Lo spazio come pensiero

Behind is a room, in front is movement. Behind it is beautiful, because it is very familiar. In front is a presence still impossible to make out: activity without movement, stasis and speed in equal amounts.
Does sheltered dialogue still exist? Each phrase refers to a previous phrase, because the progress of the conversation appears to be inevitable and every dialogue leads to another dialogue. These were theatre pieces. This is why there were rooms with four walls (open to the front), in which a group in conflict alienated itself in dialogue.
Our present and future experiences no longer allow themselves to be enclosed in these rooms.
Paul Virilio calls it “stasis at dizzying speed”: the condition of life in which everyone, with the new virtual means of transport and communication, can be everywhere at one time without moving physically from where they are. They will be fragments and collages, languages devoid of reciprocal references, activist autism, not a total conflict in which everyone is involved personally, but many clashes and incidents that cannot be resolved in private.
Behind is a room. In front a large vehicle. We don’t know where it’s going. We don’t even know if it is actually going or if it just seems to be going. Fortunately there are lots of handles, so that now and then a real image of the self can emerge. Even when there are emergency stops, ultimately we need something to hang on to.
Behind is Not Long Ago and in front is the Day After Tomorrow. It’s a mistake to think that feelings hide only behind, except perhaps the sort of wordy exaggeration we mistake for passion. It is not easy to keep balance.

Perché specialisti?

Everyone knows everything, and no-one understands anything. Everyone is a specialist, because everyone has a special field. This, however, is not enough to be in company. Everyone has developed his particular field with irrepressible nostalgia, and wants to make use of it. And a strange thing is now happening. Everyone knows about everything. Everyone knows all the details. Everything is transparent. And yet very few understand, and only then by resorting to established rituals, to languages that we call codes. Specialisation thus involves learning languages that serve to convey the special thing that each person knows. It seems enough that this special capacity is received in total communication. So it is no longer necessary to use it.
Is this a condition of happiness? Is it the fulfilment of a desire felt by specialists? “Would I like for once to be the opposite, Everything?”
Many specialists are afraid: because the old special activities are abolished and new special activities, or special communications, are used. The purpose of these new special communications is, however, to abolish specialisation.
The specialists are so nervous that they devote themselves to inventing ever-new specialities, and also create the need to direct attention to their importance. Many of them do not understand that they do not have to invent anything new, but to know the rules for combining everything that has been invented.
Are specialities parts of people or whole biographies? Can biographies be abolished?
Specialist is a fine word. It reminds us of bricolage, and also of anarchy. When people deliver their own specialities to machines for communication, something or other still remains: the difference between virtual and material. The profound conviction of the specialist that he knows better than anyone else how to play an instrument or how to draw up a perfect railway timetable between two towns, for example, the insistence on this More or Other with respect to the machine or the computer, unleashes anarchic feelings.
During the course of history, men have lost their specialities in instruments, machines, computers. There are advantages and disadvantages in this. We have suddenly lost qualities that are now found in a machine. The machine faces us like a form of power. Experience, memories, and knowledge are recorded in a mechanical surrogate for the brain. We have to learn to question this total brain in order to get part of it back, provided we do not make mistakes of codification. Men have regressed spiritually, emotionally, perhaps even physically, able only to question the potential which is recorded in machines and which once belonged to them. Perhaps they are developing other qualities, totally new, which go beyond their culture as it has lasted until now. In any case, specialists worry over every single impenetrable process. They feel dependent, and they do not know on what and on whom.
The more experiences are dissociated and the more men feel dependent, the more they have the habit of saying “I”. Everyone does it, as if constantly responsible for everything. Everyone thinks he is the boss. Everyone is always in a good mood and very satisfied with everything: as we read in all “how to achieve success” manuals, we must always be “positive”. And thus specialists navigate “positively” somewhere, at times even making signs of victory. Perhaps they have the disagreeable feeling that they are navigating in a forbidden area, from which they will never return.

Spie

Spies have to be specialised in many fields. They have to manage to discover something that someone else may know. This someone else is the enemy. The heroic age for spies was the Cold War. Now their activity has been relegated to industrial espionage, and their justification is almost unsustainable: “We need a secret service even if we are surrounded only by friends.” As if everyone didn’t know that there is no longer anything secret in this world. As if everyone didn’t know that we suffer from a surfeit of information and transparency – at least when we dominate the machines for communication.
The imagination cloaks the figure of the spy in romanticism. Because they imply something secret: they lead a double life, their biography is secret, what they have to discover is secret. The justification of their existence is thus tied to a context that now no longer exists – of that we can be sure. They will disappear, or they will reinvent the secret. Some of them decide to write their autobiographies, which are then banned. Others spy in time.
When a spy is no longer needed, it is impossible simply to eliminate part of his activities and his responsibilities. A spy has to be eliminated physically: because what makes him a spy is his memories. His life is compromised. He is potentially the history of his time.
According to the common view, the only thing spies can do now is spy on each other. They become dangerous for each other: since there is no longer a fixed division, they are all competitors. Often someone is discovered and unmasked, but this has no consequence. The fight for the justification of existence involves everyone, and is merciless. Everyone wants to be top. Only the purpose remains unclear: so that the adversary must be defeated, eliminated, trapped all the more ruthlessly. Who is the adversary? Everyone. The atmosphere becomes paranoiac. An innocuous greeting could hide an insult. Everyone becomes more and more similar to everyone else: so that everyone is suspected of stealing identity from others. No-one knows any more who started it all.
Spies become part of history. They resume service at other moments. There too, the specialists of the present are now in hot pursuit. This is where we can once again find a new fine image, not in history, but history itself against the present: history experienced against history made available. Is that part of the “secrets” department? Does anyone know the code? In the end, in order to continue to live specialists have to do something that is maybe very simple. The present is provincial and empty. Those who live solely in the present lose their imagination in favour of another possibility. The spy no longer has responsibilities towards reality. He lives only in the present.

La conoscenza degli esperti

“A while ago” means behind, “the day after tomorrow” is ahead. It is wrong to think that emotions only nestle together behind, apart from the verbose exaggeration that we mistake for passion. It isn’t easy to keep balance.
Everyone knows everything and no-one understands anything. We are all specialists, because everyone has some special capacity. But this is not enough to survive in a society. Everyone has built his own particular speciality with invincible zeal, and wants to use it.
Many specialists are afraid: they display a form of autistic activism. In order not to be sacked they disguise themselves as clerks. They adapt. They hide their own speciality. Speciality arouses suspicion. Everyone agrees. No-one wants to lose. Everyone wants to be top. Only the objective is unclear. We have to use violence to get ahead, to thrash the enemy, to roll out the net. But who is the enemy? Other people. The atmosphere becomes paranoiac. An innocuous greeting could hide an insult. We become more and more identical. So everyone is suspected of having stolen other people’s identity. No-one knows any more how all this began. Specialists do not simply want to survive. They want to remain alive, to have new experiences. What distinguishes specialists from experts? Experts know: specialists have knowledge. Experts know about specific sectors of the prevailing knowledge. Their knowledge is functional, even when they do not concern themselves with the effects of its application. Specialists, on the contrary, have always been profligates. And now they are no longer called upon, they have to persist in doing rather impractical things. No-one needs them, even if they know particularly well what they know.