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Speed, Acceleration, and Hovering.

We live today in a new space. A technological communicative space, different from the old, historical space we used to live in. The past space was Euclidean-Newtonian, of geographical and physical relations only. This new space is substantiated by the internet, television and the smartphone. This technological communication creates never-ending information 24 hours a day. Information is a type of movement, constantly moving even if you’re sitting in a chair in your room. We talk, text, and surf the web on our phones, watch television and loiter around on Facebook. It is a new space without boundaries or a defined territory, it doesn’t require a passport or a travel permit. It invites and accepts everybody. The constant motion is the key, the code, the principle. Technology and communication are a journey to the neurons in our minds. The technological and communicative reality is described by Paul Virilio (espace critique 1984): “Technology shoots us into a ballistic tunnel at the speed of light… it is an unprecedented change in the consciousness of our collective soul as humans.” The world as described by Newton where time and space are absolute is replaced by Einstein’s theories of relativity and the speed of light. Time and space are no longer the stages, but actors. Space is filled with information, therefore time accelerates. Change in the consciousness of man results in a change in man’s rhythm. The information that transmits off the television screen, the photons, the electrons – all form a new type of consciousness: One of motion, accelerating with each press of the “enter” key or TV remote. Marshall McLuhan (1964), in his book “Understanding Media”, claimed that media is an extension of man’s nervous system. We’ll add that technology is a creation of an unqualified co-pilot in our consciousness. A co-pilot that exists with every person and child, as a result of the cellular reality we constantly reside in. We might not teleport ourselves such as in “Star Trek”, rather we transmit our consciousness at the speed of light. We reside in a sort of ballistic tunnel, as mentioned. Reality is a communal production of information and speed. The information that surrounds us turns into a type of vehicle. This information rapidly changes the space around us and puts us in a state of constant motion. It is a type of vertigo, G force… Information is an Einsteinian environment and the world around us is a world of fast rhythm. Our state is similar to a situation where we are sitting in a stationary train. The train on the next track starts to move and we think it is our train that is moving. This is how the information puts us in constant motion, and because it has superiority over human consciousness. Technology is a type of “big brother”, but as media theorist Neil Postman (1992) once said, it is not the frightening big brother of Orwell’s 1984. It is the big brother of Huxley’s “Brave New World” (1934). Human consciousness is now in supersonic flight. The meter doesn’t show kilometers, rather Mach, as Virilio would say. Perhaps we should clarify: Smartphones work with Radio waves, a form of light, therefore the signals travel at the speed of light. This is the first time in human history that such a large mass of the human subconscious is traveling at such tremendous speeds without even getting up from our chairs. As pilots would say, we are now struggling against the G force. Being in perpetual liftoff, without leveling out.

The Psychology Of Speed And Acceleration. In Between Physics And Psychology.

Beauty industries around the world are making billions of dollars. Behind the capital are the images of beauty distributed as opium to masses of women around the world. Those who engage (womenaThe speed of information is closer to the speed of light than the speed of sound, therefore it would be more accurate to state; we are in an accelerating space. From Einstein’s point of view, gravity and acceleration are in equivalence (imagine taking off after a green light where our backs stick to our chairs in a Ferrari car). We choose speed and acceleration as it “protects us”, setting us in our place inside the motion. According to Einstein, Fast motion brings a sense of gravity. From physics’ perspective, fast motion slows time down. Time passes slower to whoever is set in motion, relative to whoever is stationary. Perhaps we want information as it is the subconscious’ vehicle. We choose speed because we might stay young… passage of time depends on the state of movement. When moving at the speed of light, time does not pass at all. Light does not age. We wish to be photons (light particles) so we can promise ourselves; we will stay forever young. Speed and acceleration have a psychological aspect that might create a sense of liberation and escape. It is a type of disconnect and escape from our personal history as mankind. There is something therapeutic about this speed – whether or not the destination is clear, most people have past burdens, psychological issues and mental loads. The technological information almost allows space travel such as in Star Trek or Star Wars. Our past vanishes as we fly towards the future. As this technological-communicative space creates swarms in motion, the liberation also occurs in the collective aspect. Collective memories of the group, such as wars, plagues, and hardships. Human history yearned for technology, like a spring extending. Speed allows liberation from religion, past wars, feudalism, and plagues, liberation from our painful history. Pressing send, swiping on our touchscreens, such actions are neurologically translated to fast motion towards the future. There are now justifications for the addiction to technology, information, and speed. There is a distinction between velocity, which has a direction, and speed, which does not. Perhaps we prefer to stay in a state of motion without a clear destination. A type of personal or collective denial. If we have a defined destination, it might be unachievable or unreachable. We can’t let that happen, as that would stop our liberation. Our constant motion has a purpose, it doesn’t matter where we’re going, as long as we are going. It is a psychological, and maybe neurological liberation in our consciousness, both personally and collectively. This liberation derives from a few things: Speed as a value as itself (until it reaches the boundary of the speed of light), existence in a technological space and the information, creating, in the words of Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat, 2006) and Baudrillard (America, 2008) a flat, horizontal, and fast state. and men) in its production will certainly say that beauty leads women to the polarity of Libra, and the men to Aries. The men, perhaps would like the women to be outside the centers of power. Capitalism, claims Nancy Atcoff (“The Survival of the Most Beautiful,” 1999), and the rule of the labeling men uses our language, Using the nature of Libra, to define the beauty for cultural consumption. This way, the images of beauty are everywhere in order to arouse jealousy, lust and greed that serve the financial profits. Fashion companies create a disconnection between our sense of beauty and fashion sense that aren’t identical. It is the language of the famous philosopher, Sarter, “The Other comprehensive person”, the view of the other person on me, the way we think that the other person looks and understands us, the nature of Libra which we define ourselves in the view of the other person on us. A rapper’s hat worn upside down connects us to a social vibe, clothing is a Libra connection with definitions and a direction of social identity. A cloth is a “say” of where I belong. In the coupling circle there is value to expensive wear, but the value of the expensive clothing also diminishes after the sexual goal has been achieved. The ‘Libra fashion’ is a social competition, it allows the polarity of Aries a dialect and complementary opposites to be shown from the zodiac. That’s what the colored feathers of the birds do, or the mane hair in some mammals, or the particularly long tail of the peacock. Fashion failure is not only an aesthetic failure, but also a social failure. Human consciousness leads aesthetics to other levels, it is a failure to belong to something, a lack of connection to a group, to morality, to the right time, even to a point not recognizing the objective reality. In the absence of “wrong” clothing, the affiliation to the group is not accepted… (The simple belonging to a group, without words or content, the immediate one). In the deep consciousness, the fashion “Rules” have a deep stream and implications in the tension and the bilateral flow as in Libra and Aries. We must not fall behind the fashionable order.

A New Mental Geometry

We are now witnesses of new mental geometry. In the past, the human soul was in a vertical, religious state, including chronology, linearity, history, and faith (all holding a burden of guilt and repression). The direction was up and down – from God to mankind. The acceleration of technology, information, and communication, changed our mental geometry towards the flat and horizontal plane. The horizon becomes a type of transcendence in human psychology, as a result of the verticality, that ruled the human soul for thousands of years, disappearing. The horizon, because it is unrealized, and because of our constant state of being on the highway, becomes a religious alternative. It exists, we almost reach it, but not yet… It exists whenever technology is used, keeping a safe distance just in case we might reach it. If so, we witness a combination of modern psychology. Technology, information, acceleration, and horizontality, are conjoined alike matter, space, and energy are in Einstein’s modern physics. They complete each other. The technology of information is an amplifier of speed. Speed brings horizontality. This might be the place to differentiate between information and content. Literature, philosophy, art, music, and so on, have a substantial effect on the soul of man. We can call these: content. They are slow and take time for us to understand. They create dreams, thoughts, they excite the soul. They can make us long for the past such as Plato, Nietzsche, the bible, the Mona Lisa, great symphonies and more. Information doesn’t do this, it is but a vehicle for our subconscious that desires liberation. Information only has one direction – forward. (Perhaps the first transition from the vertical world to the horizontal flat world occurred with the first immigrants from Europe to the Americas (Baudrillard, America 1986), and in doing so immigrated from the dimension of time to the dimension of space. The American, traveling by horse, then by Cadillacs and motels, now to Silicon Valley. Baudrillard said the skyscrapers of New York are a vertical compensation for the flat and horizontal) Nietzsche once wrote “Humane, too humane”… The technology of information forces the human soul to be horizontal, too horizontal. It is a horizon in a looping state of approaching and distancing. If God is gone, horizontal transcendence replaces him, at least psychologically. If so, we can say that speed holds within it a type of liberation, a victory over chronological time and a dynamic between acceleration and gravity. It preserves the horizontal and replaces the vertical in the psychology of the individual or group. The acceleration is possible due to science. The Information dimension alongside it allows acceleration just like in space, and like an astronaut exiting a spaceship, we are sucked into the void and there is nothing that can stop it.

Loss Of Memory (History) Is Loss Of Identity

The relations between technology, information, acceleration, and horizontality, dictates a new horizontal mental geometry forever. It is like a fast forward button on a remote getting jammed… The rapidness of events and visual stimulation around us (advertisements, billboards, and aggressive media constantly showering us with information of all types) focuses us on the present of the here and now. And of course, launches man forwards into a better future, full of opportunities… All that you have to do is move faster (subconsciously), and believe that the future is the redeemer, even if it is void of content, as long as it is the future, we can continue accelerating towards the liberating horizon. The forward movement manages to erase the aspects of memory and the past. At this speed, substantial relationships can’t emerge. Perhaps, in order to demonstrate this, try watching a black and white movie from the ’30s and ’40s. People are tailored, wearing suits, women are dressed well. They hold martini glasses, have casual conversations, nothing is urgent. The rhythm of time is slow, they are thoughtful and respectful to one another. They listen to one another in dialogs, the personal listening and attention to each other no longer exists. Whether it is in the living room, or at a coffee shop, the smartphone is set on the table, for there will definitely be an important caller, and so we know who texts or calls, we might have to answer. In the cellular era, connection is greater than content, as it’s a representation of movement and acceleration, or so our subconscious experiences it. The phone is put between the conversers as if to say “me first”. Conversation is commonly disrupted. The lack of a continuous dialogue is a type of collective ADD. Relationships are stripped down to their minimums. Reminiscent of the train tracks in western America. It doesn’t matter what’s in the carriages, what’s important is that trains are constantly moving. In this state, slow relationships of compassion, meaning, and empathy. Content disappears and is replaced by information, entertainment, and cooking shows. Perhaps subconscious speed also has an effect of fear, such as on a rollercoaster… Fear makes us consume more and more information and entertainment. Cooking, clothes stores, and sex are a last grip of the physical dimension and are a response to the technological information era we are in. If meaningful content doesn’t exist, time passes purposelessly. Nothing to remember, we are probably living a sort of life without memory and historical meaning. Someone once said, “How will we know where we are going, if we don’t know where we are coming from”… Marilyn Monroe, John Kennedy, Caligula, Genghis Khan, Twiggy, the Battle of Thermopylae, the Vietnam War… Don’t be mistaken – they were not forgotten by the smartphone and Facebook generation, they never existed. It is reminiscent of Star Trek space travel, a leap forward, leaving behind white stripes and empty void. “Elli fat mat”, a saying in Arabic meaning “the past is dead”, is mistaken, as the past isn’t dead but rather has never existed. Without memory, the aspect of the past completely disappears. At the edge of the polar chain, we find Marcel Proust and his monumental creation about memory, in search of lost time. It seems as if speed and the future “hold within them such a grand promise” that perhaps choosing them to rule exclusively over the human subconscious is better than all. But without memory (personal or collective), without intimate relationships of communication, empathy, and longing for the past, identity fades both in the individual and the group (after all, the group is made from the individuals within it). One doesn’t remember where he came from, where he’s headed and he doesn’t know who he even is anymore, and to avoid these hard questions he becomes addicted to technology, the internet, the smartphone, just to find a place for himself, the only place that’s left: speed. Speed is optimistic; it keeps us from falling (as there is an equivalence between acceleration and gravity) and it also liberates from ‘past hardships’. As the question of identity grows, so does our need for speed, an attempt of receiving an answer from the horizon. All in the technological swarm, everybody’s in a rush, their destination must be obvious to them, so of course, I’ll join, the sum is greater than its parts. The digital me is greater than the physical me. The technological swarm (the users, Facebook, WhatsApp) behaves as an amplifier for movement and speed. Perhaps this is also a type of liberating vertigo. Staying in the safety of the liberating speed. It is social, it is to stay connected with everyone. How investigator O’Brien says in 1984: Not believing that 2+2=5 is to not be part of big brother’s party. Not being part of the party is not existing, Winston would be thrown out of time and history into the void. Because technological acceleration is the only place left for us, it is obvious why we stick to it. Perhaps it reminds us of Quantum mechanics. A wave has speed and direction. A particle has a location. You can’t know both speed and location. You choose one, you lose the other, so it is in modern physics. We, of course, prefer the wave aspect and not the particle aspect, quantum mechanics includes us in the swarm as the duality of wave-particle applies to light as well. The swarm swirls, we need the swarm because the intensity of the swirl (a result of the speed) increases as more people join it with a click of the mouse. like a space station, the swirl creates gravity, which is how artificial gravity is made in outer space. Einstein’s thoughts live on again, not only in physics but also in our technological-spiritual lives. Physics is translated into psychological processes, feelings, habits, and thoughts. The speed that technology dictates over us has some explanations from different points of view. Speed is a perfect crime. It steals our soul, identity, in exchange for the opportunity to join the swarm – our new home on the highway. Only photons are allowed in. Our identities have become insubstantial. It alternates between the digits 0 and 1. It is digital magic where words, music, movies, images, and files, all become combinations of those digits. The technology of information prefers speed and disconnect, breaking up sequences, loss of memory, like in Spielberg’s “Artificial Intelligence” (2001). In this movie, aliens surround the child-robot and show him an illusion of an hour with his mother (who is no longer alive). This shows (like HAL, the computer in “A Space Odyssey” and the robot in “Bicentennial Man”) the reverse trend of passion and will to become a human. To be free from technology. The use of cellular and the internet now creates a global immigrant country. A virtual country, where movement is unrelated to content or identity. It is movement throughout infinite space, without any limits. It is an attempt of mankind to liberate itself from the physical realm and transmit our consciousness, usually anonymously. It is immigration into the realm of speed and letting acceleration rule over us. It’s reminiscent of Lewis Caroll in his book “Through The Looking-Glass” and what Alice found. The white queen turns to Alice, mockingly asking: “What lame memory do you have that you can’t remember what happened tomorrow?”

Texts, Books, Reading As Preservation Of Content, Time, And Identity.

A book is an excellent storage tool for content, peaceful research, and orderly detailing ideas and thoughts. So claims professor Neil Postman in his book “Amusing Ourselves To Death” (2000). In order to read written text with orderly ideas, whether it is the bible, odyssey, Plato’s writings, Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ or Marshall McLuhan’s ‘Understanding Media’, it needs to have a chronological structure. Being made up of letters, words, lines, pages, and chapters, it will fundamentally have a beginning, middle, and end. Text makes us understand, feel, wonder, and create relationships with ideas and the author’s consciousness. The experience of reading a book turns into something personal and unique. This is how you feel when you begin to read “Jane Eyre”, as the storyteller holds her most precious book, isolating herself from the surrounding noise, and the act of reading becomes a metaphor to an act of entering a different world. Marcel Proust takes us into a different world, entering a bed and falling asleep with the book that is intercepting his mind and dreams… So too do the Mad Hatter and Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, where we are rushing with the late rabbit… Text creates for us a world we can enter and leave as we like. A good story joins the reader with their soul. So does “Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain as you read the tales of his adventures across the Mississippi, and Joseph Conrad in his book “Heart of Darkness” (1899). Text binds between time and meaning. It consolidates our consciousness, and in doing so, it also consolidates our personal and collective identity. It connects the reader to the past and gives meaning to the present. It has the ability to guide us to a future full of purpose, through our reading. When the text is in a book, we actually read it. In the digital worlds of cellular and internet, the reader doesn’t actually read, they just look. That look liberates us from the text, the words, the content, and from time. To adapt to the horizontality, we move aside the content, and in doing so also we lose our identity. We prefer information/a fast journey of liberation and optimism. Information is repetitive, the center of attention, anesthetic, reminiscent of billboards. They grow in size while we shrink. It is a type of vector, everyone shares the aspect of pure motion, to a place we all belong, information is the scaffolding of speed. With the speed of today, information is old even before it is distributed. Perhaps it would be wise to think that if information is the dominant factor in our present lives, this speed might be too fast for interpersonal communication. That same bonding between human souls no longer exists when we meet only in a state of ‘flight’. In our personal and collective souls widen a large gap, like a canyon. We can think of it as hidden loneliness in the individual. We are part of a swarm, moving quickly, communicating with countless Facebook friends and receiving likes… our dating profiles being seen by countless amounts of people. But in all of those, there isn’t a single intimate relationship, a true friend to have a conversation with. There exists the mass, the swarm, but they only hide the large fracture in communication, the lack of deep relationships. The lack of authentic communication leads to violence. If the individual is no longer approachable, and we don’t feel a connection with our souls, violence (pulling out a knife at a nightclub, stabbing and murdering with unbearable ease) might be a desperate attempt at communication, approaching the lost individual. And we have already mentioned that the lack of these meaningful relationships brings up the question of personal identity, and who we really are. Violence in this context might make it not only an active straightforward relationship but also identification. Violence is an answer to our loss of identity and lack of communication. We live in a world where the communicative aspect is unprecedented. It constantly exists online, but it burrows real interpersonal communication. On the other end of the spectrum is the Tao monk. In the way of Tao, when the wise man is silent, his thoughts are heard by thousands. The change in space (from physical to digital) is a change in interpersonal discussion. We used to ride on horses, walked, or sailed in order to reach a destination or meet someone, but today, in our digital space, we are in an unending discussion with many people and factors. It is an addiction to connectivity which becomes more important than content. It doesn’t matter what is transmitting through the optic fiber as long as it is transmitting something. Content becomes information, speeding up as it goes. It resembles somewhat the structure of the human mind. The human mind is made up of connections, frameworks, and memory. For the first time in human history, time is passing but without content. It is an insufferable state for the human soul. Content and time are bound without separation. Time with shallow information becomes a type of burdening mortgage, a hidden banker inside us. Time passes, but nothing happens, then what exactly passes? What about our memory? How do you measure the time void of content and emotion? A new slang language of abbreviations, images, and symbols emerged, so then where exactly is our interpersonal communication? We live in a type of communicative Tower of Babylon. We have in our hands all types of communication, we are never by ourselves (the Tibetian zen monk will definitely have a say about this… or perhaps something to remain silent about…), which is why we are so lonely. To have such an intense relationship level, and yet still not feel a substantial connection, might be one of the largest failures of the era. Even if by chance we are part of this, we won’t stand a chance as we’re trampled by the bison herd running across the autostrada of information. Technology is an all you can eat buffet, open 24 hours a day. Screens invite you to music, football, models, fashion, sex, news, advertisements. We eat all the time and yet the form of information creates an aspect of an unending diet. This is why we are never satisfied, something is missing, perhaps our soul yearns for the content which it no longer even knows. The content it never experienced, but yet deep down in our subconscious it still yearns for it. We continue to travel quickly, as information guides us across the autostrada from motel to motel, from turn to turn, but make sure not to make a mistake, as you eat more from the same thing, you remain just as hungry. This movement grants us hope and optimism for the future. This makes information an addicting journey, granting us hope.

Media

The speed in which human consciousness exists is undoubtedly unprecedented. Media, of course, has a central part in the process of acceleration. The speed and the mass of information create a feeling of senselessness and loss of identity in the individual. Narrative and content exist no more. A large laser beam scorched the city. Were left with the fallout of the media. Media corporations enter the empty space, the distraught subconscious. It drives the environment with great speeds, overflowing us with brands, talents, cheap sales, celebrities, models, athletes, superstars… The country built on linear time, on ideologies and myths, loses its power and is replaced by the media corporations. They rule information and communication, drive the environment like a black hole forming an event horizon, reminiscent of the movie “The Truman Show” (1999). In this movie, reality is the production of media, where the entire world comes from an entertainment background, portraying soap opera actors, broadcasted nonstop. The media is like a type of disk that spins us all, similar to space stations that generate artificial gravity in space. We seemingly are willing to partake in this whirl of communication in order to feel a sense of gravity that lacks in our collective soul. The media creates a virtual, one-dimensional reality, ruled by the American dream of watch rates and viewer opinions. The television disrupts our natural order and relations. It informs us, but the rapidity of change from topic to topic makes it hard for us to actually digest that information. Entertainment shows are a type of constant distraction, a matrix-esque reality. The media corporations have the power to change our consciousness using mass, speed, and disruption. Advertising is liberation, it is like news but always good news. We choose to be in a rush, probably out of fear, fear of having a real identity, fear from reality as it is, fear from all those relations that might exist if we could slow down. These fears derive from the lack of plot, the producer that doesn’t reveal himself, and the director that keeps being replaced. We will accelerate towards the current celebrity, and once we slow down, the corporations will quickly guide us towards the next celebrity. The corporations seemingly have a philosophical instinct: speed and acceleration represent wealth. Shopping at a mall, the compulsive consumerism is a desperate attempt of the human consciousness to slow down, return to the physical plane, to try out a dress at the changing rooms, to go back to the identity that falls apart due to the technological acceleration. Information and horizontal acceleration create a new economy. As everything turns digital and virtual, we invest in real-estate. A house is stable, land and property are real… the subprime crisis in America, real-estate is a reaction to the collective soul existing in a senseless state. It is an attempt at retrieving the physical aspect that our soul is lacking. In other words, as long as we’re rushing, someone is profiting. Reminiscent of the video game Pacman. A large mouth eating more and more, never stopping. A capitalistic reality. Shopping, consumerism, and real-estate are one attempt at grasping the old consciousness that existed in historical linear time. Sexuality is openly expressed on billboards, television, and online. It is also a type of desperate attempt of an accelerating soul at returning back to the physical, meaningful relationships. This sexuality changes a lot about the world. Inside turns outside, outside turns inside. It may not even be sexuality anymore. It is disconnected from true closeness, it is charged with acceleration, it’s a reaction to something which is its exact opposite, information and speed. It’s hopelessly on the defense, not fitting in with the horizontal flow. Paradoxically, as we accelerate, we want to shop more, and as we shop more, our human psychology will yearn for intimacy. It is a type of dialectic, between the materialistic and the mental and sexual. Two sides of the same principle. Instead of emotion, acceleration is translated into quick sex as a savior of the horizontal senselessness, touch and intimacy can definitely make up for the virtual space, but only with the right person. Sexuality and shopping are the missing stabilizers of our collective flight. In his book, “America” (1989), Jean Baudrillard claims; speed is a triumph of the reason precedes over cause. Speed is without a past, a type of vector, a force with a direction but no destination. In order to have speed, you must have movement. Movement is, of course, us. As mentioned, it is the swarm. The swarm is on a mad flight, but we can’t know the intensity of the madness. If I’m with everyone, I’ll be ok. It’s like running on a treadmill – no matter how fast you run, you’ll always stay on the treadmill. Without motion, there is no speed, speed requires the mass, it’s a pure object. Mass creates the liberating, forever young horizontality, giving us hope towards the future. In the virtual world, Alice’s Cheshire Cat disappears, but instead of a smile, only tears remain. We’re on an autostrada with no intention to stop. If we stop, where exactly would we end up? The only place left for us is acceleration. The autostrada is liberating, just like a car for an American teenager. No more laws, only traffic laws. A typo while texting interrupts the movement. It is a type of mind-jam, as we stopped. As we exist in a void, we can’t stop, since even if the engines are off, we continue traveling. The business world is a fast world. Perhaps so thought terrorist Bin Laden, as a Muslim, must have thought haste comes from the devil. The twin towers, the towers of 0-1, he destroyed. The American space brought immigrants to the sense of horizontality, speed, and autostrada (from the cowboy to silicon valley, from geographic to informational) the towers dictates the world of speed. Likely his Arabic mind, even if it didn’t know it, felt it deep down. We’ll definitely continue cooking, photographing, as they are also an expression of our yearning for lost time of Proust.

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