Paul Virilio 2010 The Great Accelerator

Te Great Accel erator
We thi nk the same way we collide in to

each other.
Paul Valery
Te Great Accelerator
Paul Virilio
Translated by J ul i e Rose
polity
First published in French as L . GrauJ Acd/e,,t.,r Editions Galilee, 2010
Tis English edition < Poliry Press, 2012
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Contents
Te I nsecurity of Hi story 1
Too Late for Private Li fe 31
Te Great Accel erator 66
Index 9
4
v
To the i l lumi nists of l i ght-speed
at CERN, Geneva,
and
to the Wall Street traders who crashed i nto
that other wall, the time barrier.
Te Insecurity of History
To live every i nstant as though i t were the last -
that is the paradox of fturism, of a fturism of
the i nstant that has no future. We might note
that it also spells the decl ine in the propaganda
of an endless Progress that, only yesterday, still
fuelled the history of past centuri es . Tat history
is now so wired, so hysterical , that it even clai ms
to foresee actions, the reali ty of events that have
not yet occurred. You' d think that, tomorrow,
we' l l be abl e to construct an actual ' Histor of the
Future' - thanks to long-term forecasting. Such
micro-narratives would impose themselves on the
hi storicity of the avowed facts, as i f the perspec
tive of the real ti me of instantaneity suddenly
annulled all durabi l i ty. For, thanks to certain
I
THE GREAT ACCELERATOR
software programs and the modell i ng they allow,
the mythology of futurism is even gearing up to
renew the myths of our origins and of Antiqui ty.
A recent anecdote might serve to illustrate this
' phase transi ti on' i n History: at the beginning of
the Year 2010, Bernard Accoyer, then president
of France' sAssemble Nationale, protested against
the excessive use, by the French government, of
a speeded-up process that l i mi ts both parli amen
tary chambers' examination of proposed new
laws to a si ngle readi ng.
' We can' t go on workng this way - not i f we
want decent laws and decent democratic debate' ,
Accoyer declared, addi ng that he would not hesi
tate, i f the need arose, to resort to the possibi l i ty
of opposing the emergency process in question
by siding wi th hi s opposi te number i n the Senate,
Gerard Larcher. 'A good law' , Accoyer concluded,
' requi res an i ncompressi ble period of time for
refecti on. ' 1
Te current legi slative frenzy actually i ntro
duces the i nertia of real time, a paradoxi cal
i nertia that results from the sudden acceleration
of common reali ty.
1 Le Monde, n febrar 2010.
2
I n these very early years of the thi rd millenni ur,
the polar inertia produced by the instantaneity of
interactive CONNECTIONS (LIENS is actu
ally poised to supplant the fxed-property i nertia
of PLACES (LIEU i ncluding the most rep
resentative places of legislation and the law. Te
whole of historici ty will then fnd i tself shattered
by this ' distortion of competition' between the
past and the future that is so detrimental to the
present, with the NANOTECHNOLOGI ES of
the i nfni tely short term already taki ng the place
of the traditional chronologi es of the medium
and long term of past days, years and centuries .
All of this undermi nes the sovereignty of
Histor - and the sovereignty of all anterior
i ty, with i t. So, following the age of terri torial
insecurity, 1 comes the age of the insecurity of
History and i ts tripartite divi sion, PAST -
PRESENT - FUTURE.
Tis reversal of val ues, we might note, has
already afected space. At the close of the last cen
tury, geopoli tical strategists were, i n fact, turni ng
real i ty inside out like a glove and asserting that,
forever after, the exterior was to prevail over the
1 Paul Virilio, L 1nseurite du territoire. Paris: Galilee, 1993.
3
interior. Today, i t is in the order of time that this
turnaround is being accompl ished, as posteri ty
is pri med to dominate all anteriority. Hence the
sudden insecurity of Hi story that now comple
ments and completes the i nsecuri ty of a terri torial
sovereignty now threatened on all sides - from
above, by i ts expansion, and from below, by i ts
regional fragmentation. Hence the ' repeat delo
calization' we are currently wi tnessi ng under the
pretext of globalizati on, along with the impact of
a process of external ization - outsourci ng - that
is i ncreasi ngly untethered to any practical reali ty.
I n any case, the current debates between his
torians over MEMORIAL LAWS, codifed bills
dedicated to the memory of specifc victi ms of
historic cri mes, clearly point to the damage done
by ' progress' regarding the notion of historical
anteri ori ty and i ts great narratives, which are in
the process of disappearing. What is rising to
the fore i n their stead is what certain people are
already calling the ' great national novel ' .
So, what we are now seeing, after the topo
graphic and geometric efraction of distances, is
the anachronistic efraction of the time intervals
required for efective knowledge as well as for
memory of the facts . FRCTAIZTION of
4
physical expanse i s coupl ed with fractal i zati on
of durations relative to the CONTI NUUM of
a general Hi story that' s i n the process of bei ng
i nstantaneously obl i terated.
Let' s hear what Wi nston Churchi ll had to say
on the subj ect, when he addressed the House of
Commons on 13 May 1940. I f a battle between
past and present is all owed to break out, Churchi l l
sai d, there wi l l be ' no survival for the urge and
i mpulse of the ages, that manki nd will move for
ward towards its goal ' . 1 I n other words, we' ll l ose
the future.
We know what came next : Great Bri tai n as a
space di d not sufer the i nsul t of occupati on, but
only because the Bri tish l eaders avoided a chro
nopol i ti cal battle over the TEMPO of the Battle
of Bri tai n.
Tat was an odd lesson i n hi story; but i t was
also a l esson in geopol i tics, in which the perspec
tive of the CHRONIC temporal i ty of events was
undefeated by the prospect of the pani cky i nstan
tanei ty behi nd a ' futuri sm' whose fasci st ori gi ns
were al l too obvious, starti ng wi th Mari netti ' s
1 Winston Churchill, Address to the Home of Commom, 13
May 1940.
5
tracts celebrati ng the Great War as ' the worl d' s
hygiene' . Te cul t of t he accel erati on of history
ended appropri ately enough for the futuri sts i n
the Bl itz, that l i ghtni ng war of the fai l ed i nvasi on
of the sky as wel l as of the Bri ti sh I sl es.
As for us, if in the near future we l et some
Museum of the Hi story of France settle perma
nently, whether i n Paris or somewhere else, we
will very swi fl y fnd ourselves occupi ed - and
extremel y preoccupi ed . . . Maybe we are al ready.
Everyone knows that time is reveal ed and then
revolves, is gone. Te REVOLUTI ONARY of
bygone days i s now about to be el i mi nated by
the revel at i onary forecaster, the REVEALER of
postmodern ti mes.
Apropos the ' systemi c cri si s' i n the TEMPO
of the stock market and i n the fture of an i l l u
si on, that of getti ng the world economy back of
the ground, some peopl e are al ready faggi ng the
al armi ng devel opment of distortion of competition
for si ngl e-market turbocapital ism. And i t' s hap
pening right where the dromol ogist would i nsi st
on the term ANAMORPHOSI S for the tempo
ral i ty of the i nstant, as most clearly descri bi ng thi s
fnanci al fasade that can no l onger be seen except
6
by watchi ng i mages on STOCK EXCHANGE
screens, and, then, only from a particular angl e:
t hat of the curved distorti ng mi rror of t he round
ness of the terrestrial gl obe - in other words,
the conti nuum of an accel erati ng ' gl obal izati on
of afects' by traders operati ng i n a market that ' s
now, once and for all , i nterconnected through
PROGRAM TRADI NG, through the synchro
nizati on of an i nteractivity that makes a whol e
new ki nd of i nsi der tradi ng possibl e.
Let ' s be cl ear about thi s eccentri c angl e on t he
worl d economy. I n t he l ast quarter oflast century,
the Ci ty of London l aunched market i ntercon
necti on, the BI G BANG of program tradi ng, so
aptly named. Tat was to l ead, as early as 1 987, to
an i naugural crash i mpl i cating the real -ti me com
puterizati on of tradi ng. Twenty years later, wi th
the bursting of the sub pri me real -estate bubbl e i n
the Uni ted States i n 2007, i t is the fash tradi ng
i nvolved i n high-frequency exchanges that has
been stigmatized by the Securi ti es and Exchange
Commission (SEC) , the Wal l Street watchdog,
considering the accrui ng risks of a new ki nd of
i nsi der tradi ng. For, di storti on of competi ti on
now resi des i n the i nstantanei ty of mil l i seconds
i n a stock market NANOCHRONOLOGY that
7
escapes market control - thi s, smack bang i n the
mi ddle of the credi t crunch and massive l oss of
i nvestor confdence.
BI G BANG, BI G CRUNCH. I n the absence
of any true pol i ti cal economy of speed, one deal
i ng with the wealth of the devel oped nati ons,
these events l ead to a rel ativist fel ony, an
extremely seri ous di storti on of competi ti on i n a
market that i s no l onger si ngl e i n the real ti me
of stock market exchanges, even i f i t remai ns
si ngl e i n the real space of the gl obal izati on of
profts. Te capaci ty of a few big banks to engage
in fash orders, usi ng computi ng power analo
gous to the power of nucl ear deterrence i n the
hands of the top brass of the mi l i tary, cal l s i nto
questi on the very basis of free competi ti on i n a
turbocapi tali sm clearly neari ng i ts end.
Ti s, I thi nk, expl ai ns the i mportance of the
term ANAMORPHOSI S i n relati on to tempo
ral i ty and to the sudden temporal compressi on of
fnanci al data before the curvature, the di storti ng
mi rror, of the conti nuum of an economi c hi story
that resi des today in the astronomi cal TEMPO
of an i nstantanei ty and an i nteractivi ty that once
and for all spurn the old l aws of a competi tive
market where the fel ony of i nsi der tradi ng, per-
8
petrated by cheats, was sti ll commi tted wi thi n
the common hi storical TEMPO of the chro
nol ogy of days, hours and seconds - not wi thi n
the NANOCHRONOLOGY of nanoseconds,
pi coseconds or femtoseconds of an ' i nforma
ti on bomb' that is currently i n the process of
expl odi ng before our very eyes.
Here, t he anamorphosi s of free trade i s pro
duced by the anachroni sm of thi s sudden
futurism of a real i nstant that expl oi ts the cri mi
nal operati on of di gi tal systems and thei r deviant
' mathemati cal model l i ng' , willy ni l l y. And does
so at the ri sk, thi s ti me, of exhausti ng conf
dence, the speculati ve fai th of shrewd i nvestors
and sharehol ders, al ong wi th credi t, i n a BIG
CREDI T CRUNCH (fxed property-based or
other) , si nce, as we all know, confdence can' t be
i nstantaneous or automati c.
Hence the maj or ri sk of a choc de Ia confance,
a ' crash of confdence' , as devastati ng as the choc
des civilisations, the cl ash of civil izati ons, with the
ATHEI SM of the free thi nker suddenly turni ng
i nto an athei sm of free trade, in the age of banks
that are too big to fail , but , especi ally, too swi ft to
be honest!
Ul ti matel y, thi s di sastrous si tuati on ought to
9
cause us to wonder about the nature of a new
i nerti a: the i nerti a of Ti me, of the real i nstant
and of the i nteractivi ty i nvolved i n the transac
ti ons that take pl ace withi n the Si ngl e Market,
fosteri ng the growi ng risk of a monopoly that
woul d be damagi ng for all ki nds of exchanges.
Ti s would be a MONOPOLY OF DI SBELIEF
and of an ' athei sm' i n whi ch the l oss of specu
l ative fai th woul d most l i kely end i n a sort of
MONO-ATHEI SM of the Si ngl e Market that
woul d be analogous i n its evocative power to the
MONOTHEI SM of rel i gi ons, of the si ngl e God
of j usti ce and truth.
So, that woul d be i t, the ' systemi c' risk, the
i ntegral acci dent i n high-frequency speculati on,
where the i nerti a of real t i me woul d take over
from the real -space i nerti a of settl ement accordi ng
to the nati ons' emploi du temps, thei r schedul i ng
of time timetables i n the several -thousand
year-ol d era of the sedentary homebody.
Let me j ust summarize : i f the emploi du temps,
the t i metable, behi nd hi stori cal chronol ogies,
the tripartite divisi on past-present-future, were
to compl etely di sappear, overtaken by the acci
dent of an overwhel mi ngly anachronisti c i nstant,
10
then the NANOTECHNOLOGI ES of futuri st
i nstantanei ty would soon l ead to l oss of memory
and abandonment of Hi stor' s credi bi l i ty to the
detri ment of all confdence in the fture. Te
contemporary world of the gl obal i zed Si ngle
Market woul d then end i n a POLAR I NERTI A
of unequal l ed atemporary passivity, an i nerti a
of the real i nstant . And that i nerti a would, thi s
ti me, total l y shatter t he not i on of t he durati on
and sedentary stabi l it of planetar settl ement,
si nce the i nerti a of the i nt eractive i nstant woul d
soon compl etely outdo the fxed-property i nerti a
of acti vi ty i n the real space of humani ty' s routi ne
dai l y l i fe.
As for the geographi c and, so, ' spatial ' aspect
of thi s devel opment, seen through the anamor
phosi s in competi ti on menti oned above, i t woul d
be fagged by l oss of confdence i n the noti on of
Progress and by the overwhelmi ng prevalence of
delocal i zati on of producti on - but also of research
and devel opment . For, URBAN EXODUS,
i n t he twent- frst century, will one day repro
duce the agony of RURAL EXODUS, i n the age
of the i ndustri al revol uti on in transport and l ead
to the headl ong rush - only, in closed circuit- of
a general exodus of humani ty.
II
Last century, French Ai r Force general , Li onel
Max Chassi n, declared: ' Te fact that the Earth
i s round has not yet been taken i nto account by
the mi l i tary. ' It seems that today' s economi sts
and fnanci ers of the Si ngle Market sti l l refuse
seriously to entertain that fact, certai n of them
even asserting that progress i n communi cati ons
has made the worl d perfectly Bat, 1 l i ke some
mul ti modal l ogi sti cal platform! Hoodwi nked by
the real i ty efect of accelerati ng profts, the spec
ulators of the moment are so mesmerized by
STOCK ECHANGE screens, they apparently
don' t notice the deformati on of val ues caused
by the curved mi rror of stock trades i n the
age of gl obal izati on and, so, the ' astronomi cal '
nature of thi s sudden ti me compressi on that, of
course, all ows them t o make highly i mpressive
profts. But only at the cost of more and more
fragil e ' bubbl es' that wi ll soon produce the
SYSTEMI C CRSH of turbocapi tal i sm and,
more than anythi ng el se, the SECURLI SM
of specul ators who wi ll no l onger be abl e to
have confdence i n the future of the i l l usi on
1 Tomas Friedman, 7e World i s Flat. Harmondsworrh:
Penguin Books, 2005.
12
of progress or to expect the l atest software to
deliver the mi racles promi sed by the mathemati
cal model l i ng used by a market subj ect to the
excessive speeds of hyperacti ve fash tradi ng.
Te rel at i vi st fel oni es commi tted by the i nsi der
traders i nvolved i n hi gh- frequency el ectroni c
exchanges wi ll suddenly put t he brakes on the
hyperl i beral i sm of the Great Casi no, qui te as if
the speedi ng-trai n efect of high fnance escaped
t raders and, especially, the N abel Pri ze wi nners
i n economi cs - apparentl y unl i ke the pl anners
who l ai d out the railways - as though the i nse
curity of Hi story wasn' t bound, some day, to
fatal l y meet head-on the i nsecuri ty of the ter
ri tori es i nvolved i n the nati ons' empli du temps
our ti metabl es!
Actual l y, the vi rtual Great Casi no of the thi rd
mi l l enni um l ooks a l ot l ike those geostati onary
satell i tes in orbi t above some l ocal i ty or other and
whose fxed-propert i nerti a i s said to be geosyn
chronous in terms of the vert i cal ity of a gi ven
PLCE, whereas t he pol ar i nerti a of the fnan
ci al casi no i s CHRONOSYCHRONOUS
wi th every pl ace on t he gl obe thanks to i ts
O B B B
mstantaneous mteracuve connections.
So, though i t may be singl e i n the real space
1
3
of geography, the gl obal ized market is no l onger
si ngl e i n the real ti me of trades i nvolved i n the
Rash tradi ng perpetrated by the i nsi ders of the
' Big Night' of the Srock Exchange. Te above
menti oned di st ort i on of competi ti on created by
hyperel oci ty wi l l suddenl y tri gger the trans
mutati on of capi tal i sm, or, more precisely, the
phase transi ti on of the turbocapi tal i sm of an
overwhel mi ngly criti cal instant . For, traders who
are fans of Rash orders wi ll, thi s ti me, tri gger the
acci dent to end all acci dents of a stock market
tempo that i s now AUTOMATI C. Te loss of
awareness of all true durati on wi l l tri gger the
l oss of confdence, the credi t crunch of the l atest
i nvestors, speculative fai th havi ng once and for all
evaporated.
Surely we can't fai l to noti ce that thi s i s hap
peni ng! Te very noti on of a ki nd of capi tal i sm
fuelled by capi tal from somewhere else, out of
sight of any true producti on and based on weight
l ess specul ati on, i s nothi ng more than a market
l ure, an economi c aberrati on that l eads strai ght
to the dreaded systemi c cri si s - l i ke those hedge
funds whose accounts departments are exi l ed
these days i n ofshore havens, fscal paradises,
where they are managed by what ofen comes
down to some mi nuscule team that can work i n
an apartment, the specul ative fund havi ng no real
l egal status.
I nsecuri ty of territory, wi th the i mportance
of i sl ands, of ofshore venues and the evi dently
wani ng i mportance of, say, Swi tzerl and, along
with banki ng secrecy . . . I nsecurity of History,
whereby the accounti ng standard of the market i s
on t he poi nt of replacing t he hi stori cal standard
of the l i sti ng of stocks on the Stock Exchange
. . . Tese are all so many cl i nical symptoms of
the ' futuri sm of the i nstant' and of its i mpact on
economi c i ntell igence in the age of an ecologi
cal di saster whose scope never stops spreadi ng i n
broad dayl ight .
I n a recent i ntervi ew publ i shed i n t he Sunday
Times, the chairman and CEO of Gol dman
Sachs, Lloyd Bl ankfei n, declared: ' I ' m j ust a
banker doi ng God' s work. ' Cl early, thi s partic
ul ar God i s no l onger hopi ng for much from
hi s fai thful proft-worshi ppers, the investors to
whom the Messiah of fnance coul d sti l l say, on
account of the abundance of thei r specul ative
fai th: 'Go, your fai th has saved you! '
Actually, the credi t crunch, the crisis of
1
5
confdence, that has hi t the stock exchanges of
the Si ngl e Market, i s j ust an early-warni ng sign
of a true ACCI DENT IN KNOWLEDGE that
i s about to strike an 'exact' science which has
recently turned i nto a technosci ence of i nstru
ment al efci ency that bears no rel ati onship to the
knowl edge we' ve acqui red over the course of the
ages. Tat technoscience' s sophisti cated math
ematical models and sofware don' t dissi mul ate
al l that wel l the systemi c catastrophe of a sci
ence that has no consci ence, a science that no
l onger even sees the warni ng symptoms of i ts
own decl i ne and especi ally not the l i mi ts i t has
now reached i n i ts di scoveri es - at once atomi c,
i nformati c and geneti c. More than anythi ng el se,
the ' digital ci vi l izat i on' so ofen trumpeted marks
a return to numerol ogi cal pagani sm and its cul ts
of yore.
Actually, the world of the pharaohs of fnance
i s not fat as they clai m. I t i s mi ni scul e, i nfni
tesi mal - j ust l i ke the degree zero of a techni cal
Progress that woul d no l onger fool anyone, wi th
out i ts propaganda. So, with the breaki ng and
ent eri ng i nto the i nstant, the fractal i zati on of hi s
torica TEMPO, the NANOTECHNOLOGI ES
behi nd the real i ty efect open up the unheard
16
of possi bi l i ty of trumping the economi c with
the astronomi c. When that happens, the sci
ence of the ecol ogical habitat wi l l really shake
up the habitus of societies once settled in seden
tary fashi on, wi th the routi ne nature of our dai l y
ti metabl es, our emploi du temps, bei ng totally
abol i shed. Te ACCELERATI ON of fows of all
ki nds will then suppl ant - thi s time for good -
the hi stori cal ACCUMULATI ON of stocks of
weal th, of goods once housed i n that reservoi r,
the ci ty of men.
I f thi s were efectively t o happen, t he current
del ocal izati on of producti on woul d i n no way l ead
to some future rel ocal izati on of activi ty, i ndus
t ri al or otherwise. I t woul d l ead to a defni tive
EXTERNALIZA TION - OUTSOURCI NG
- of the urban race, right here on thi s t i ny tel
l uri c planet - until salvati on came i n the
form of some other 'promi sed l and' , thi s one
EXOPLANETARY, the singl e-fl e exodus of
the bi bl ical epi c yi el di ng to the l ooped exodus
of a ci rcus prophesi ed, i n a way, by the ci rcul ar
accel erator i n Geneva!
Te vi rtual otherworl of cybernetics is, in fact,
nothi ng more than the anachroni sm of an other
time, in which the cri tical space of Mandel brot' s
1
7
' fractal s' 1 merges with the criti cal i nstant of a
fndamental l y uni nhabi tabl e conti nuum. Tat
conti nuum i s j ust the anamorphosi s of the prac
ti cal real i ty of a forgotten topography, si nce the
repeti ti on of all our movements, as wel l as of a
nati on' s acti ons (thei r pol i t ical l i t urgy) , regi sters
a l ot more forci bly in the domici l i ary fxi ty of
' sedentary man' than i n the headl ong rush, the
forced exi l e, of unbri dled 'nomadism' . Hence the
urgency of a questi on that is now central or, more
precisely, termi nal : the questi on of the nature of
I NERTIA, i n the age of the revol uti on i n i nforma
ti on and the apparently unremarked transference
of the FIXED-PROPERTY i nerti a associ ated
wi th the real estate of PLACES - LIEUX- to the
POLAR i nerti a of CONNECTIONS LIENS.
For, twenty-frst-centur i nteractivity now domi
nates t he standardizati on of behavi ours and
activi ti es that characterized both the ni neteenth
and twenti eth centuri es. And that domi na
ti on entai l s an i ncreased ECOSYSTEMIC ri sk
of paralysi s or, rather, the sudden tetraplegi a
of a soci etal body whose perpetual moti on i s
1 Paul Virilio, L 'Esptce critique. Paris: Christian Bourgois,
19
84.
18
frozen i n each of i ts l i mbs and whose structural
unemployment is now a sel f-ful fl l i ng prophecy.
Tis mass unempl oyment i s forced on us partly
by the automati on of posti ndustri al producti on
and partly by the automati on of refex acti ons
i n our now outrageously speeded-up emploi du
temps, our agenda. Tat is the i mpetus behi nd
the much-touted threat of rel aunchi ng the worl d
economy - except that, thi s ti me, such a relaunch
woul d be wi thout any emploi du temps whatso
ever and woul d occur wi thi n the cyberneti c space
defned by the i nerti a of the propi ti ous i nstant
- the right moment - for supernumerary man, a
man deci dedly wi thout qual i t i es . . .
I n the Uni ted States, for i nstance, the drop
i n the wage bill i n the last quarter of 2009, cou
pled with an unchanged l evel of activity, does
i ndeed signif that Aerican frms are i mprov
i ng productivi ty - but only to the detri ment
of empl oyment. Tat fact dearly poi nts to a
future dei ndusrri alizat i on of nati ons, as a prel ude
to whi ch the current del ocal izati on of frms i n
favour of l ow-cost empl oyees is nothi ng more
than an earl y-wari ng sign of the spread of auto
mati on. Tomorrow, the robotics of arti fci al
i ntelli gence and i ts ' enhanced real ity' wi ll take
1
9
on the bul k of productivity i n a resol utely post
modern worl d.
I n t he face of thi s assessment of afai rs and for
want of a pol i ti cal economy of speed and not j ust
of the weal th of nati ons, the ' speed box' (gear
box) of techni cal progress wi l l go i nto automati c
mode and the stock market crash brought on
by specul ati on wi l l end, sooner or l ater, i n the
crash of all job producti on. Te fturism of the
i nstant requi res it and will force i t tomorrow on
the generati ons to come.
HERE i s no more. Everythi ng i s NOW, and
the HIC ET NUNC of days gone by i s about to
di sappear completely from the horizon of his
tory. I n his recent vade-mecum, French publ i c
i ntel l ectual , economi st , banker and top-ti er con
sul tant, Jacques Attal i recommends ' l i vi ng every
moment to the hi l t as though i t was the l ast'.
Attali even goes as far as declaring that, 'Si nce
ti me is the onl y really rare commodi ty, it i s
now t he onl y one worth bei ng saved. ' Tat i s
why, he reckons, i t i s urgent 'to focus on every
i nstant' . 1
I Jacques Attali, Survivreaux crises. Paris: rayard, 2009.
20
A symbol of a fatal i nerti a, this verbati m
account i l l ustrates perfectly the i nexorabl e nature
of thi s del i ri ous futuri sm that deconstructs all
chronol ogy and, with it, the mel ody l i ne of hi s
tory as wel l as the great narrati ve of our common
memor. Ti s i s what real ly l i es behi nd France' s
recent spate of memori al l aws and t he growi ng
threat to terri torial i denti ty of a nati onal i ty that
i s no more sel f-evident, in the end, than the geo
pol i tical sovereignty of the l egi ti mate nati onal
state. And thi s, i n a gl obal ized world constantl y
traversed by i nternal exi l es in a dosed-ci rcui t
exodus of j ust- i n-ti me fows of peopl e that some
are al ready referri ng to as the mi grator ofensive
of sustai nabl e mobi l i ty i n the twenty-frst cen
t ury - TRCEABI LITY now bei ng i mposed on
each and every one of us. Ti s is why ' magneti c
portals' have been i nstal l ed i n ports and ai r
ports, al ong wi th 'smart corri dors' for passenger
i denti fcati on that are endowed with ful l -body
scanners to st ri p search al l those bodi es in end
l ess transi t . We all know that where there' s a wal l
there has to be a door; but the onl y real di fer
ence between thi s wall and the old forti fed wall
that surrounded a ci ty i s the vi rtual nature of the
contemporary encl osure of postmodern ti mes, as
2
1
wel l as the cl i ni cal radi ography deployed at the
main entrances of our current borders.
Ti s may hel p us to understand the reason
behi nd the Sarkozy government' s pl an for a
fut ure ' Museum of the Hi story of France' , whi ch
woul d be a sort of heal th cl i ni c for ti mes past
compl eti ng the one for ti mes present, memory of
whi ch fades so qui ckly now, wi th a real danger of
amnesia due to the fragi l e supports for the dead
memori es of our computers.
Ten agai n, l et' s not forget that the eteral
present of Ei nstei ni an relativity i s not the same as
the present that ruled the day, when l i ght was sti l l
di sti nct from darkness. I t i s the real i nstant, con
frmi ng what Di etrich Bonhoefer cl ai med l ast
cent ury: ' Technol ogy has declared war on the
day. '
Contemporary wi th the Bl i tz, that verdi ct
beauti fully defnes the probabl e transl ati on of the
' i l l umi ni sm' of the Anci ents' sun worshi p i nto
the ' i nstantanei sm' of the techno-worshi p of the
postmodern peopl e we' ve all become.
We' d actual l y do better to swi fly abandon the
grand i l l usi on of a future ' Muse urn of Hi story'
and substi tute, in its stead, a Mi ni stry of the
Ti mes, a great mi nistry of the rel ativi ty of both
22
the weather, Ie temps qu ' il fit, and of passi n
g
ti me, Ie temps qui passe, ti me now passi ng so
qui ckly. AEROPOLI TI CS woul d then cl everly
compl ete the CHRONOPOLI TI CS of the ti me
behi nd the GEOPOLITICAL i nteracti vit of
our real-ti me communi cati ons.
Tanks t o such admi ni strati on of durati on and
of t he ri me needed, Ie temps qu 'l faut, t o act
consci enti ousl y and not j ust i nteract with tel e
communi cati on tool s, the ecol ogy of the weather,
Ie temps qu 'l fit, woul d take on a ' natural ' i ntel
l igence rhar' s currentl y i n the process of bei ng
di scri mi nated agai nst , as though it were our
cl assed by the fears of the ' arti fci al ' i ntell i gence
of computer programs and handy software that
can do anythi ng, and soon, undo anythi ng . . .
Such a great mi ni stry of Ti mes Management
woul d manage the vi tal rhythms of the weather
and not j ust the envi ronment; it woul d be a mi n
istry of Space Management, overseei ng a space
that i s now exhausted not onl y i n irs bi odiver
si ty bur also i n irs chrono-diversi ty, with seasonal
shi fs in cl i mate bei ng erased, as well as in i ts
geo-diversity, wi th the di ferences i n and extent
of country l andscapes bei ng si mi l arly erased. For,
the pol l uti on of ti me di stances now compl etes
2
3
the pol l uti on of substances, water, ai r, fauna and
fora; and the current domi nati on of the real ti me
of exchanges over the real space of the conti
nents ends, as we see, i n i nerti a. More precisely, i t
ends i n the 'moment of i nerti a' of the i nteractive
CONNECTI ON (LIEN, an i nstant i nerti a that
wi l l shortly take over from the 'fxed-property
i nertia' of PLACES (LIEUX i n a sedentari ness
that, all the same, goes back all the way to ancient
ti mes.
In the face of thi s astronomical shatter
i ng of our emploi du temps, our dai ly regi men,
the shattering of a conti nuum that' s about to
go from bei ng postmoder to become ' posthi s
tori c' , we can l egi t i mately ask ourselves about
the INTEMPORRY amnesi a of techni cally
ori ented civil i zati on. Te proposed mi ni stry
of the rel ati vi ty that is restricted to our i ncred
i bly cramped pl anet would, i n fact, open up a
new avenue for hope, the hope of all owi ng for
the kairos, the right moment for acti on and not
j ust i nteractive reacti on - that future 'ghetto of
CONNECTI ON' i n a substancel ess addi ct i on
that wi l l soon suppl ant t he 'ghetto of PLACE'
of age-ol d sedentariness on a tel l uri c pl anet
that' s decidedly too smal l for technical progress,
j ust as i t is too smal l for the profts of a cap
i tal i sm unl eashed by the systemi c crash of the
NANOTECHNOLOGI ES of i nstantanei ty.
It al l ends, ul ti mately, i n the ' great l ockdown'
of Hi story, the unanti ci pated renai ssance of a
new form of sun worshi p, one requi ri ng sacri
fces that are not onl y human (soci ological} but
rural (ecol ogi cal ) . I n other words, i t ends i n
the i nevi table revival of the i l l umi ni sm of l ight
through the i l l umi nism behi nd the i nstantanei sm
of l ight' s l i mi t speed. Tat i s the new absol ute of
a god who dearly doesn' t pl ay di ce, but happi l y
dons the ri di cul ous cast-ofs of the ' Sun Ki ng' , or
of Jupi ter, god of the sky and of l i ght, but also
of thunder and l i ghtni ng - divi ni ty of thi s truly
stunni ng, and not j ust expl osive, i nstantanei ty
of a demandi ngly secul ar age. An age i n which
mono-athei sm outpaces the ni hil i sm behi nd
t he death of t he gods, with t he renaissance, the
new age, of a l ate form of sun worship in whi ch
the speed of el ectromagneti c waves l i ghts up,
through i t s radi ati on much more t han i t s rays,
the radi ant future of progressivi sm. Ti s tri umph
of mono-athei sm i s parti cul arly marked by the
constructi on in Geneva of a ci rcul ar (subterra
nean) cathedral , whi ch i s actually a
2
7 ki l ometre
2
5
racetrack, destined to di scover, at the end of the
race, ' God' s parti cl e' , the HADRON - at the ri sk
of endi ng in the obscuranti sm of a ' bl ack hol e' .
Such an acci dent in knowledge woul d no doubt
put an end to the demand for experi mental phys
i cs and thereby the exact sci ences, promoti ng
i nstead the eternal return of the magi cal thi nk
i ng of the Pythagoreans of the di gi tal and other
programmers of handy sofware that can do
anyhi ng.
So, i t' s all too easy to see that, with the latest el ec
tronic i l l umi ni sm, transhuman soci eti es of the
ani mal speci es are metamorphosi ng i nto hybri ds
of the pl ant speci es as they i n turn become
HELI OTROPI CAL and photosensi ti ve, ' obj ect
ori ented' through the frami ng of poi nt of view,
and captured by the i nterface-to-face confronta
tion of the mul ti pl e screens of an envi ronment
that' s suddenly gone i nteractive.
We mi ght now have a better sense of the havoc
wreaked by progress i n a KINEMATI C energy
of i nstantaneous transmissi on that has come to
compl ete the KINETI C energy i nvolved i n the
transport of bodi es i n the era of the i ndustri al rev
ol uti on that preceded the very recent i nformati on
26
revol uti on produced by tel ecommunicati ons. Te
ki nemati c energy i nvolved i n bei ng carried away
in the age of i nteractive synchroni zati on rounds
of the ' real ity efects' produced by the ki neti c
energy i nvol ved in the physical movement of
i ndi viduals, at hi gh speed.
'J ust-i n-ti me-zero-stock' : that sl ogan of l arge
scale commercial distri buti on today beauti full y
descri bes the mutation i n the i ni ti al form of i ner
tia, that of fxed-property settl ement, i nto a fnal
inerti a, that of the i nstant or, more precisely, the
' moment of i nerti a' i n the i nteractivity that now
defnes our rel ati onshi p wi th the worl d. A worl d
gl obal i zed by worl d t i me, thanks to the restrai ned
relativity of (i nstantaneous) exchanges. And thi s
rel ati vi ty l eads not only to Ei nstei ni an restri ct i on,
but also to the ecosystemi c reducti on of the t i me
di stances of t he star that carries us and supports
us (with greater and greater difcul ty) , the ori gi
nal ark, EARTH, whi ch the phenomenol ogi st
Edmund Husserl tol d us coul dn' t move, si nce
speed i s not a ' phenomenon' but the rel ati onshi p
between phenomena. For, the temporal compres
sion of imeracti vity is equival ent to the tel l uri c
contracti on of the pl anet of l iving bei ngs: thi s
i ncredi bly ' Down-to-Earth' star of t he QUI CK,
2
7
the l ive (vi, where the accel erati on of the
QUI CK, the swi ft (vite), i n the VOI D (vide),
has now become the pri mary i ssue for an ecol ogy
that i s pol i ti cal - not transpol i ti cal , as those pure
di sci pl es of the cul t of the speed of l ight i n the
vacuum (vide) of deep space, the i l l umi ni sts of
the Last Day, woul d l i ke to have us bel ieve.
I n the end, the maj or i ssue for the thi rd mi l
l enni um i s i ndeed the issue of the regi me of
peri odicit i n an 'aeropol i tics of ti me' that woul d
not, al l the same, negate the geopol i ti cs of the
origi nal settl i ng of the Earth and the CITY,
that has tured i nto a WORLD-CITY, THE
ORI GINAL ARK OF TOMORROW. Here, a
metaphor spri ngs to mi nd - of ocean navigati on,
wi t h the i nventi on of frst the mechani cal cl ock
and then the on-board chronometer.
If the sky is i ndeed a monumental cl ock, that
doesn't make it easy to deci pher, despite the com
pass and the sextant and ASTROLABE. For, i f
we can cal cul ate l ati tude by observi ng the hei ght
of stars above the horizon, l ongi tude, on the
other hand, can' t be veri fed except by consi d
eri ng the ti me di ference between two di ferent
poi nts on the gl obe. Tat requires the use of the
chronometer, whereas the 'wheel house hour-
gl ass' , very l i ke a speedometer, merely showed a
shi p' s speed, wi th the aid of a l og, that i nvi si bl e
l i fel i ne lyi ng submerged at the end of a pi ece of
stri ng, graduated i n knots. 1
Surely we can' t fai l to see the enormous ti me
di ference that exists, today, between our at once
unti mel y and i nteracti ve practi ces - practices
i nvolved in supersoni c transport and i nstantane
ous transmi ssi on - and our dai ly l i fe, now so
exausted, so deprived of the i nteral s of t i me
needed for refecti on and responsi bl e acti on. Ti s
i s t o say nothi ng of t he ' casi no economy' , that
i nfernal machi ne that i s i mpossi bl e to stop before
a SYSTEMI C CRS H, the shi pwreck of the
origi nal Ark, occurs, l eadi ng, thi s ti me, to a chaos
we can wel l i magi ne . . . A Chroni c UTOPIA, or
a topical UCHRONIA, as some people might
call the fut ure bi rth of a great Mi ni stry of the
Ti mes or, more preci sely, of the weather, le temps
qu 'l fait, and the ti me needed, le temps qu 'l
faut, here below, in the depths of a forecl osed
worl d. A world that woul d, i n the end, desere
thi s AERO POLITICS of the peri odi ci ty of what
1 Gilles Lapouge, La Ugmde de Ia gl1ie. Paris: Albin
Michel, 2009.
2
9
i s vi tal for chronophage soci eti es, keen to crash,
tomorrow, into the CI RCULAR ti me barri er
at the end of the tunnel of LI NEAR hi storic
i ty. CERN' s 'Great Hadron Col l i der' i n Geneva
has become the perfect symbol of a post modern
return of i ll umi ni s m, the i l l umi ni sm of the cul t
of l ight speed for a hi story operati ng i n a di ferent
t i me zone from all common real i ty.
So, if we can j ust hang on a l i ttl e whi l e l onger,
the known worl d of our memory mi ght wel l fade
from the control screens of Hi story and di sap
pear, seemi ngly i nadvertentl y.
30
Too Late for Private Life
Communism hasn't disappeared, it's
been privatized.
1hrius Oprea
Mode de vie ( l i festyle) and cardiac rhythms (heart
beats), mod de vitesse (speed mode) and technical
rhythmics ( techni cal cycl es) -that, in a nutshel l ,
is the question posed by the TEMPO of our
use of time and space i n a vi tal i ty that was once
run-of-the-mi l l but is now sufering from every
day l i fe's el ectro techni cal ARHYTHMIA whi ch
never stops rocking peopl e' s consciences.
lhe old cal endar-based systems of agrar
ian societies, their seasonal rhythms, have
l ong yielded to the systems and rhythms of
3
1
i ndustrialization and the mass population shifs
from the country to the towns. lhis process has,
by the same token, abol ished the remai nder of
the West' s Christian rituals, wi th publ i c hol idays
dwi ndling as the programmed end of l i fetime
empl oyment - the practice of open-ended work
contracts - spreads, along wi th structural unem
pl oyment. I t has reached the poi nt of pure and
simple el i mination of the weekly cycle now that
Sunday has been subverted as a day of rest and
the much-touted seven-days-a-week (7/7) made
i mperative.
Annual and seasonal not so long ago, weekly
and daily after that, this truly historic rhythmi cs
was to be given a fatal bl ow by the cybernetic
i nformation revol ution. For, the acceleration
of common real i ty swi ftly makes practical l ife,
everyday l i fe and not j ust social or famil y l i fe,
i mpossi bl e. lhis has recently resul ted i n the atom
ization, the sudden ' fractal ization' of social uni ts
whi ch, beyond the risks of ' communi tarianism' ,
entails the incomparably more serious risks of
an emotional SYNCHRONIZATION that wil l
l ead to a ' communism of afects' on the scale of
a pl anet reduced to nothi ng, where the real ti me
of 'cber' instantaneity wi l l , this ti me, fnally
3
2
overtake the real space of the time diferences
and time distances involved i n our indispensa
ble relationship wi th the world. Desocial ization
wi l l thereby extend peopl e's current mental and
emotional disorientation.
Media pressure al ready notoriously ends up
exposing the private l ives of select individuals,
pol i ticians, celebri ties, ' top-tier' sportsmen, even
of that avant-garde of progressivism, the present
ers of ni ghtly newscasts. Here, we might note,
the doping of television audiences is no longer
chemical but el ectro-optical and it has reached
the poi nt where the usual si mulation of the
virtual world of screens i s enhanced by the rhyth
mical excess of a sti mulation that mentally and
emotionally shakes people once so attentive to
the hours of the day and the months of the civil
year that successfully replaced the new year of the
historical calendar system and the holy year of
t he j ubi l ees of yore.
One particular presenter, a woman, put i t
this way: ' My obj ective i s to feel that I ' m always
al ive, to not become mummi fed. But I don' t
know i f I can keep up the pace for much l onger.
I know that i f I ' d worked less, I 'd have had
a second chi l d. That wi l l always be my great
33
regret. But current afairs are forever weari ng us
down. '1
Presenter, male or female- this denomi nation
is revelatory of the l atest of ' futurisms' : that of
the el ectrotechni cal dopi ng perpetrated by the
OMNI PRESENT instant that so rel entlessly
tortures former 'j ournal ists' , who've suddenl y
segued i nto ' i nstantaneists'. Tomorrow, i t wi l l
afect each and every one of us, transforming the
ordinary l i fe of sedentarized societies, here or
there, i nto an ' i nfra-ordinary' l i fe. For, the pho
tosensi tive inertia of viewers wi l l shortly cat<h up
wi th that of their favouri te presenters, the inertia
of the real instant of the newsfl ash standing i n for
the fxed-property inertia of their domici l iation.
'T1e del ocal ization of our use of space, l'mploi
de l'espace, will be doubled by disorientation i n
our use of time, l'mploi du temps, i n a dai l y l i fe
once given rhythm by the al ternation of days
and nights, and now shattered by the breaks i n
rhythm caused by an enti rely denatured acrobatic
vi tal i ty.
I t' s as if the end of l i fetime employment, wi th
1 'Audrey Pulvar en fourche une nouvelle vie', in Paris . \atch,
22 July 2009.
3
4
i ts very l ong durations and i ts professional con
strai nts, had suddenly mutated i n the face of
the disci pl i nary demands of the unforeseen, the
unexpected, of the 'j ust-i n-ti me' nature of tight
distri bution, for the very peopl e who are al ready
no l onger producers, actors of progress, but mere
onl ookers, consumers of the background noise
of an INTERREACTIVTY that takes the pl ace
of the I NTERMEDIATI ON of the empl oyees of
the not so distant past.
So, empl oyment as a way of l i fe, a mode de
vie, is superseded by l i fe as a user's manual , I
vie mode d'mploi, as Georges Perec would say,
for a new kind of provisional society, one exces
sively instrumental ized and endlessly i nci ted to
overreact to thi s or that signal , all the diverse
stimul i of a permanent state of al arm. In that
state, the instantaneity of what crops up unex
pectedly wi l l doubtl ess condi tion the p
tting
i nto a trance not of the ci tizen-soldier anymore
but of a ci tizen-subject, wi thin a ' social network'
that wi l l soon repl ace the network based on the
physical proxi mi ty of actual peopl e. Peopl e l i ke
our old nei ghbours, who we' d so ofen bump
i nto in the PLACES behind the SOCIAL
CONNECTIVITY of our past domici l i ary
3 5
i nertia. lhe private l i fe of each and every one of
us wi l l gradual l y yield to the overexposure of a
semi -publ i c l i fe where the i ntimacy available to
people general ly wil l be l i ke the intimacy enj oyed
by detainees under observation in pol ice custody.
For, the old CAMERA OBSCURA of panopti
cal surveil l ance turns out to have been nothing
more than a cl inical symptom of the imminent
obl i teration of any private l i fe.
Here, a further comment is needed. I n the
past, with the rule of Sai nt Benedict of Nursia,
the sequestration of the monastic order suc
ceeded the roaming of the wanderers of the
apostate, wi th the Roman Church distinguish
ing between CONTEMPLATIVE and ACTIVE
orders. Today, it would indeed seem that, for the
CORELIGIONISTS of social networking, the
same kind of l i ne is being drawn between a few
all egedly highly-skilled ' actives' and the anony
mous mass of ' contempl atives' , these Francisan
friars riveted to their screens the way monks were
once riveted to their breviaries, with our secu
lar but interconnected soci eties once and for all
sorti ng the sheep from the goats.
Here again, the (emotional) polar i nertia that
resul ts from instantaneity and synchronization
tends to suppl ant domicil iary inertia and the geo
graphic l ocal ization of a social body al ready in
a state of advanced decay where mass indivi du
al ism wreaks i ts havoc. For, the photosensi tive
i nertia of the mass of progress' s contempl atives
and the del ocalization of their activi ties are noth
i ng more than fatal signs of the disorientation in
what Perec would cal l the mode d'mploi of their
daily l i fe.
Here, too, comparison with the rel igi ous
orders is fruitfl . lhe l i turgy, ' the acts of the
peopl e' , contemporary wi th the third mi l l en
ni um, revives, as though in secret, the l i turgies
of the people of believers. But where the Church
of Christendom managed to create an equal i ty
based on Fai th wi thi n a wide diversity of l iving
conditions and spiri tual riches thanks to the stat
ics of deep-rootedness in fi xed property ( that of
the monastery, a true laboratory of the future
of our emploi du temps) , the dynamics of the
revol ution in transport, and especially in com
puter transmissi ons, has abol ished this form of
social uni ty - in favour of the synchronization
of common sensations. In this INTERCTIVE
COMMUNISM, the real instant of audiovisual
tel ecommunications dominates the al l -too-real
37
THE GRET ACCELERATOR
space of social communi cations, and the stand
ardization of rel igious beliefs and behaviours is
erased thanks to the si mul tanei ty of common feel
ing, wi th the ' communi ty of i nterests' shared by
all now yielding i ts pol iti cal primacy to this com
muni ty of emotion based on an i ndividual ism
that i s fundamental ly transpol i tical.
lhis phenomenon is further aggravated by the
evol ution of a cul ture and, wifly aferwards, a
true CULT OF EXCESS over the course of the
ni neteenth century and, especial ly, the twentieth,
wi th the acceleration of real i ty i tsel f ending i n
the dawn of a new form of madness, I flie d
voir. lhis entails having to see at all costs - to the
detri ment of heari ng, as wel l as of handling, of
touch, tactil i ty, as wel l as of contact.
On this score, i t's time for an anecdote, the one
about Ri chard Wagner putting his hands over his
girl friend, his l over, Mal vida's eyes, whi l e they
were l istening to Trstan and shouting at her:
' Stop looking so hard and l i sten! '
Ever si nce i ts Greco-Lati n origins, i n fact,
Western phi l osophy has been pri mari ly a phi
l osophy of visi on, of the vari ous kinds of l i ght
and the forms presented to searchi ng eyes. lhat
has produced today' s cul t, this technocul t of the
speed ofl i ght and of the waves that convey i nfor
mation that has now gone MEGALOSCOPIC.
I t is also what's behind the retinal persist
ence of an anachronistic fturism of whi ch the
NANOCHRONOLOGI ES are the latest avatar.
One wri ter has even gone so far as to claim that
' speed is the contemporary worl d's aristocracy'
- in a nutshel l , a ' raci ng nobi l i ty' , fol l owing on
from the court nobil i ty of the Ancien Regime.
But, to get backtothe European PHI LOFOLLY
of seeing, Westerners, and especial ly Latin
Europeans, l i ke Latin-Americans, need public
passions. After the great passion of tri umphant
Christiani ty, i t seems they opted for the great
passion of a Progress that was to end, last cen
tury, in the very brief passi on for speeding up the
history of the twentieth century. lhe l i mi t speed
of waves then stole a march on the weal th of
nations, whose end, whose defeat, ' Communism'
was supposed to mark, thanks to the cosmism
of escape veloci ty that enabled escape from ter
restrial gravi ty - fi rst by Sputnik, then by the
MI R station that signalled that cosmism's fai l ure
and disappearance. lhe TURO CAITALISM
of the Si ngle Market then took over i n the age
39
of i nternational economic integration thanks to
the very latest ' escape vel oci ty' , residing withi n
the domai n of cbernetics and anticipating the
deliverance, this time in the name of ecol ogy, of
a humani ty pol l uted by discovery of a habitable
EXOPLANET, free-market COSMOTHEISM
thereby fol l owing hot on the heel s of the social
COSMISM of the old Soviet Empi re.
I n fact, i t has only ever been one small step
from the mass portable empire to the otherworl d
exodus of populations - ' one smal l step for man
but a giant l eap for manki nd' , as Nei l Armstrong
once said, as he disembarked on the night star
a star or, more precisely, a nightspot, that some
would now l ike to see back on the agenda, despi te
President Obama' s rej ection of the idea.
One thing' s for sure and that is that i t's now
too late to have a private l i fe. Yesterday's ' soli tary'
crowds, who we' re told are now so ' smart' , are
nothing more than hordes primed for a l ong
haul exodus, OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD exi l e
beyond our earthly homeland, for the l i berated
and dispersed soci eties of the great diaspora,
deportation having been merely a fatal sign of
an ETERNALIZTION that has no future,
where movement is al l and the goal is pointless.
Nowadays, unl i ke i n the indus trial era of
manufacturing pl ants and factories analysed by
Marxism, we no l onger expl ore - we expel . We
also exterminate more and more frequently, the
STOP EJECT of those damned to exodus thereby
taki ng over from the STAND BY of yore!
Both the settl ing of the peasantry on the
land where i t all began and the fi xed-property
inertia of the ci ty-dweller are now being over
taken by the real instant' s devastating i nertia
or, more precisely, i ts moment of i nertia, in an
I NTERACTIVE simul tanei ty that shakes up
all settling down, any deep-rootedness. On that
score, note that the very frst l aw of urbanism is:
retention of the si te. At this stage in the history
of human, but also urban, settlement, ' terri torial
insecuri ty' is at an all-time high and the terri to
rial sovereignty of the l egiti mate nati onal state
is in danger of being lost forever in the face of
the HYPERCOLONIALIST threat posed by
sovereign weal th funds' grubby l and-grabbing,
monopol izing all l ands and their resources. 1he old
pol i tics of the droit du sol, the right to ci tizenshi p,
gives way al l of a sudden in the face of the exor
bitant privileges of a sort of AEROPOLITICS,
whi ch is not onl y ecol ogical but economic. 1his
is what l ies behind the droit du ciel, the right to
the sky, to heaven, to all the heavens and to the
virtual space of interconnected fi nancial markets,
wi th the high-frequency traders who engage in
fash trading here pl aying Russian roulette, every
day, wi th the fate of the world in a l ightning
war whose weaponry is provided by high-fying
(sic) cybernetic systems, the ol d sovereignty of
nations gradually disappearing. What shoots to
the fore instead is a MET A-GEOPHYSICAL
pol i tics for nations that are ' statel ess' , or as good
as, now that the correl igionists of humani ty's
SERVOMOTOR are j oining forces wi th those
of a computerized PANTHEISM. Gaia, the
Earth Goddess of tri umphant ecology, is al ready
a symptom of this.
Wi th the revol ution in the fi nancial industry
and i ts mathematical models leading to the sys
temic chaos we' re al l onl y too familiar wi th and,
in this age of an anthropocentrism that is wreak
ing havoc wi th our cl imates and causing whol e
peoples to go i nto exodus, we actual ly have no
choice but to look long and hard at the structural
energy of an anthropodynamics of the history
of humani ty i n which terri torial identity is in
danger of shortly being lost al together, now that
4
2
we're seeing the beginnings of a sort of instant
traceabil i ty of the social body as well as of each of
its members.
I f the aerostatic form of sedentary human
settlement was once geographical ly indexed,
the aerodynamic form of excl usion, and of the
epeled that now prevails over of the exploited of
ful l employment, is not indexed at al l .
Hidden behind freedom of movement and mass
tourism, the HABITABLE CIRCULATION
involved in the forced exil e of both the ' i nternally
displaced persons' of African states and the ' delo
calized persons' of developed countries meri ts
more than j ust a cartography now. I t meri ts a
constantly updated traj ectography - a sort of
PLANETARIUM of the fows of populations i n
permanent transit - i f we are to attempt to trace
this uncivil ized choreography of the excl uded,
whose mortal i ty rates never cease growing,
beyond the chaos in moral val ues, to the point of
extermination and genocide.
Here, a further comment springs to mind.
If the pol i tical engagement of the responsi
ble individual not long ago j oined forces wi th
the brand of engagement promoted by Sartrian
existentialism, we have to say that, in this era of
43
THE GRET ACCELERATOR
mass individualism of a COMMUNISM OF
AFFECTS that are synchronized, what prevails
is being carried away, l'emportement. lhis, i n both
the l i teral and metaphorical senses of the term: as
in the mobile and the portable, and in loss of sel f
control . lhe acceleration of real i ty is now part and
parcel of the loss of all sel f-control , when even the
accelerating history of hi storical materialism still
took i ts time - the time needed to get a sense of
past history as well as the time i nvolved i n a radi
ant future that Soviet cosmism would try to get
of the ground again once the USSR collapsed.
In this sense, the COSMOTHEISM that is
once agai n rampant i n the West, in tandem wi th
ecology and the desperate quest for an exoplan
etary refuge, takes us back to the astronautical
hall uci nations that so cleverly masked the evi
dent fail ure of ' progress' in the era of the balance
of atomi c terror between the great Eastern and
Western blocs.
By way of confi rmation, we might poi nt
out that, at the end of July 2009, the very frst
' I nternational Extraterrestrial Summi t' took
place in Barcelona. lhis was followed at the end
of August that same year by a beefed-up edi
tion of Operation Suricate, designed to track the
44
traj ectories of UFOs all over Europe, thanks to
hundreds of telescopes trained on the frmament,
i n a bid to correlate sighti ngs.
Speaking of the contemplative nature of contem
porary man, a j ournal ist j okingly put it this way:
' He's an exhi bi tionist who' s been placed under
observation in custody. '
Surrounded by hi s screens and subj ect to
video control and the discipline of programs,
as well as to the rules of i nteractivi ty, this new
PHOTOSENSITIVE being turns i nto a consent
ing victim of a progress that amputates his private
l i fe, wi th electro-optical addiction to i nformation
more and more al ienating him from his sense of
sel f.
Hence the deni al of engagement per se (poli ti
cal , syndi cal ist . . . ) in favour of an emportement
getting carried away, rage - that only mass
i ndividual ism has the knack of, where once col
lectivism merely imposed engagement, the fact of
having onl y one party facil i tating the lack of any
' conscientious obj ection' !
lhe inertia of the photosensi tive onlooker thus
corresponds to the mutation of the traveller and
45
the fi1rtive gliding of a mode of private ' auto
mobi l e' transport, that mode of publ ic transport
involved in the mass exodus of interconnected
individual ities.
Wi th naval or aeronautical BULK CARERS,
GROS PORTEURS, or, better sti l l , MERES
PORTEUSES, surrogate mothers carryi ng out
gestation for others, the constant expansion of
the carrying capaci ty of our vari ous vehi cl es does
indeed fag the sudden shi ft in travel , whi ch was
sol i tar not so l ong ago but wi l l soon be embarked
on (embedded) communally as we head to uncer
tain destinations where speed becomes a ki nd of
destiny.
,
Here, we might note a new type of highly
manoeuvrable transport plane that is particul arly
revelatory of the coming revol ution in haul age.
lhe SKYLANDER, manufactured i n France, is
a veri table LAND ROVER of the sky, capabl e of
operating i n difcul t conditions and hostile envi
ronments, wi th maxi mum payloads and fight
ranges. Canada's TWIN OTTER, said to be a
' rustic aircraft', is also a versatile twin-engine tur
boprop that can take on freight or passengers as
required in conditions of rudimentary comfort,
where passengers travel standing up, l i ke cattle in
a cattle truck, whil e awai ting further, even more
radical , devel opments.
But l et's get back to the case of the 'surrogate
mother', so brilliantly analysed by the French phi
losopher Sylviane Agacinski . 'Tis living tool this
metabolical vehicle, ' trivial izes pregnancy, which is
reduced to si mpl e foetal transport, certain women
now even being seen as akin to chartered planes
that can efect a sort of co-cartage for others' . 1
lhese are all so many panicky signs of the
imminent end of a private l i fe deprived of all
' fl ial ' identi ty, from bi rth on; and when we come
of age, we can expect to see ourselves deprived
also of any ' terri torial ' identi ty, in situ, by the
biopoli tical requirement of unending 'social '
traceabi l i ty. lhe imperatives of ecologi cal secu
rity in this l atest LEBENSRAUM wil l also
necessi tate the same control over distribution to
the detriment of stocks and of the historical accu
mulation of civil l aw and the ' rights of man' that
sti l l , until recently, prevailed. lhis is why we're
seeing the gradual disappearance of sel f-control
and the medical evacuation, by airlift, of the old
1 Sylviane Agacinski, Cors e miettes. Paris: Flammarion,
2009.
47
way ofl i fe, wi th i ts customary urbani ty followi ng
on from peasant l i fe, that l i fe l ived from day to
day, to the rhythm of the seasons, i n a way the
nanochronological acceleration of the interactive
i nstant no l onger al l ows.
Over the course of the 1 920s, wri ter Joseph Roth
sensed the deeper signifcance of the styl e of
archi tecture known as ' the i nternational styl e' ,
i n whi ch the cul l i ng of ornament, as wel l as of
vol umes, came wi th the hygi enist myth of maxi
mum sunl i ght and transparency for housing. lhe
SHOP WI NDOW was poi sed to be raised i nto
a GLASS BUI LDI NG, causi ng al l i ntimacy to
be l ost to inhabi tants overexposed to the eyes
of al l , the l oss of the temporal beari ngs of daily
l i fe being accompanied by a disori entation i n the
rhythms of l i fe. lhe l i ghting of towns, at night,
was to be further rounded of by the el i mi na
ti on of l oad-beari ng wal l s, wi th the ' curtai n wal l '
and automatic bl i nds serving as shutters for the
' cameras l ucidas' of an era in whi ch the snapsho
t
would shortly overcome the hold of l ong-term
durations and the purely piomotional MEDIA
BUI LDI NG woul d even i l l uminate the publ i c
space of the ci ty, as i n Times Square.
Wi thin this same order of ideas of a coming
' post-i ntimac' , we might note how joint tenancy
is gradually turning into a mode of coexistence
these days. For often qui te di ferent reasons, then,
we are seeing the revival of the Sovi et utopia of the
' communal household' and the shared apartment
- these so-cal led SOCIAL CONDENSERS for
which the futurist archi tect, Mel nikov, provided
the theory.
Trough economic necessi ty, given the costs
of renti ng, people now boast on the Internet of
the concept of a ' uni t of col l ective l i fe' , as the
Partage-Senior (Shari ng for Seniors) Associ ation
i ndicates: 'A mixed nest of four or five people and
what you get i qui te a di ferent ambi ance where
j oi nt tenants feel freer.'
A woman who runs a similar association goes
as far as tel l i ng j ournalists that: 'Joi nt tenancy is
the worl d' s best anti-depressant . '
Other organizations go even further i n this
disorientation of the ol d way of l i fe, ofering a
' l i fe plan aboard a sai l i ng shi p' tail ored to seniors
who might fancy an open-ended trip around the
world . . . Between container ships, where i l l egal
immigrants stow away at the risk of their lives,
and these l uxury cruises for tourists of desolation,
49
who fri tter away the i nheri tance so they can l ive
permanently on an ocean l i ner si nce that turns
out to be l ess expensive in the end than a decent
retirement home, there is all the di ference i n
the world - the di ference between the head
long Hight of the desperate and sheer ambul atory
madness.
I n the same category of gyration as that per
formed by the GYROW A YES of exodus, these
new wandering monks of no fxed abode, we
might ci te an eccentric practice that typifes the
new form of travel for peopl e in endless transit.
Couch surfng i s a mode of hospi tal i ty that con
sists in ofering free accommodation i n your own
home to travell ers met over the Internet. Wi th
these j oi nt tenants for a night, the guest room
turns into a room in a guest house for strangers.
To travel , to comb the worl d wi thout havi ng
to part wi th any cash thanks to hi tch-hiking and
some couch-surfer network - that was the aim of
an ideal ist i ni tiative l aunched i n 1949, afer the
Second World War, by Gary Davis, that apostle
of a global ized ci tizenshi p which has today been
cunni ngly diverted from i ts peaceful obj ectives.
Hotelier or Hospitaller of the Net? Wi th couch
surfng, the bl urri ng of genres is clear. Inti macy,
50
THE GREAT ACCELERTOR
once sought out of a sense of propriety, seems to
be mistaken for conceal ment, as though of some
shameful disease . . .
Al l this reproduces fai rly fai thfully the excesses
of telesurveillance, i ni tially l i mi ted to the space
of streets and other pl aces of transi t, then i ntro
duced i nto the common parts of bui ldings, car
parks or entrance halls.
Here agai n, the transparency of public space
fol l owed by private spaces leads to the transap
pearance of the i ntercom, or securi ty phone, and
i ts camera.
Another example of this i s the recent growth
in the MEGAOSCOPY of Google Earth,
wi th i ts research engine, Google Maps, aiming
to visual ize the entire worl d. Fol l owing the use
of observation satel l i tes, the fi rm i s devel oping
Google Street, usi ng a special ized car in street
by-street reconnaissance of cities - and setting
of a whole debate on respect for private l i fe i n
doi ng so. In the face of resistance at local coun
cil l evel, Google decided to launch Street View,
using bi cycles that are each equipped wi th a GPS
and cameras to fl m France and other countries.
lheir incredibly diverse landscapes will then be
digitized to feed Googl e' s giant mappi ng proj ect.
51
Why don' t we take this deadly OVER
EXPOSURE of private l i fe that
s now spreading
as far as the eye can see j ust a l i ttle bit further?
I magi ne that, fol l owi ng on from the fxed cam
eras set up at maj or i ntersections to ensure road
trafc safety or at the entrances to buildings to
ensure securi ty, couch surfng is al ready taking
us to the next, the ul timate, l evel of revel ation.
lhis is where the Google Home inspector turns
up on your doorstep, covered in portable cameras
designed to reveal to all and sundry the l evel of
comfort of the bathrooms on ofer to l ow-budget
tourists beneftting from the hospi tal i ty of the
I nternet's social networks!
' The acceleration of History is disturbing. We're
forced to cal l ourselves i nto question much more
routinel y than i n the past. [ @ @ @ ] lhe shifi ng
present causes great anxiety. Our sense of the
everyday is swept away by a feeling of inevitabil
i ty. lhat feeling amounts to a kind of col l ective
depression. ' So said Nathalie Kosci usko-Morizet,
France's then Secretary of State for Strategic
Planni ng, in the summer of 2009. But talking of
'depression' isn' t saying much. Wherever accel
eration of the reali ty of the moment prevai l s over
52
accel eration of the history of the famous ' shiftipg
present' , what is cal led i nto question, at every
instant, is the real presence of people and things
that, only yesterday, seemed to l astingly surround
us. As an elderly friend, whose young wife never
stopped travel l ing, sadly confessed to me once:
' She doesn' t travel to forget she's j ust used to not
.
,
seemg me anymore.
Wi th the exodus of societies that have once
again become dispersed, travel is a form of widow
hood or widowerhood that encourages each and
every one of us to no longer see what once tied us
to, rooted us i n, a common past, country, neigh
bourhood, neighbours, family or spouse. lhis is
also what the end of private l i fe is, this endless
translation of the i nti macy of the sedentary home
body i nto the extimac of transportation whreby.
the traveller is not so much a new nomad as a pas:
senger i n the middle of getting a divorce, caried
away by the inevi tabi l i ty of everyday exil e .
.
. .
To try to facil i tate reconciliation proceed ings,
a company in Brussels cal led Fasten Seat Bel ts airs
on airport screens a series of video cl ips in enty
languages. lhe cl ips are designed to make . 'good
manners' easier to achieve in foreign couhtries,
wi th j ust a few key phrases . . . As the woian
5
3
in charge of the proj ect poi nts out: ' I t' s funny,
peopl e are travel l i ng more and more, but some of
them behave exactly as they do at home. 1hey' re
always in shorts and thongs and only speak their
native language. ' 1
No one really travels; i n fact, they fee, they
escape a hated, stressful daily gri nd. lhe ol d
HOME OF ONE' S OWN is now ON ONE,
i n the panoply of communi cating obj ects, el ec
troni c tri nkets, that you carry away wi th you, i n
thi s amicable divorce of repeat delocal izati on.
Is thi s due to the i ncrease i n l i fe expectancy?
We mi ght note, whatever the case may be, that
the divorce rate for people sixty years and older
has risen by close to 30% for women and 40% for
men. Also accordi ng to France' s lnstitut nationale
detudes demographiques ( I NED) , i t' s worse for
people in their fi fies, as the rates have practi cal ly
doubled.
Here again, we noti ce the same acceleration
as wi th publ i c transport: for some, it' s a case o
supersoni c and shortly hypersupersoni c fi ght; for
others, express divorce. Si nce 4
5
% of marriages
now end i n divorce, we may a wel l simpl if
1 Le Monde, 1 6 Au
g
ust 2009.
54
THE GRAT ACCELERATOR
the usual procedure straight away and make the
break of l oad between spouses even faster and
cheaper with a l aw that specifcal ly combats the
i nertia of husbands and wives, l ow-cost divorce
trivi alizing the fami l y saga of yore. lhat' s why
Rachida Dati ' s l ast proj ect, as Keeper of the Seals
and Mi nister of Justice, was to reform divorce
so that a coupl e can now separate, subito presto,
simply by coming before their notary. 1
All of this maes i t feel as though, by end
l essly shrinkng - l i ke the ti mes i nvolved i n the
' turnover rate' from movi ng in to movi ng out
- marriage i s starti ng to l ast about as l ong as
what occurs i n ' pl ay-acti ng' , the ' edutai nment'
practice that i s now nothing more than the stag
i ng of the contemporary l oss of all sense of real i ty
i n this age of telecommuni cations and the instant
del ocalization they trigger.
Addiction to constant travel , l ike addiction
to changi ng partners, is now part of the i l l usory
nature of the autonomy of the ol d way of l i fe, the
fashi on for coaches taking over from the fashi on
for the spiri tual advisers of rel igious orders or the
master thinkers of totali tarian mi l i tantism.
I Libbation, 18 Au
g
ust 2009.
5 5
A striking example of this shift in commu
nal sedentariness can be seen, right now, in the
impact of the Internet on monastic life, particu
larly in women's convents where, to date, only
25 of France's surviving 270 monasteries are still
resistant to using the WEB- despite 'the under
hand imposition of a new pace of communication
that is slipping into the spirit of monastic time',
as a Cistercian monk from Hauterive points out.1
Yet everyone insists on the essential discrimi
nation of each monk: '1he material enclosure is
not an absolute; it is a means. 1he main question
is rather: how to experience the relationship to
the world (to the whole world instantaneously).
1he Internet forces us to have another look at our
borders and to internalize that enclosure.'2
1he WEB, in fact, potentially opens all the
doors and steps through all the gates of the monas
tic enclosure. Which is why the Benedictines of
Bec-Hellouin Abbey took the initiative of organ
izing a session on the subject in the autumn of
2009.
As Dom Notker Wolf primate of the order,
1 L Croi, 7 October 2009.
2 Ibid.
noted: ' Detachment, silence and sol i tude,
or else: the cul ture of CONNECTI ON and
EVERYfHING, NOW. lhere is no more space
to wai t i n, no more space in whi ch to desire the
i nfni te. In this cul ture, wai ting is always neg
ative. . . . I t means wai ting for the end of an
operation and not for an encounter. ' Apropos the
contemplative l i fe of the convent, he concl udes:
' We shouldn' t so much regulate things based on
virtual cul ture, but on monastic cul ture. ' 1
I t's poi ntl ess t o add here that t he sedentariness
of this spiri tual cul ture matches, in all respects,
the sedentariness behind the customary urbani ty
of the ci ty and of the fi xed settlement of popula
tions that were once nomadi , l ike the monks of
earl ier orders - the rule of Saint Benedict. lhose
monks were also nomadic (rovague) and subj ect
to unforeseen events in a meandering that was
conducive to all kinds of deviant behaviour, con
templation for them being j ust a sol i tary form of
prayer.
Lastly, we might mention that, once he was
back fr<m the concentration camps, Primo Levi
would spend hours in front of his computer
I lbid.
57
screen without wri ting, or at his mother's bed
side, wai ting for night and the release of sleep,
tell i ng hi s fri ends and family over and over agai n,
before throwing hi msel f down the stairwell of his
home and killing hi msel f: 'Tis is worse than at
Auschwi tz. ' 1
lhe end of private l i fe i s a new kind of poverty
in terms of ' living conditions' and not j ust ' the
cost of living' anymore. lhe contemporary drop
in soci al standing implied by the emergence of a
community of synchronized emotions turns i nto
a disafliation at once both familial and social
that will eventually go ' national ' and fnally ' ter
ritorial ' , with the undermi ning of the PlACE as
well as the CONNECTION of common l i fe.
Right now we are seeing the frst signs of a dis
afliation that is ani mat wi th the bl urri ng of
MASCULINE and FEMI NINE genders inaugu
rating an i mmi nent DEMATERNALIZATION
of women. No doubt that wi l l end, tomorrow,
in the disconnection of reproduction from the.
human race, a future ' post-sexuali ty' that will
I Ernesto Ferrero, Pimo Levi. L ecrivain au microscope. Paris:
Liana Levi, 2009.
;8
supposedly be so li berating for women as well
as for their incredi bly cumbersome pregnancy.
lhe industrialization of life will then take over
where the industrialization of death left of, in the
camps where one Dr Mengele reigned supreme,
incredi bly preoccupied as he was with twin births
and cloning.
I n fact, the notion of a cri me against humani ty,
elaborated nearly a century ago, no longer excl u
sively concerns the extermination of all or part of
the human race - along the lines of the clinical
genocide perpetrated by the Nazis, or even the
atomic geocde of the Cold War period, with its
balance of terror. It more simply concerns the
ultimate endangering of our daily routines, of a
'way of life' that was, i n the end, quite ordinar. I n
the near fture, i f we' re not carefu
l
, this wi
l
l
l
ead
to a vital ity made fundamentally uninhabitable
by
the excessiveness of an oppressive eagerness,
a l i fe without a ' user's manual ' , in the words of
Georges Perec, an INFR-ORDINARY vivacity
- until biodiversity of the human kind is fnally
exhausted.
To ill ustrate this probable DISLOCATION
in daily li fe, we mi ght cite a case brought before
the industrial tribunal of Oyonnax, a town in the
59
Ain region of France. I n 2009, the tribunal had
to examine a compl ai nt ' for a violation of the
right to a fami l y l i fe' brought by the employees
of the ED supermarket, fred for refusing to work
on Sundays, fail ure to observe working hours and
insubordination. lheir l awyer put it this way:
' Since there is no case l aw deal ing with working
on Sundays, we' ll base our case on a rul ing of the
fi nal Court of Appeal whi ch says that, for night
work, the salaried empl oyee needs to have signed
an agreement. ' She concl udes, ' I t will actual l y
be particul arly interesting to see if the industrial
tri bunal recognizes the RIGHT TO A FAMI LY
LI FE as a higher principl e than the right to paid
work. ' 1
Day and night, al l through the week and on
Sundays, twenty-four hours a day, seven
.
days a
week . . . that's a way of l i fe that has no di rec
tions for use, no mode d'mploi, other than
the repetition of repeti tive processes. After the
forced l ocalization of the age of de-industriali
zation, forced dislocation is getting under way
to the rhythm of a Progress now openly unnatu
ral . Meanwhil e, the case would seem tri cky to
1 La Cri, 16 October 2009.
6o
plead as the ' right to refuse' , to ' civil conscien
ti ous obj ection' , has scarcely any reali ty as a legal
entity.
Being suicidal was once a psychol ogical state,
but i t can consequently turn soci ological , when
we deregulate the way we regulate time and
i ts rhythms, their mode d'mploi, to the point
of causing anxiety, the permanent anguish of
communi ties, as is al ready happening i n telecom
munications companies where the harm done by
stress has become fatal .
'We must insist that the fture does not
bel ong to fear' , President Obama told the Uni ted
Nations in his address of September 2009. He
was talking about the maj or risks of nuclear pro
liferation. But, more i nti mately, this statement
should also apply to the issue of our mode de
vie, our way of l i fe, the everyday l i fe of a period
marked by precariousness and the instabi l i ty
of the TEMPO driving l ocal communities i n
the gri p of the fear caused by the devastati ng
progress i n i nteractive technology. Tat progress
is nothing more than the progress of a del iriously
bustl ing eagerness, not to say a col l ective rage,
tri ggered by a sudden pani c that's turned i nto a
PANDEMIC. A pandemic that has everything
6r
to do wi th the real i ty efect of accel eration of
i nformation and i ts sudden demands. For, the
I NSTANTANEITY of the disarray of each one
of us wil l soon contaminate the way of l i fe of al l .
So, after the rise of MI LITARY DETER
RENCE and i ts fal l at the end of the col d war,
it would seem that the ' col d panic' of a worl d
overexposed to maj or risks is beginning to be fel t.
These risks i ncl ude not onl y bl ind terrorism but
al so ecology and, especially, a tyranni cal pol i tical
economics, wi th the temptation, for certain fans
of ' personal space' , of l aunchi ng what would this
time amount to CIVIL DETERRENCE. lhe
governance of publ i c fear would then shif from
the battlefi el d of the past to the marketpl ace. I n
other words, to an everyday l i fe that wi l l soon be
made impossible, ravaged as i t is by the ' domestic
terror' of each and every instant; the excess speed
of the dashing tasks to be performed taking over
from the crashes once involved in road accidents.
Isn' t there al ready talk, here and there, of
the future requirements for a SUSTAI NABLE
MOBI LITY that wi l l best ensure sustainable
devel opment? Big fans of management through
stress, certain CEOs even cl aim that ' we can
no longer l et immobil ity set i n' , suggesting
that the ' TIME TO MOVE' doctrine should
be imposed throughout the global ized business
fi rm. Everywhere you look, the ' broadband' of
telecommunications is contaminating the use to
which we put the week, i ts mode d'emploi, wi th
the el i mination of Sunday as a day-of fol lowed
by the elimination of the daily interruption of
l unch. Imposition of the JUST-IN-TIME con
tinuous day anticipates the inertia of the fatal
instant and the unstoppable ofensive of the
NANOCHRONOLOGIES, along the l i nes of
the ' l ightning crash' of 6 May 2010, when the
wal l ofW al l Street suddenl y crashed into the wal l
of money, the MONEY BARRIER, at precisely
2. 25 pm.
Afer the continuum (of terrestrial spacetime),
til l now seen as the adustment variable of our
various activi ties, the dromospheric pressure
of technical progress now afects individual i ty
throughout the whol e panoply of populations
subj ect to the death throes of instantaneous inter
activi ty. For, this l atest tyranny suddenl y becomes
the ultimate variable in a demographic adj ust
ment of proft. Te quanttative Malthusianism
of the past is now coupled wi th a qualitative
Malthusianism, whereby the usuaJ ethnic racism
wi l l be rounded of by an ' Ol ympic' racism.
Sports competitions and the feats of the l atest
'stadi um gods' will then abandon the podium
for an on-the-spot race, opting for the inertia of
those that telecommunications have l ocked up
al ive - i n other words, the victims of electronic
doping: the doping carried out by the cybernetic
futurism of the global governance of humani ty.
lhis is the reason for the successive disaflia
tions mentioned above, wi th the probable decl ine
i n pol i tics and the geopol i tics of pl ace as wel l as
of social connection, in sit and hie et nunc, in
favour of simul tanei ty and i ts teleobj ective ubiq
uity. It is also the reason for the ' progressive'
externalization of connections of all kinds and
the repeti tive delocal ization of common space
and publ ic services - in other words of the demo
cratic city, as we l earned about it through the
history of settlement.
And so, afer the disintegration of matter
through nuclear fission, we are now l ooking
on, powerless or as good as, at the early stages
of the disintegration of the historical transition
of past time and at the fusion/ confusion of the
sharehol der in this COMMUNI ON OF THE
SAINTS ofi nteractivi ty's global brain. lhe social
body suddenl y metamorphoses i nto a sort of
mystical body of humani ty perfected, wi th the
DROMOSPHERE of acceleration standing in,
in extemis, for the NOOSPHERE, the sphere
of human thought of God' s elect, according to
T eilhard de Chardin, himsel f a victim of the great
' brainwashing' of the propaganda of Progress .
6;
Te Great Accelerator
Arrival of ol d, you wi l l go everyhere.
Ri mbaud, ' To a Reason'
Ci rcui t, short-ci rcui t - there i s no ci rcus wi th
out a ci rcl e, the kukloJ of Anci ent Greece and
the Olympi c cyclades of the accel eration of ol d!
In 2009, a year afer the l aunch, i n the middl e
of the economi c cri si s, of the Great Accelerator,
that CATHEDRL bui l t by CERN i n Geneva,
a ci rcul ar TEMPLE bui l t for the l ast l ap of the
Formul a 1 worl d champi onshi p opened i n Abu
Dhabi - that i s, i n the mi ddl e of the desert .
Speed of light for the fans of physi cs and of
the HADRON, the parti cle known as ' God' s
pani cl e' and sought i n vai n even then, CERN' s
66
col l i der havi ng broken down . . . Light of speed for
the designers of the Abu Dhabi racetrack accord
i ng to whom ' thi s ci rcui t i s the onl y one i n the
worl d designed so spectators have a fl l vi ew' , the
DROMOLOGICAL prowess so vai nly sought
by the physi ci sts of the i nfni tely smal l was cou
pled here - one year l ater - wi th a prowess that
i s DROMOSCOPI C, by supporters of the i nf
ni tely bi g of the spectacl e of accel erati on. Tis, at
a ti me when the automobil e was bei ng 'scrapped' ,
i n France, i n a bi d t o restart an i ndust ry that ' s i n
the dol drums . . .
' I f ti me i s money, you might as wel l gai n both! '
Ti s sl ogan of a l ow-budget ai rl i ne company
coul dn' t better descri be the current state of mi nd
for addi cts of a great fnancial casi no, which i s
itsel f i n crisis. On II J une 201 0, i t i mposed on
Wall Street a CI RCUI T-BREAKER system for
the markets of high-frequency fash tradi ng, i n
a bi d to avoi d a repeti ti on of t he l ightni ng crash
that threw the stock exchange i nto a spi n on 6
May 201 0, at preci sel y 2. 25 pm.
Afer General Motors went bankrupt, Toyota
Motors was so badly shaken by the cri si s that
i t announced its i mmediate withdrawal from
Formul a 1 raci ng and gave up hosting J apan' s
2010 Grand Prix, at i ts Mount Fuj i ci rcui t, i n
order to commi t itself t o fndi ng fresh sol uti ons
to the probl ems of domestic mobi l i ty.
Ti s i s what a special correspondent from
the newspaper, Le Figaro, had to say about the
' Tokyo Motor Show' :
' I ' d never tested a new model on a showroom
carpet before. Yet i t was on the eighth Boor of an
ofce bl ock that I was i ni ti ated i nto the fut ure
of driving i n an i REAL; thi s si ngle-seater vehicle
certai nl y makes do wi th very l i ttl e room [sic] , the
equi val ent of a comfortabl e armchair mounted
on three wheels. ' 1
I f the Japanese motor company is having trou
bl e attract i ng younger generati ons to the car, i t
i s now efectively launchi ng itsel f i nto the more
restrai ned mobi l i ty of adults and especially sen
i ors. Bei ng l ongstandi ng consumers of domesti c
automobi l ity al ready, why wouldn' t seni ors turn
out to be tomorrow' s great fans of ' these electric
si ngl e-seaters that can go on the footpath, i f not
i nsi de an apartment bui l ding and even take the
l i f' ?2
1 Le Figttro, 30 October 2009.
2 Ibid.
68
Hence the i nventi on of this orthopaedi c pros
thesis ai med at the seniors market, a market that
wi l l , tomorrow, expl ode throughout the i ndus
trial ized worl d. Tat prospect for growth wi l l
be part and parcel of a vogue i n stacks of very
high bui l dings, these TOWERS that are al ready
poki ng up in the tens of thousands in J apanese and
Chi nese cities, such as Chongqing, wi th i ts thi rty
mi l l i on i nhabi tants. Ni ckamed FOG CI TY,
Chongqing i s one of the most pol l uted cities on
the pl anet. Tese days its centre is cl uttered with
hundreds of wrecks of abandoned taxi s.
Dreaded by men in perfect heal th, wi th the
so aptly named i Real , the wheelchai r for cri p
pl es t urns i nto a somewhat fatal sol uti on to the
wreck of the ci ty to come and to the fai l ure of
tomorrow' s concentration camp-l ike world city.
Wi th the recent promoti on of thi s mi s
i denti fed travel l i ng obj ect, the fundamentall y
I NCAPACI TATI NG nature of the techni
cal progress behi nd thi s ' piece of furni ture on
wheel s' is obvi ous and echoes the bi bl i cal fabl es
of the bl i nd man and the paralyt i c.
Te i Real engi ne i s actually driven by hand,
thanks to two buttons l i ke the ones used i n vi deo
games: ' No reverse, you J USt t urn hard l ef or
right and swivel round on the spot . I t ' s as si mpl e
as a video-game consol e and requi res only smal l
movements of the ri ght or l eft wrist . As for speed,
that' s l i mited to 6 km an hour, but a rapid-speed
setting of up to 30 km an hour i s avai l abl e! ' 1
We are, obvi ousl y, far here from the strai ght
l i ne of the Abu Dhabi speedway on which si ngl e
seaters travel at over 300 km an hour. But we' re
every bi t as far, i t woul d seem, from the r oo m
world record of Usai n Bol t who, wi th hi s own
two l egs, ran at over
3
7 km an hour on average
around the Berl i n stadi um track duri ng the worl d
athl eti c champi onshi ps on 1 5 August 2009 the
' feast of the Assumpti on' !
I f not exactly ri si ng up i nto the sky, t he sta
di um god here i s l i ke the Hermes of myth, that
god of travel l ers but also of thi eves, cheats, the
i ssue of dopi ng remai ni ng today unresolved for
the whol e array of sports feats i n these days of
the paralympi c expl oits of geneti c engi neeri ng
of GMOs .
Where Andre Gorz once condemned
I NCAPACITATI NG occupati ons as bei ng l i kely
to l ead to automati on and a structural unempl oy-
1 Le Figaro, 30 October 2009.
7
0
ment that would be fnal and no longer cycl i cal ,
we note that i t's now the ' progressives' of all
stri pes that are accusi ng gal l opi ng automati on of
cri mes agai nst humani ty. Such widespread auto
mation no l onger leads to anythi ng but i neni a,
the paralysi s brought on by a so-cal l ed i mprove
ment i n productivity whereby the human body
tends to lose, one by one, the characteristics of
the ANI MAL realm that once di sti ngui shed man
from pl ant and mi neral !
' I t ' s our soul s we need to change, not the
cl i mate' , prescri bed Seneca, that apostl e of an
ecol ogy of the movi ng bei ng, this l i vi ng bei ng
whose anima i s obvi ously not a ' genus', as sex
i s for some peopl e, but a real m - the real m of a
species endowed with the movement of bei ng,
where ' marri age is when you espouse travel' 1
especially when the l atter i s circular!
In fact, the historic expansi on of the accel er
ati ng sphere of our physical activi ti es - once so
rich i n experiences, with the l anguage of dance
and the choreography of voyages of i ni ti ati on
i n whi ch we set out to di scover the vastness of
our own world - today l eads to the l aw of l east
1 A Canadian proverb .
7
1
acti on of cyberneti c i nteractivity. I n other words,
to the 'moment of i nerti a' of i nstantaneous i nter
acti on and, so, to postural di sabi l i ty, the unseen
l oss of the frst of our freedoms, the freedom of
movement that characteri zed the human race.
So, anti ci pat i ng the devel opment of the
NANOTECHNOLOGIES of the i nfnitely
smal l of 'progress' , but also the devel opment of
the NANOCHRONOLOGI ES of the i nfni tel y
short-term of cyberneti c i nstantanei ty - i n other
words, the defni ti ve powerl essness of our aware
ness of the facts and of our j udgement of val ues
i n the face of the sudden metamorphosi s of our
envi ronment - we sti l l have to fgure out the
actual nature of our responsi bi l i ty regardi ng the
'pol l uti on' caused by technol ogical progress, as
wel l as by the exhausti on of the chrono-diversi ty
of the i nstant, an i nstant from now on not so
much present as absent from our awareness of
our behavi ours.
Just afer attempti ng t o commi t sui ci de,
Catheri ne Kokoszka, the head of the Pari s depart
ment of l egal protecti on of mi nors, wrote:
' Anythi ng that goes too fast dri ves you i nsane,
destroys you. I almost di ed because I spent my
l i fe at my j ob, qui te convinced I was uphol di ng
7
2
the educati onal val ues of the i nsti tuti on. I al most
di ed of the deafness of an i nstituti on that di dn' t
understand that everythi ng was goi ng roo fast ,
so fast we coul d no l onger keep up [ . . . ] and
that the accel erati on of change was undermi ni ng
the i nsti tuti on' s educati onal mi ssi on and produc
i ng abuse. Te i nfernal machi ne presses on, alas,
wi thout worryi ng about human bei ngs . ' 1
I ncapaci tating occupati on yesterday, abu
si ve admi ni strati on today. Tomorrow, what
wi l l happen when the CYBERWO RLD has
once and for all subverted the space and ti me,
the cont i nuum, of our fate? Yet no one i s wor
ryi ng about that particul ar tsunami , or about
the dromospheri c pressure al ready overwhel m
i ng popul ati ons i n di st ress. Peopl e are merel y
bei ng sensi tized to the dangers of atmospheri c
pressure, of cl i mate change, of a thoroughly con
tami nated worl d. No one i s ever concerned about
bei ng locked up behi nd the dosed doors of the
cycl otron of cyberneti cs.
In an i mportant report on stress at work handed
to the French government i n the autumn of
I Le Monde, November 2009 .
7
3
2009 , we learned that 33% of salaried empl oyees
are now scared at work. In thi s statisti cal stock
take of psychol ogi cal and soci al ri sks, we also
l earned that for 22. 6% of staf i t is the quanti ty of
work that i s too ofen excessi ve, whereas for 30%
i t i s the qual i ty i tsel f of the work that i s at i ssue,
si nce the pressure of ti me no l onger gives peopl e
enough ti me to fnish what they' re doi ng. 1
Once upon a ti me, peopl e were fami l iar i n
advance with the fear of forced l abour i n penal
col onies to whi ch convi cts, frrats, were deported.
But what domi nates i n the mi ddl e of these l i beral
ti mes is fear of chosen work - no matter what the
nature of the j ob or the task at hand.
Te other characteristi c of thi s enqui ry shows
that
4
2% of sal ari ed empl oyees feel , as unbearabl e
stress, the obl igati on to hi de thei r emoti ons whi l e
they' re at work, an obl igati on written i nto thei r
contract .
We see, then, that this psychopathol ogi cal
approach to j obs, al ready threatened on all si des
wi th bei ng moved of-shore or with the productiv
i ty gai ns of al l -out automati on, has i ncapaci tat i ng
and abusi ve di mensi ons that rei nforce each other
I Sud- Ours/ , Ocrobcr 2009.
7
4
- mutual y - to the poi nt where progress, whi ch,
to Edgar All an Poe, i n the ni neteenth century,
was j ust the heresy of decrepi tude, has suddenl y,
in the twenty-frst century, turned i nto the frenzy
of stupefacti on.
Tanks to t he rise of technol ogy and i t s tool s,
sci ence has i n fact become not only functi onal
but also, above al l , functi onal i st . . . si nce func
ti on now generates the component!
Today the most i nsi gni fcant of technol ogi cal
pseudo- i nnovati ons very quickly becomes a ' hi
tech i ndustry' , and then a system for creat i ng
pani c, as we've seen wi th the WEB and i ts al l
encompassi ng network, wi thout any precauti ons
bei ng taken i n thei r use. Ti s wi l l soon l ead to the
great breakdown of the I nternet, the expl osion of
the i nformati on bomb, whi ch wi l l probabl y do
i rreparabl e damage to the digi tal economy. 1
Apropos, note the current craze for nanotech
nol ogi es that nothi ng will now stop, any more
than the bi o-engi neeri ng of GMOs was stopped
yesterday, or gee-engi neeri ng of the cl i mate wi l l
be stopped tomorrow, or not l ong afer.
1 Paul Virilio, 7e Infrmation Bomb. tr . Chris Turer .
London: Ver s, 2005.
75
Te latest confrmati on of this is the setting
up, in Beij i ng, of a Bureau of Meteorologi cal
Modi fcati ons, responsi ble for the national cli
mate of China. As it happens, the bureau recently
weathered an avalanche of criticism for havi ng
i nduced unseasonal snowfall s. Tose snow
falls grounded hundreds of planes and caused a
number of road accidents for Beij i ng residents
caught out by a phenomenon created by the mass
dispersi on of chemical products i n clouds in a bid
to relieve the persistent drought in the north of
the country. 1
But the fatal convergence, noted in the
pages above, of control and abuse i n the work
place, can also be explained by the fact that in
Chi na, as elsewhere, it is the diverse forms of
the TOTALITARIAN experience that are i n
turn converging. Te globalizati on of the Si ngle
Market and the instantaneity of i nteractive tele
communications are i nducing a fusion/confsion
of extremisms and the deliberate hybri dizati on of
this ' tyrannyofreal time' , this COSMOTHEISM,
behind a rurbocapitalism that reproduces the
excesses of Soviet COSMISM in the days j ust
1 Sud- Ouest, October 2009.
before the USS R i mpl oded - the bi g bang of
hi storical materi al ism endi ng i n the very cyber
neti c acci dent of which we are now victi ms. Te
SYSTEMI C CRSH of Wall Street i l l ustrates
perfectly not onl y the Gargantuan nat ure of a
' sci ence wi thout a consci ence' which i s nothi ng
more than the ' rui n of the soul ' . Above all , it
exposes the Gargantuan appetite of an economi c
science that i s now without confdence, bei ng
nothi ng more than the ' rui n of the Si ngle Market' ,
t he very possi bi l i ty of turboproft through hi gh
frequency tradi ng suddenly comi ng to an end, or
close to i t, for one ver si mpl e reason: confdence
i s one thi ng that can never be i nstant!
Tat is the reason for thi s unsayabl e fear of
stock market volati l i ty i n the face of the BIG
CRUNCH of credi t - i n other words, of i nves
tors' bel ief and specul ative faith when confronted
by the extreme uncertai nty of the moment . I n
May 201 0, that fear l ead to what traders them
selves call ' the fear i ndex' , the Market Vol ati l i ty
I ndex (MVI ) . Ti s barometer of ant i ci pated
market volati l i ty was conceived as early as 1 993 ,
whi l e t he CRASH of 1 9 October 1 987 was sti l l
fresh i n everyone' s mi nd.
Ti s is where the most cruci al questi on comes
77
i n: has I NSTANTANEITY become, for the mate
rialists of the Si ngl e Market, what ETERNI TY
once was for the spi ri tual i sts?
Wi th the devel opment of money i n the Mi ddl e
Ages, the ti me al so came for seri ous debate about
the l egi t i macy of credi t and of i nterest-beari ng
l oans. Usury was prohi bi ted for Chri sti ans and
consi dered a morral sin, an act of thef, thef of
ti me, which bel ongs only to God, si nce ' i nterest
charges the ti me that has elapsed between the
l oan and i ts rei mbursement' . 1
Today we can easily i magine how thi s i ssue
mi ght once agai n cal l i nto questi on the rel ati vi ty
of ti me, of spacet i me and i ts cont i nuum, whi ch
i s at the centre of the debates on the future of
tomorrow' s world economy.
I f thi s were i ndeed the case, the fturism
of the i nstant would make i ts entry both in
THEOLOGY and in the ETHOLOGY of the
stock exchange of val ues, with the pol i ti cal eco
nomi cs of speed mergi ng, from then on, wi th
that of the wealth of nati ons.
Meanwhi l e, an event way outsi de the norm
1 J acques Le Gof Le Moym Age et l "rgmt. Paris: Perrin,
201 0.
occurred at preci sely 2. 25 pm on 6 May 2010.
Ti s was a FLAS H CRASH, i n whi ch the
Dow Jones pl ummeted a thousand poi nts i n
j ust a few mi nutes. For the Ameri can Srock
Exchange watchdog, the Securi ti es and Exchange
Commi ssi on (SEC) , whi ch di scounted all proof
of human error, computer hacki ng or cyberneti c
terrorist attack, thi s catastrophi c event urgently
i mposed the putti ng i n pl ace of harmonized and
above all synchronized ci rcui t-breakers on a scale
coveri ng the ent i re market . Ti s was done, as early
as n J une, for the el ectroni c tradi ng pl atforms of
Wall Street .
So, afer the MONEY WALL produced by
the accumul ati on of capi tal , Mary Schapi ro, the
chai r of the Securi ti es and Exchange Commi ssi on
i n New York, put up another ki nd of ' divi d
i ng wal l ' , a TI ME BARRI ER agai nst cyberneti c
accel erati on of fel onies (i nsider tradi ng i n the
fnance sector or terrorist attacks by hackers . . . ) .
But that move begs a supremely i mportant stra
tegi c quest i on, one that i s undeci dabl e: ' When
you are incapabl e of detecti ng the origi n of a
stock exchange crash and, so, fnd i t i mpossi
bl e to know i f i t' s a CYBER ATTACK of some
reach by one state agai nst another, or whether i t' s
79
a SYSTEMI C CRSH that' s purely acci dental ,
what do you do? '
' We need to forget about ti me at t he most fun
damental l evel . We don' t need that part i cul ar
parameter to descri be the world that surrounds
us. Te theoretical framework I propose al lows
us to do wi thout it: this i s the framework of loop
quantum gravi ty. ' So speaks the physi cist Carlo
Rovel l i , an adept, l ike so many others, at the
confusi on of the general rel ati vi ty of the physi cs
of the i nfni tely bi g and the quantum mechani cs
of the i nfni tel y smal l .
After the End of Histor was forecast l ast
century, the End of Time is now bei ng fore
cast, certai nl y i n theoreti cal physi cs, but also i n
rel ati on to pol i ti cal economi cs.
In the end, what i s most reveal i ng i n thi s gen
eral disarray i s perhaps what Benoi t Mandel brot
cl ai med i n 200
4
, when he sai d that the con
venti onal mathemati cal model s empl oyed by
the stock market ' are not onl y wrong; they are
dangerously wrong. ' 1
1 Benoit Manddbrot, Te (Mis)Behaviour of Mmkets. New
York: Basic Books, 2004, p. 276.
8o
Faced wi th the repeti ti on of a crash that wi ll
soon be systemi c, we have no choice but to ask
ourselves about the powerl essness of savv econo
mi sts to i nterpret the al arm bel l s that have been
ri ngi ng steadi ly for a quarter of a century and, i n
parti cul ar, since the 1 987 crash.
Tryi ng to descri be the catastrophi c swings
observed over such a long peri od throughout the
Si ngle Market, Mandel brot i ntroduced mul ti frac
tal ti me and thus ushered the hi stor of fnance
into a dynami c worl d, where stock market trad
i ng time no l onger has anythi ng in common with
physi cal ti me, since, i n thi s new model, ' t radi ng
ti me speeds up the clock in peri ods of high vol a
ti l i ty, and sl ows i t down in peri ods of stabi l i ty' , 1
the space of fractal geometry combi ni ng here
with the ' mul ti fractal ' chronometr of the fourth
di mensi on.
Wi th our professor emeri tus, then, i t is no
l onger j ust ' cri ti cal space' that i s heral ded, but
the efracti on of Hi story, the ' critical spaceti me'
of ti mes to come!
Wi th Benoi t Mandel brot, then, property
bubbl es suddenly turn t nto FINANCIAL
I Ibid. , P 22.
81
MANDELBUBBLES , not j ust withi n the
expanse of real estate, but also within ti me, the
long durati ons of the ' worl d economy' so dear to
Fernand Braude! .
St rangely, we note yet agai n that the ' l oop'
and the ' sphere' shoot to the fore, as though the
circular ti me of days gone by was reasserti ng i ts
rights over the l i near ti me of a Progress once
conti nuous . . .
Afer Karl Popper' s famous ' feedback l oops' ,
Carl o Rovel l i , as we' ve j ust seen, now i nt roduces
hi s ' l oop quantum gravity' .
Ci rcul ar t i me yesterday, l i near ti me of progress
right now, and tomorrow, or soon afer no
doubt, thanks to Mandel brot, gl obal i tari an ti me
. . . Here TI ME - from the Lati n tempus, whi ch
referred to a ' fracti on of durati on' as disti nct
from aevum, whi ch was used of conti nui ty and
of an ' era' - really i s the ACCI DENT TO END
ALL ACCI DENTS . Ti s is because ' mul ti frac
tal ' efracti on of the durati ons involved in stock
exchange operati ons tal l i es with Hei senberg' s
uncertai nty pri nci pl e, only to be appl i ed to
the model l ers, the fnanci al pl anners i n a
fnance i ndustry that has gone algori thmic, the
famous credi t crunch of the market here signal -
l i ng the end of an era, the BIG CRUNCH of
turbocapi tal i sm!
As an academi c recently poi nted out : ' We
must fnally have the humi l i ty to say that we can' t
model uncertai nty accuratel y. ' And to add, as far
as I ' m concerned, that, despite the propaganda of
Progress, confdence never wi ll be automati c!
But l et' s get back to Karl Popper and hi s
i ndetermi ni sm. Accordi ng to Popper, and hi s
' feedback l oops' , events i nfuence our opi ni ons
every bi t as much as these same opi ni ons i nfu
ence events. But the accel erati on of the real , of
real ti me, i s turni ng our si tuati on on i ts head,
si nce, from now on, i t i s acci dents and not j ust
events anymore that i nfuence our deep feel i ngs.
And thi s has reached the poi nt where the com
muni ty of opi ni on of our mutual i nterests i s now
taken over by the ' communi ty of emoti on' of the
present i nstant, wi th emoti onal synchroni zati on
subsequently taking over from the standardiza
ti on of publ i c opi ni on that was, all the same, at
the root of representative democracy.
And note how, wi th Mandel brot , Karl
Popper' s ' feedback l oop' j ust keeps on shri nk
i ng, l ike some peau de chagrin, wi th the accrui ng
ri sks that this i mpl i es for the survival of our ol d
pol i ti cal parti es, now l i teral l y overtaken at speed,
much l i ke economic i nvestors. Te systemi c
crash under way si nce 2007 afects the pol i t i cal
top brass of the Republ i c every bi t as much as
those of the bi g banks i n a market that' s i ntercon
nected thanks to twenty- frst cent ury program
tradi ng, with the high-frequency el ectroni c pl at
forms of the fash tradi ng that was responsi bl e for
the CYBERCRAS H of 6 May 2010 functi oni ng
outsi de human ti me, thanks to the time machine
of Stock Exchange computers.
But, here, we are i n t he presence of an absence
- i n other words, of an obj ect contrary to obj ec
ti vi ty. In actual fact, if ti me i s no more, i f i t i s
di sappeari ng i nto i t s accel erati on, I NSTABI LITY
i s brought to a head, and the moment of i nerti a
of i nteracti ve CONNECTI ON domi nates, on
al l si des now, the i nerti a of PLACES, the i nerti a
of fxi ty as well as of i mmobi l i ty.
Hannah Arendt put i t forcefully: ' I nstabi l i ty
i s a functi onal prerequi si te of total domi nati on. '
Wel l , what can we say about t he i nstabi l i ty of the
i nstantanei ty of real t i me? Are we goi ng to have to
l i ve (survi ve) , tomorrow, under the domi nati on
of a sort of tribunal d'nstance, a court that woul d
rul e on the i nstant ? On thi s tyranny of ti me or,
rather, l ack of ti me, i nvolved i n the exodus of
free wi l l and democracy, with everyone afected
by an i nstabi l i ty at once psycho- and l oco-moti ve
due to our hypermoti vi ty - i n other words to
our l oss of control over our vi tal refexes? For, by
then these will be condi ti oned by the fows, the
i nfows, of a cyberneti c envi ronment that will
soon be uni nhabi tabl e.
Ci rcui t, short-ci rcui t - l et' s go back now to
the ci rcl e, the kuklos, and thi s ci rcul ar parti cl e
accel erator, the CYCLOTRON, which i s at the
origi ns of nucl ear physics, havi ng been i nvented
at Berkel ey i n the early 1
9
30s and which sud
denl y, i n 200
9
, turned i nto an underground
CATHEDRAL, the templ e of an accel erat i ng
epi c science l aunched in quest of ' God' s parti
cl e' , thi s HADRON that i s sti ll mi ssi ng from
t he collections of t he savant s of contemporary
physics.
Note frstly that the cosmotheist venture i n
questi on started, beneath t he roots of t he tree of
knowl edge of J udeo-Chri sti an genesi s, wi th the
ori gi nal acci dent, the break-down of a ' real i ty
accel erator' that was supposed to di scover, at the
end of a tunnel , the i nfnitesi mal particle at the
origi ns of astrophysi cs. Al thi s shoul d al ert us
to the megal omani a of a science deprived of a
cri t ical conscience and coupl ed with a sort of
megal oscopy of the i nfni tely smal l , whereby the
LARGE HADRON COLLI DER of Geneva
cl ai ms to reveal - l i ve - the creati on of the worl d,
no l ess, at the obvi ous risk of procreati ng a ' black
hol e' - of l ow ampl i tude, they say, no doubt to
reassure us about the ri sks bei ng run.
Tose ri sks have sparked l egal proceedi ngs
i nsti tuted by sundry American physici sts and
other theorists of chaos, such as Otto Rossl er
from Gotti ngen Uni versi ty, agai nst thei r CERN
col l eagues.
I n thi s ' speedway' where the l andscape is the
l ack of a l andscape, the exodus of the speed ofl ight
actual ly l eads to a crash of reason, of ' common
sense' . What t hen surges up, ex abrupto, i s the
Acci dent i n Time triggered by a physics that is
now the vi cti m of a coma afecting all knowledge
acqui red here bel ow.
An acci dent in substances, an acci dent i n di s
tances, an acci dent i n knowledge. In the end,
Ri mbaud was right : ' We' ve got i t back. What?
Eterni ty. ' I ndeed, i f ti me i s disappeari ng com
pletely as an adj ustment vari abl e necessary to the
86
space of the NANOWORLD that surrounds us,
the eternal present of relativism wi ll soon reign
supreme as of right, to the detri ment of the
cumbersome processes of Hi story.
I t is odd, all the same, to see that though the
ast rophysi ci sts of exobi ol ogy appear to bel i eve i n
universal l i fe spread throughout outer space, they
still refuse to bel ieve i n l i fe everl asting!
' 0 ye hypocri tes, ye can di scern the face of the
sky, bur can ye not di scern the si gns of the ti mes? '
(Matthew 1 6: 3) . Ti s phrase of Chri st' s seems
t o be di rected at today' s gl obal climate change
ecologi sts who strangely l eave out grey ecol ogy,
the sudden retenti on of spaceti me, the tempo
ral compression of the common worl d, even as
those cosmologi sts who are devotees of the BIG
BANG envisage, most concretely, the hypothesis
of the BI G CRUNCH, the fnal contracti on of
the expandi ng Universe.
Fi fteen bil l i on years ago, according to the l ate
Belgi an astronomer-physi ci st abbe Lemaitre,
Russi an cosmol ogi st-physi ci st George Gamow
and company, there would have been a defa
grati on of the pri mordi al atom, tri ggeri ng the
expansi on of a bubbl e that was to keep grow
ing all the way along an - astra-hi stori cal
- conti nuum right up to the BIG CRUNCH -
the i mpl osi on and crash of the Ti me Barri er. But
today we' re forced to report that i n thei r quest
to di scover the very frst second of the creati on
of the Universe, our savvy astronomers of t he
vastness of outer space seem parti cul arly anxi ous
about the i nfni tesi mal durati on of t he i ni ti al
i nstant . 1
Tat quest frst gave us the cycl otron; then the
US l aboratory FERMI LAB bui l t a si x-ki l ometre
atomi c racetrack known as the TEVATRON;
and now, fnall y, we have Europe' s LARGE
HADRON COLLI DER, 27 ki l ometres long.
Te name i s signi fcant si nce we' ve gone from
the i nventi on of the ACCELERTOR - l i near
then ci rcul ar - to the COLLI DER, the i mpact
study of the speed of l ight concl udi ng wi th the
spectacul ar smashi ng of the Time Barri er!
A fne i l l ustrati on of the acci dent to end al l
acci dents i n thi s brand of ti me which certain
physici sts are aski ng us to forget compl etely -
Coperni can astronomy of the ' tel escopi c' ori gi ns
of t he conquest of space l eadi ng, i n Geneva, t o
1 Hubert Reeves, The Latest News from the Cosmos, t ro Donald
Winkler. Toronto: Stoddart Kids, 1 997
88
the ' tel escopi ng' , the maj or col l i si on, of the end
of ti me!
Sci ence, the BI G SCI ENCE of physi cs, i s not,
i n actual fact, at peace wi th i tsel f. It i s at war wi th
t i me: ' the stately slowness of durati on, the movi ng
wonder of every hour' , is the way I mpressi oni sm
and i ts phenomenol ogi sts put i t , Cl aude Monet
among them. In so doi ng, between 1 899 and 1 901 ,
they prefgured the theory of relativi ty, Albert
Ei nstei n' s theory about poi nt of view. Monet,
the man who pai nted the cel ebrated ' Seri es' even
decreed that: EVERYTHI NG CHANGES,
EVEN STONE, thereby forecasti ng t he emer
gence of ki nemati c energy al ongsi de ki neti c
energy. Te Lumi ere Brothers woul d develop
ki nemati c energy more ful l y, thereby anti ci pat
i ng the mutati ons, i n the tenti eth centur, of
the mul ti fractal spaceti me of whi ch Mandel brot
- that other i mpressi oni st! - woul d become the
secul ar prophet.
But l et' s go back once more to the Geneva
templ e, thi s cycl i ndrical Pl ato' s cave, where
the i l l umi ni sts of the Last Day keep the fame
of Progress al i ve behi nd the ' sci enti fc truth'
that Ei nstei n, that apostle of general rel ati vi ty,
abhorred.
I t real l y i s wei rd the way the signi fcance of
such a camera obscura, thi s cathedral crypt buri ed
beneath the border between two countri es, has
never got our savants thi nki ng, wi th the excep
ti on of those menti oned above. How can i t be
that such an edi fce, t he cost of which comes cl ose
to the bi l l i ons l ost by a certai n trader who had the
media i n a ti zz for qui te a few months i n 2010,
onl y ever attracted the sarcasti c remarks of sci en
ti fc popul arizers targeti ng anyone who might be
worried about i t, j ust as the great breakdown that
crowned the CERN col li der' s unvei l i ng was met
onl y wi th si l ence on the part of admi rers of epi c
science?
Te damage done by COSMOTHEI SM here
matches the damage done by a form of fanati cal
sun worship in which the accel erating speed of
l ight i l l umi nates hi story, i n anti ci pati on of human
sacri fces quite di ferent from the peopl e who got
burned in astronomi cal fnanci al i nvestments, for
the edi fcati on of these templ es of i l l usi on - l i ke
the one recentl y proposed for Bei j i ng. Ti s one
wi l l be ' an i nternati onal l i near col l i der' and, to
pur i t i n a nutshel l , i t wi ll be al l i ed to the crash
tests of an automobi l e i ndustry in crisis, i nsi de the
l i ttl e cubbyhol e of a NANOWORLD where the
9
0
worl d' s ecological footpri nt now l eads, di rectly,
to the i ntegral acci dent in publ i c fnances . . .
I n the same vei n, i n 201 0 Chi na made a
conspi cuous entrance i n second pl ace i n the
Supercomputer Top 500 List, j ust behi nd
the Uni ted States, thanks to a motor named
NEBULE. Its performance benchmark i s 1 . 27
petafops, whi ch translates as the capacity to
efect 1 . 27 mi l l i on bil l i on operati ons per second,
whereas Jaguar, the computer i n the US Energy
Department in Tennessee, can achi eve 1 . 75 peta
fops. Forecast for 2020 i s a ' great accelerator
calcul ator' that wi l l be abl e to attai n an exofop
- or a bi l l i on bi l l i on operati ons per second.
We mi ght remember that these motors are
used i n sci enti fc research, in geneti c sequenci ng,
but especial l y i n the strategic domai n touchi ng
on nati onal sovereignty. 1
According to the speciali sts, the fel d of appl i
cati on of supercomputi ng never stops getti ng
bi gger. So, geophysi ci sts today are abl e to predi ct,
i n real ti me, the afershocks that fol l ow an earth
quake. 2 On the other hand, they are currently
1 Le Monde, 26 June 2010.
2 Ibid.
91
unable to anticipate the fatal consequences of a
CYBERCRSH of great magni tude afecti ng the
whole of the fnancial system. Yet, it' s only too
easy to foresee that the automation i nvolved in
high-frequency fash tradi ng will lead, tomorrow,
to the INTEGRL ACCIDENT in very-high
frequency high fnance!
In this endless race, the future Great Proft
Collider wi l l no doubt lead to the di scovery, right
at the end of the tunnel of Hi story, of the ' primor
dial atom' of stocks, for a fnancial i ndustry in the
process of accelerated automation and this, to the
detriment of fnancial agents who are so i ncred
i bly unscrupulous and dangerous, as proved by
' Kafa' s Trial ' - sorry, that was Kerviel, the gui lty
trader from French bank, Societe generale.
Accordi ng to both the Times and the Dail
Telegraph, reporti ng in mid-September 2008 , one
of the four detectors i n CERN' s Grear Collider was
broken i nto by i ntruders who successfully hacked
i nto the LARGE HARDON COLLI DER' s
computer network as early as Wednesday 8
September, the day Geneva's underground
cathedral was ofcially set i n moti on. We might
also recall that on 22 September, the newspaper
9
2
Libeation announced that the LH C had come to
a standstill , afer breaking down duri ng a test run
conducted on Fri day 17 September of the same
year, a year that was to see the Wall St reet Barri er
come crashi ng down.
9
3
Index
Accoyer, Bernard 2
aeropoli tics 23 , 28, 29-3 0,
41-2
Agaci nski , Sylviane 47
anamorphosis 6-7, 8-9, n,
r 8
archi tccture 48-9
Arendt, Hannah 84
Armstrong, Neil 4o
atheism 9-1 0, 25-6
Attal i , Jacques 20
Big Bang
of program trading 7
theory 87-8
bio- and geo-engineering
75-6
Bl ankfei n, Ll oyd 1 5
94
Bonhoefer, Dietri ch 22
Bri tain
Ci ty of London 7
Battle of 5, 6
' casi no economy' 29
CER: Hadron Collidcr
25-6, JO, 66-7, 85-7,
88-90, 92-3
Chardi n, Tei l hard de 65
Chassi n, Lionel Max 1 2
Chi na
Bureau of Meteorological
Modi fcations 76
computer technology 91
chronometers 28-9
Churchi l l , Winston 5
communal households 49
THE GRT ACCELERATOR
communism
of afects 3 2-3 , 43-4
interactive 37-8
computer technology 91-2
Internet 49, 5o1 , 52,
5 6-7, 75
see alo cyberattacks;
cybernetics ; fash/
program tradi ng
connections and places 3, r 8,
24-5 3 5-6, 58, 63-4. 84
cosmotheism 40, 44-5,
76-7, 85-6, 90
couch-surfng 50-1
credi t crunch see Stock
Exchange/all St
cyberattacks 79-80
cyberneti cs 17-1 8, 1 9, 32-3 ,
40, 42, 71-2, 73
Dati , Rachi da 55
Davis , Gary 50
delocalization 4, II, 1 7,
1 9-20, 34, 37
see alo mobi l i ty/
migrati on
distortion of competi tion 3 ,
6-9. 1 4
divorce 54-5
ecology
and aeropoli tics 41-2
9
5
bio- and geo-engi neeri ng
75-6
and cosmotheism 40, 4
of moving being 71
and time/ space
compressi on 23-4,
27-8, 72, 87
Ei nstei n, Albert 22, 89
employment
i ncapacitating
occupati ons 7o-1 ,
72-5
l i feti me 32, 34-5
and productivi ty 1 9-20
and ri ght to fami ly l i fe
(Oyonnax industrial
tri bunal) 59-61
exteri or-interi or relationship
3-4
externalizati on 1 7, 40
extraterrestrials/UFOs 44-5
fear 61-2
Market Volati lity Index
(MVI) 77
feedback loops 82, 83-4
fnancial system see fash/
program tradi ng;
Si ngle Market
( turbocapital i sm) ;
Stock Exchange/Wall
St
fxed-property i nertia see
places and connections
fash/program tradi ng 7-S,
1 2-14, 41-2, 67, Sl
and fash crash/ cybercrash
7S-So, S4
fractals/ fractalizati on 4-5,
1 6-I S, 32-3
futuris m 1-2, 5-6, 9, I o-n,
1 5 , 20, 21 , 34
geo- and bio-engineeri ng
75-6
Google mappi ng proj ect 51,
52
Gor, Andre 70-1
Hadron Col l i der 25-6, 30,
66-?, S5-7> SS-90,
92-3
historic time rhythms 31-2
Husserl , Edmund 27
i l l umini sm 22, 25, 26, 2S,
30
i ncpaci tati ng occupations
7o-1 , 72-5
i nertia 2-3 , 9-1 0, I I , 1 3 ,
I S-1 9, 21 , 27, 3 6-?, 41 ,
63, 71-2
connections and places 3 ,
I S, 24-5> 3 5-6, 64, S4
photosensi tive 34, 37, 45-6
i nsider tradi ng see fah/
program tradi ng
i nstability S4-5
i nstantaeous i nteractive
connections see
connections and pl aces
I nternet 49, 50-1, 52, 56-7,
75
i RL (electric cars) 6S-70
j oi nt tenancy 49
knematic energy 26-7, S9
Kokoszka, Catheri ne 72-3
Kosci usko-Morizet, Nathalie
52
Larcher, Gerard 2
laws
legislati on process 2, 3
memorial 4, 21
Le Gof, Jacques 7S
Levi , Pri mo 57-S
l ight of speed/ speed of light
66-?
loop quantum gravity So, S2
loss of confdence I I , 14
Malthusi anism 63-4
Mandelbrot, Benoi t So,
Sl-2, S9
THE GRT ACCELERATOR
Market Volati l i ty Index
(MVI) 77
marri age and divorce 54-5
mathematical models 12-13 ,
1 6, 42, 8o
Mel nikov, Konstantin 49
memorial laws 4, 21
Mi ni stry of Ti mes 22-3
mobi l i ty/migration 40, 43 ,
45-?
.
49-51 , 53-4 55
' magnetic portals' 21-2
sustainable 62-3
Monet, Cl aude 89
Museum of the Hi story of
F ranee 6, 22-3
nanochronol ogies 7-9, 3 9,
6J , 72
nanotechnol ogies J , 1 0-1 1 ,
1 6-17, 24-5, 72
newscasts 33-4
N otker Wol f, Dom 56-7
Obama, Barrack 40, 61
ofshore fnancial havens
I 4-I 5
Oprea, Mari us 31
other-time 1 7-18
Perec, Georges 3 5, 37, 59
photosensi tive i nertia 34, 37,
45-6
9
7
pl aces and connections J , 1 8,
24-5 35-6. 58, 64, 84
Popper, Karl 82, 83-4
private l ives 33, 36, 40, 47,
53 58
productivi ty and
employment 1 9-20
program tradi ng see fash/
program tradi ng
relativi ty
proposed mi ni stry of 22-4
theory 22, 89
Ri mbaud, Arthur 66, 86
Rossler, Otto 86
Roth, Joseph 48
Rovel l i , Carlo 80, 82
Seneca 71
seni ors 49-50, 68-9
Shapiro, Mary 79
Shari ng for Seni ors
Associ ation 49
Single Market
(turbocapitalism) 6-7,
1 0, I I , I 2, 1 5-I 6, 39-40,
?6-8, 81-2
social netorking 35-6, 50-1
speed of l ight/light of speed
66-7
Stock Exchange/Wal l St 6-9,
1 2-14, 1 5-1 6, 77-84
supercomputi ng 91-2
s urrogate mothers 46, 47
telecommuni ctions 63 , 64
temporal i ty of events 5-6
terri torial i nsecurity/identity
ti me
3 , 4, 1 3, 1 5, 21 , 41 , 42-3 ,
47
historic rhythms 31-2
Mi ni stry of Ti mes 22-3
other-rime 1 7-1 8
ti me/space compressi on
23-4 27-8, 72, 87
ti metables (l'mploi du
temps) 1 o-u, 1 3, 17, 1 9,
24, 34, 61
Toyota Motors 67-8
i REAL (electri c cars)
68-70
travel see mobi l i ty/migration
turbocapi talism see
Si ngle Market
( turbocap i talism)
UF Os/ extraterrestrials
4-5
Uni ted States
computer technol ogy 91
productivi ty and
employment 1 9
Securi ties and Exchange
Commission (SEC) 7,
79
Stock Exchange/Wall St
6-9. 1 2-14, 1 5-1 6,
77-84
urban exodus I I
visi on 38-9
photosensi tive i nertia 34,
37 45-6
Wagner, Richard 38
women
dematernalization of
58-9
surrogate mothers 46, 47
World Wars 5-6

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