“To invent the sailing ship or the streamer is to invent the
shipwreck.”
~ Paul Virilio, The Original Accident, p. 10
~ Paul Virilio, The Original Accident, p. 10
Technology is supposed to make our lives easier and better. But is this the case in reality? In his book, The Original Accident (published in 2007, translated into English by Julie Rose), the French cultural theorist and urbanist Paul Virilio claims that all we can see up to this point in time is fear, uncertainty and danger. He argues that technology cannot exist without its dark side of potential disaster and accidents. The following quotation from page 10 of the book sums it all up as follows: “‘There is no science of the accident, ‘Aristotle cautioned a long time ago. Despite the existence of risk studies which assess risks, there is no accidentology, but only a process of fortuitous discovery, archeotechnological invention. To invent the sailing ship or streamer is to invent the shipwreck. To invent the family automobile is to produce the pile-up on the highway.” As can be seen, according to Virilio, every new invention holds within it its own potential catastrophe. Virilio then states his disagreement with Aristotle about the inexistence of a “science” dedicated for studying accidents, explaining that this is no longer the case in the age of highly complex simulation systems designed to predict and avoid potential threats and disasters.
With a deeply
philosophical, intriguing and kind of pessimistic style of writing,
Paul Virilio further explains his views by bringing up examples
from politics, economics, science, military, media and others. For
instance, he highly criticizes the role media plays in shaping and
manipulating public opinion and emotion. With regards to the coverage
of the 9/11 attacks, he remarks (p. 20): “Since September 2001, as
we’ve all been able to observe, media coverage of acts of violence
has everywhere expanded. From local delinquency to the global
hyperviolence of terrorism, no one has managed to escape this
escalating extremism for long. And the accumulation of felonies of
different nature has given the impression that all forms of
protection have collapsed at the same time as the fall of the World
Trade Center.” And so this image, according to Virilio, created in
televiewers a sense of “stereo-anxiety, a massive fear of the
public insecurity and domestic terror that was even further
intensified and sensationalized by mainstream media.
This book generally does a great job at raising the reader’s
eyebrows, posing critical questions about the role of technology in
our lives. And fans of Science Fiction movies and novels would
probably agree that a close examination of Sci-fi literature may give
us a crystal clear understanding of Paul Virilio’s message through
this book. For instance, one would not help but realize that most
Sci-fi and action movies and literature revolve around the idea that
a terrible disaster takes place where it is least expected. In the
movie Eagle Eye, for example, we can see how the invention of the
Eagle Eye system carried imbedded within it the invention of the
accident where the system gets out of control. And perhaps even a
better example would be found in Mary Shelley’s most famous work,
Frankenstein, where the invention of that big creature, through an
unorthodox scientific process, was an invention of a great monster
that would later break loose and gain control over his helpless
maker. Furthermore, this reminds us of how J. Robert Oppenheimer’s
most unfortunate invention of the atomic bomb was an invention of the
terrible Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks towards the end of WWII.
Average
readers may find the language of
the book a bit difficult to keep up with, for it contains a lot of complex philosophical terms and concepts which are scattered
throughout the chapters. It consists of two main parts, with the
first part containing seven chapters, and the second three chapters,
for a total of 120 pages including the Notes, Bibliography and Index.
The book can be
found online on Amazon, with a price tag of USD $16.98.
