which can't be achieved.
I am time.
If "time is life," life = time (moving with time).
Dead nature (still nature) isn't dead. Time move slow with
the dead subjects. The more complex form of life the more time is
present and faster it gets. QM and humanity have a lot in common.
Human life (conscience) is only a potential apparatus for
time production: time has to be extracted out of human existence
(through and by others). Working knowledge = technology is the
machine to do the job of time preservation, concentration,
enrichment, etc.
We need a critical mass of time to defeat the death. Is six
billion lives big enough pool? Depending on the speed of our
times => infinity, eternity.
According to Einstein, "time-space-matter" (union, trinity
type) are non-separatable. Are the three interchangeable as well?
Trinity image: time is a projection of matter in space, matter is
a projection... and etc. Three expressions of one essence,
existing within their own fields. Thus, could time act as space
or matter?[9]
III. SPEED LIMIT
Speed! We wallow in speed. I've developed this theme in my last book based on a theory that I baptized "dromology" from the Greek "dromos" which means course or track. Throughout time, man has tried to increase his speed. With the horse, the sailboat, the train, the plane... But all of these speeds remained relative in the sense that they didn't dominate space. Today, we've reached a limit that we can't exceed -- that of the speed of light. This brings about a globalization of time. World time overtakes local time. With the risk of integral accidents. (Virilio).[10]
[ post-AmeriKa ]
THE IDEA OF SPEED (Drugs, dreams and PM): moving from one
time universe to another. Conquered space, an ideal space without
matter, space of pure light -- this is time.
1. Elementary PM physics: space is nothing more than a
combinations of speed and time. Resistance to time means that
time is power. Does the universe spread out because there is a
space of time, a vacuum of time? God's gaze? Sounds like Theology
101.
Eternity? Matter is limited, time is not?
Space is constructed by watching?
Speed = space/time > space = time x speed. Could we see
space as a product of movement in time dimension? Time is a
process itself (movement of what? movement within movement --
acceleration).
Light can be called the shadow of absolute speed, or, more exactly, the speed of light rays (geometric optics) can be called the shadow of the light of the speed of electromagnetic waves (ondulatory optics). Splitting thus the luminescent energy on one side into light and on the other side into the speed of diffusion of the so-called light, we would be led to recognize in the end that speed allows us to see, but above all that it allows us to see 'light' before even the objects (phenomena) that the latter illuminates in its turn. (Virilio)
LIGHT. Space exists only if time is used with/by speed. Does
"speed" exist by itself, or this is only "potential" quality?
[Is there anything which doesn't move? We can't judge, only
visible, detectable is known. Einstein: speed of light is the
limit (and measure) of everything, including energy (E=mc2). Time
is present twice in this formula; as a part of "c" and hidden in
"m"? c2 = c x c; speed of light multiplied by itself!] time is
power, potentiality of energy. Energy is (released) time?
Outside of earth "space" is an abstraction -- emptiness
(space within galaxies measured in light years). Even weigh is
an idea (no gravity). What's left? Time?
Theory of relativity? Journey inside the time! What is
this E = mc2? Energy includes the time (c). Oh, Nuclear
explosion: time release?
Thought is faster than a speed of light?
Knowledge is the power over the ultimate power?
This description of light as the 'shadow of absolute speed' is the latest development of the metaphor of the 'light of speed' that Virilio employs frequently in his texts. Speed, or the absolute relation of the speed of light, lights light. Light and what it illuminates becomes, in this formulation, a shadow of this speed. This figure of the universe as dromosphere, lit up by speed and visible only in, or as, its shadow, emblematises Virilio's own questioning, relativising perspective. The dromosphere is the figure of a universal posing of the question of relation.[11]
Speed is the material of changes. Dramatic theory: changes
are events. Experiencing the changes = time, life.
Speed explains the nature of time; it is time's nature!
Light, universal constant of speed.
Speed is controlled by acceleration, speed of speed
(=speed/time). Speed itself is not an event (stagnation), not
visible from within, only the changes of speed are dramatic.
Speed of movement and speed of time. The second could be noticed
only with acceleration (changes in speed).
According to an (outside) observer the maximum speed is the
end of time (c=limit of speed). The insider is noticing only
changes in speed (acceleration) = "gaining" the mass (energy).
Our history (pm) has to go through changes with the speed of
light? Not the sound, but the speed of light barrier.
[How do we measure the changes, especially in history?]
IV. THEORY OF SPACE-SPEED
Time is "cuts" (picnos; Virilio). Time is actual "absence"
-- jumps. V (speed) is a pure vector when we have time as a
space. Neutron is a symbol of such non-stop essence. Exists only
in motion.
T = f (v) = ff (a)
Since T = SPEED/SPACE, the only way we can control time
(space/distance/ is fixed? category) is by increasing the speed,
the faster the speed the "shorter" the time (slow). The only way
to escape losing time is to move faster ("stretching" the time),
"make the time" (American expression).
Acceleration is limited by the mass (inertia), not for
image, non-material.
'From now on everything passes through the image. The image had priority over the thing, the object, and sometimes even the physically-present being... Therefore the image is invasive and ubiquitous. Its role is not to be in the domain of art, the military domain or the technical domain, it is to be everywhere, to be reality. The new generation of the real' ("Virilio" 7).[12]
Speed can't be gained without acceleration. So, in order for
me to defeat the time, I have to defeat the space, but to do so I
have to overcome the mass. It does take energy. I do need others
(outside input). Technology = others. The faster I want to go,
the more others (condensed humans) I have to use.
(Thoughts on a board of the plane flying from Denver to
Fairbanks after the wedding of my son).
Airplane is a condensed knowledge (and energy).13 Knowledge
(technology) is super-condensed time, released to create the
energy (speed). Is time a stimulus for a release of data ( =
nuclear reaction?) Could it be stored time (nuclear energy)?
"Minimum" speed is needed to take off. The wings were shaken. I
was seated next to the engines and I could feel the growing
energy before the plan began to move...
Acceleration (extra, additional, build up the energy) is
needed to reach the level of speed (energy) which could defeat
(balance) the gravity.
Acceleration (quickening) = the change of changes (speed =
changes in space).
Traditionally space was measured by speed (time). Now
absolute distance became irrelevant. All depends on speed: how
would I cover the distance. Don't we create the distances by
moving all the time?
Speed = weight (matter), the faster you go, the "bigger" you
are. Not static mass, but dynamic. "Faster" -- intensification of
time?
Electronic technology is the apparatus of speed (in itself
technology posses time through labor/knowledge). [We had to
"departure" (or to "translate" the matter) from the material
world in order to enter the time dimension]. (Space is nothing
more than formal measurements of matter). Space and matter have
strange relations: small isn't necessarily not big in term of
energy. Red stars; giants could be small. White dwarfs. Condensed
time includes technology (saving time = service industry).
Knowledge (data) = saving time (what "wasted" time does to
our inner environment?)
Since the time (through the technology) is a construction by all
of us (live and dead) the communism is just a quality of the new
universe.
"Stagnation" (time characteristic), no changes (when changes
are needed?) Slow downed historical time, normal reaction to
constant changes, when too much growth causes the break down. The
Soviet time and Russian time. Moscow time, the seventies (also
time). "Local time" idea. National times. Ethiopian time. Night
shadows on the ground of the hotel Iordanos. I came closer. And
-- met his eyes. He wasn't sleeping. They stand without changing
a position for hours. They are comfortable being motionless.
They, the Ethiopian humans, the guards. They look at you the way
birds, acknowledging your presence. Almost like trees. Vegetation
time. They have their own time dimension.
Our time (objective) is negotiated, contracted deal. Social
time and my time (measured emotionally). Time depravation in
Soviet Russia: collective time, *our* time. Violation of the
nature of time: time can't be fully separated from the subject.
Mine and only.
American time: "Thank you for your time. Thanks for watching."
V. TIME PRODUCTION
TWO STAGES OF MAKING TIME
The first faze is the Gaze (F); looking is the begining of a
production of time. From Remembering to Recording. we still
treating time as a "thing". We invented watches to measure it. Do
you really think there're 24 hours in each day? Time is more
tricky than space. It's literally nothing.
Virilio: The true problem with virtual reality is that orientation is no longer possible. We have lost our points of reference to orient ourselves. The de-realized man is a disoriented man. In my last book, The Art of The Engine, I conclude by pointing at a recent American discovery, the GPS (Global Positioning System) which is the second watch. The first watch tells you what time it is, the second one tells you where you are. If I had a GPS, I could know where this table stands in relation to the whole world, with an amazing precision, thanks to satellites. This is extraordinary: in the Fifteenth century, we invented the first watch, and now we have invented the GPS to know where we are.
When you find yourself in the middle of virtual reality, you don't know where you are, but with this machine, you can know. This watch has been used for ships and not only can it tell you where you are, but also it can tell others where you are: it works in the two ways. The question you're asking is really interesting. For one can't even know what it means to be lost in reality. For instance, it is easy to know whether you are lost or not in the Sahara desert, but to be lost in reality! This is much more complex! Since there are two realities, how can we say where we are? We are far away from simulation, we have reached substitution! I believe this is, all in the same time, a fantastic, a very scary and an extraordinary world.[14]
We tried our best sticking time to some changes -- day and
night, seasons. Thanks to the Greeks (?) we acquired historical
time. But, excuse me, those numbers -- the end of the twentieth
century? -- it drive me crazy! The end of what? The end? OH, and
the holidays! We must be in extreme need to invent something to
rule over us!
Recording = frozen time. The second (?) stage of the
Controlling (Taming) the Time. Stopped Time? Here comes the
technology. Before we know -- the virtuality!
Information (knowledge) is defeated time, concurred,
compressed, tamed. Language (from oral to written) = time
economy, secrets of time.
Watching a recorded time = double time existence. Watching
yourself on video. Frozen time gets life again (adding time of
watching). [Drunk driving adds with the actual footage of real
victims]. Virilio calls it "delayed time." (V 66)
VI. TIMES OF TIME: MANY WORLDS
Perceptions? (Badrillard's Simulacra)
Time in Paradise is multidimensional. Times easily co-exist.
Time could be understood only in comparing times. Time doesn't
exists by itself. It's always plural. Paradox: Many space in one
space (looking from the time dimension). Archeology of time.
Being in the same space with the dead.
Interesting; NY Times, and Time, even Times Square?..
Ethnic Times, American, Soviet, Ethiopian...
NY Times, London Times, Times? Time isn't a thing, it's an
idea, a feeling, a sense. How do you feel? That's your time!
The American Time: the present. The only time. No time.
Intensive v. Extensive Time (measurement = speed).
"Quality time," "my" time = high density, loaded by labor,
time of others. Processed (serviced) time.
Is time always "new"? Old times (nature of memory).
Life (death is an indication of the life's presence) was an
invention of time (or was it other way around?). Humans are the
highest time concentrates. Concentration of life, our will to
live. Of course, we will go on increasing it as much as possible.
Memory asked for technology, we asked for it. From Homer to a
tape recorder -- it was just a matter of time and timing. Society
took another step into time condensation and time concentration.
History: turned time-production into world of time.
NEW EMOTIONS [1]
Time as a "taming."
Stooped time? Faust meant "frozen happiness." What a strange
notion? You can't stop time? Time exits only in motion (neutron).
How can I stop the feeling, especially, if it a moment of joy
(unique state of mind)? Not the past or the future represent time
but the moment, that "nothing" which connects past and future.
-Do you have time?
In paradise that's all what I have. Time is the last
frontier, not fully nationalized property.
-Roll the camera!
Movies as product of "time preservatives" [reconstructed
time, time organized as a narrative, technological (human) time].
Viewing time = pre-structured experience. (Somebody's time). The
dead time (recorded) is waiting to be resurrected, all it needs a
technology (tape-player, electricity) and some humans to watch
it.
[Actual and factual time? What's the difference? Time is pure potentiality, only I make it actual.]
Time always will remain a fiction.
In time-world an illusion is a fact. There's nothing unreal about my dreams. Multiple reality? Time travelers know that the main law of time-reality is that there's no one time, but multi-time Time. Not a one reality but always many.
VII. TIME AS COMMODITY
Too late to complain; time is here and time is the king.
A-Effect: Estrangement is conditions of time production?
Social time (humanized time)and worked out space (matter).
Product (see Marx) is reconstructed space/matter by "used" time
(active, actualized time = labor).
Communism = our (mutual) time, nationalized time. My time
(life) becomes common property. (One more step closer to
eternity).
Labor (Marxism) is only visible expression of time games.
Knowledge = power (shortcuts in time). Ideological state of
space; since only ideas have the power over time.
Copyright = use value of knowledge. The refuge of private
property, a secret. Ideas are the easiest forms of property for
expropriation. Except for understanding!
Is this the point of separation between man and men?
(Accept it; the majority isn't interested in learning -- they
are the inertia of they resist information.) The knowledge is
imposed on them, information society the new way to discipline
them, to make time their habitual property.
Thinking about a new 100 dollar bill...
Time & Labor. Time as Labor.
Time as currency. "Time is money" in our cashless society.
The moneyless land has to be measured by direct equivalents
(lives). Money is equivalent of labor = invested (gained) live.
Time is a product of negotiations.
"How does one introduce desire into thought, into discourse, into action? How can and must desire deploy its forces within the political domain and grow more intense in the process of
overturning the established order?" (Michel Foucault)
Thought, discourse, action -- are expressions of desire.
That's all what we do, the changes, the "overturning the
established order."
All our New Feelings are based on sense of time. Living in
time universe we need more and more new experiences, that's how
we became "consumers." Consumed by time and consuming time
products. Here's our problems -- time as matter.
Imagination creates time (zone). Knowledge kills it. It
eats, consumes it...
What else can we do besides making our emotions a reality?
We call it history. We are Fear and Hopes. We are overturning the
established order (ourselves) -- and creating New Order
constantly. We made Technology a political reality. We are
incapable of doing anything without our desires, our discourse is
nothing but the action of our feelings. (see "Free Will of
Electron")
Action -- feeling -- thought = performance. We have designed
the new our in OUR image and likeness. Our history is human, too
human. I look around and try to find anything within the second
or even the first nature which has no energy of life -- and
everything I see is "emotional." Life is very passionate. The end
of emotion is the death.
As long as one is alive he doesn't need to have God: His presence is everywhere. Life is His imposition on Nothing. There's too much of life. I misunderstood myself and existentialists -- the complains of misery were borne of my awareness of life, presence of life in me. Maybe we die because of too much stress is put on us, including the so-called dead matter (radioactive half-life)? We can't handle it! What is so dead about physics? The universe and the atom have their own limit of presence, mortality. What doesn't? Universe is very emotional.
After entering the time dimension one sees nothing but an
emotional, very human God.
The reality of thoughts and feelings. The idea of sin
included the nature punished for man's fall. Time lost its
angelic quality. We have little memory of the primitive stage.
Than - history. Finally -- post-history, Resurrection Age. Time
regained its full dramatic essence (emotional), it always exited
only in human universe. Is time semi-organic thing (coming from
the human + machine symbiosis)? Time expressed through technology
is a bridge between live and dead nature.
VIII. POSTMODERN IS A KINGDOM OF DYNAMIC TIME:
Time As Matter
After all, matter exists only while there's time. On atomic
level the nature of time is more visible.
The new millennium of the Holy Ghost: God is Time. Father --
matter, Son -- space.
XX century was the agony of departure from the mortal world.
Resurrection is Creation and Birth.
If we did invent (or discovered) time, we can improve (use)
our invention (creation), so we did; we redesigned time
dimensions. "Leaving the time" (dying) in PM is an effort to
create another time conditions: resurrection = juxtaposition of
times.
Time in space is a new space (resurrected space = humanized
space). Time of the virtual.
To live in double time is to live between "spaces" -- in
dreams space is fluid and is a function of moving in time. Space
fits my needs...
Paradox of the twins: times co-exit? Each individual is a time dimension (many -- physical, historical, metaphysical). Each
man is the universe?
Time is personal matter, it has this build-in element of
"subjectivity."
....
....
....
My new Soviet day would start with the same music. You have
to wait for six hours to be resurrected. Not a big deal. My only
problem was that I couldn't sleep -- I waited. I couldn't forget
that it was the same song for all...
