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Mankind face to the machine and to its own reflection :
corollary of
the new technologies' boom.
Jean Baudrillard deals with the universe of
virtuality,
the consequences of which are not so virtual...
Claude
Thibaut : From your point of view, what potential
do the new technologies
offer?
Jean Baudrillard : I don't know much about this subject. I
haven't gone beyond the fax and the automatic answering machine.
I have
a very hard time getting down to work on the screen
because all I see there
is a text in the form of an image which I
have a hard time entering. With my
typewriter, the text is at a
distance; it is visible and I can work with it.
With the screen,
it's different; one has to be inside; it is possible to
play with
it but only if one is on the other side, and immerses oneself in
it. That scares me a little, and Cyberspace is not of great use
to me
personally.
In what domains can these new technologies be used:
communication, education, simulation? Are they likely to modify
the
attitudes and behavior of those who use them?
I think that it will no
doubt explode in all directions, because
this is a sprawling medium, and it
will grow in all of the
domains. But do the ends remain the same; that is
doubtless the
main problem. Let's take pedagogy for example: doesn't
information kill education? I have friends who are experiencing
this in
the domain of writing, and for my part I find that their
behavior changes in
a way. The possibility of indefinitely
adjusting the correct version creates
a sort of fantasy of
perfection of the text which gives the latter another
allure,
another construction than those which their earlier writing
possessed. The result of this quest for perfection remains
problematic.
We have the impression that the machine operated
beyond the ends of the
writing.
Is there a distortion of the personality?
Perhaps there
is a distortion, not necessarily one that will
consume one's personality. It
is possible that the machine can
metabolize the mind.
Isn't
interactive communication on the Internet in particular a
big novelty in the
world of media?
There is a considerable expansion of all of the
possibilities,
but is it a good thing in the absolute to follow through with
these? Isn't there a sort of wall or overkill? Communication
seems to
exhaust itself in the practical function of contact, and
the content seems
to retreat: the network, rather than the
network's protagonists, is given
priority. This last becomes an
end in itself.
Some people seem to be
excited about videoconferencing. How can
this desire to see each other to
communicate be explained?
In a real face to face encounter, there is a
complex relation, in
which each person is an actor at once both present and
absent. In
on-screen discussion, there is only an alternating presence of
one and the other. Expression is more targeted, more functional
and
completely disembodied. It is doubtless suitable for
professional kinds of
conferences. No doubt, the videoconference
offers the attraction of fighting
against this disembodiment.
It's a way of adding to the presence..
Do you think, as Monsieur Virilio does, that there are very great
risks in developing the Internet?
Monsieur Virilio is right that
there is a risk of the subject
being taken hostage, in a way, by his own
tool. However, I do not
see a doom-laden phenomenon there. I would side more
with Leo
Scheer, when he says that virtuality, being itself virtual, does
not really happen. To make the network operate for the network by
a
machine whose end is to operate at all costs, is not to give it
a will. One
lives in the very Rousseauistic idea that there is in
nature a good use for
things that can and must be tried. I don't
think that it is possible to find
a politics of virtuality, a
code of ethics of virtuality because virtuality
virtualizes
politics as well: there will be no politics of virtuality,
because politics has become virtual; there will be no code of
ethics of
virtuality, because the code of ethics has become
virtual, that is, there
are no more references to a value system.
I am not making a nostalgic note
there: Virtuality retranscribes
everything in its space; in a way, human
ends vanish into thin
air in virtuality. It is not a doom-laden danger in
the sense of
an explosion, but rather a passage through an indefinable
space.
A kind of radical uncertainty. One communicates, but as far as
what is said, one does not know what becomes of it. This will
become so
obvious that there will no longer even be any problems
concerning liberty or
identity. There will no longer be any way
for them to arise; those problems
will disappear a little below
the horizon. The media neutralizes everything,
including, in a
way, power, and virtuality itself is not able to turn itself
into
a political power..
What do you think about the notion that
Bill Gates does not have
any real power?
One could not contest that
Bill Gates has materiel strength and a
power, which appear as a form of
mythology in the sense that it
has no relation whatsoever with the political
relation, and that
it abolishes traditional structures . Furthermore, this
thing is
quite capable of destroying itself. The sprawling monster can
develop linearly in an exponential way, then fall into a chaotic
zone of
turbulence leading to accident, a sort of prevention and
precaution against
the omnipotence of the system which turns the
meanings of things upside
down. Accident can appear as silent
resistance, a sort of negative
self-regulation of the machine. In
fact, virtuality is perhaps not a
universal form of life, but a
singularity.
Isn't this radical
uncertainty brought about by virtual [Image]
reality likely to challenge
man's vision of himself and
the world?
Certainly, because it is the
system of representation that is at
issue. The image that he has of himself
is virtualized. One is no
longer in front of the mirror; one is in the
screen, which is
entirely different. One finds himself in a problematic
universe,
one hides in the network, that is, one is no longer anywhere.
What is fascinating and exercises such an attraction is perhaps
less the
search for information or the thirst for knowledge than
the desire to
disappear, the possibility of dissolving and
disappearing into the network.
After all that has just been said, what about happiness?
Happiness is essential for both the individual and the group. The
possibility of having available all the means to attain it
creates a
kind of electronic "high", a kind of happiness so
evident that it ends up
having no more raison d'Etre. There,
there is a general problem of critical
mass of the means which
puts an end to ends. What happens when everything
has been
realized in modernity, when everything is virtually given? The
question is crucial: where does one go from there? That is the
problem:
from the moment the subject is perfectly realized, it
automatically becomes
the object, and there is panic. I am not
sure that with the virtual world we
are moving closer still to
happiness, because virtuality only gives
possibilities virtually,
while taking back the reference and the density of
things, their
meaning. It gives you everything, and subtly, surreptitiously
it
takes everything away at the same time. It is a game of which one
does not know the rule[s]. One loses what one wins and vice
versa. All
that one can do is refuse to play, but it's not easy
in our times. Books and
writing will subsist in a kind of
parallel existence; they will only be more
precious for it
because they will serve as a reference. It is difficult to
oppose
the virtual world because it harnesses all the polarity of the
system, the positive and negative poles; it absorbs everything.
One can
hope that there is in each of us something singular that
will allow the
development of a reverted, reverting defense
reflex.
Interview by
Claude Thibaut, March 6, 96
Translation : Suzanne Falcone