After reading further into Virilio's Open Sky it has become apparent to me that he suffers from technology OCD! You cannot take away the interesting and certainly important claims that he makes about technology and our future but when is enough enough!
He raises important issues of health problems with technology. This is very serious and if we are not careful it can negatively effect us but from a different point of view I believe the good outweighs the bad.
Virilio's claims suggest that he simply is afraid of change. He brings up issues of the possibilities of one day having technology installed in our bodies and how we are affecting natural life cycles. Why would this be a bad thing when we could possibly save millions of lives. Why shouldn't we take the opportunity to better ourselves if we have the capability?
He also claims that because we can experience far away places virtually we will lose our will to travel. Again from a different point of view this could do just the opposite. Personally when I am exposed to new things I like to try them out for myself, so seeing an exotic place virtually will only want to experience the real thing even more.
Virilio's reactions to new technology is normal to someone not used to a certain type of change. According to Virilio's claims the invention of cars would have made the whole world lazy. I find his Law of least action interesting. He makes an argument that our new technology makes things so much easier for us therefore, allowing us to do less physically. I do not fully agree with this. These new technologies will certainly be more expensive and just because we have access to them which will make things easier will not always lead us to use them. When gas prices sky rocketed many people walked and biked to work instead of taking the least action by driving. Technology now allows us to communicate with each other from far away but this does not stop us from traveling and communicating face to face.
Virilo does bring to surface problems that we must account for but we must look at this change from different angles.
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