The properties of the element of fire guide Virilio in writing on the subject. Fire is an almost imageless element, except for three: light, heat, immediacy. The light according to Virilio is the light of the camera, the heat is the weapon, the immediacy is the decision making.
Virilio reviews how the development of the camera was due to the development of the machine gun, and in general how the development of cinematic photography was due to the consequences of various military developments. Observation and visual intelligence are the cornerstone of the military. That is why they have been at the forefront of technology since the dawn of history to the present day. As the weapons became more sophisticated and the slaughter on the battlefield increased, so did the need for more sophisticated means of observation. The observation plane became the most effective means, and in this way the battlefield, and later the whole world, also became cinematic. The war itself became a spectacular visual spectacle, due to the sophistication of the night lights and the intensity of the shells, in parallel with the sophistication of the defenses against them, trenches and fortifications, which created a sense of disconnection.
The function of the camera is first to connect the fragments of the whole that are revealed to it in separate images, into one complete image. Unlike more modern photography, which focuses on details and create resolutions. Nowadays, with the development of means of observation also for the invisible, such as infrared and radar, and other electronic means, the problem is the management of the information that comes from them, which is the most reliable, but also dense. This created the need for computing, and from there it was a short way to make automatic decisions. In this way the war became a nonstop film, and the nonstop time management replaced the management of space. There was also an obsession with stealth weapons, simulations, and electronic deception. As a result, the war became impersonal and intangible.
Because the sense of reality went wrong, so did human reason. The need to filter information under the conditions of human-machine combined activity was first discovered in World War II, with the sophistication of air defense equipment. Thus was founded the science of cybernetics, based on the concept of the system and the feedback, and in particular the negative feedback, which allows for the screening of human errors through practices.
A detached worldview was created as a result, making motion pictures more tangible than reality. Reality, which has been imprisoned and eliminated by the electromagnetic cyber world, is being revived through the worlds of guided imagery of cinema. Movies have become the telescopic rifle through which we look at war in particular, and the world at large.
In World War II, aerial observation, which has become very sophisticated, has become the most important means of feeding raw materials for films designed to portray reality with an objective eye. But the aerial observation also turned the surface into a detached object, as in a laboratory. Everything became too clear and immediate from the air, and repeated evidence was required, as in a laboratory experiment, to confirm any report. This is due to the increasing speed and mobility of the modern ground military movement. The need for a broad verbal interpretation of the outcome of air battles and bombings, has turned silent films into talking films, among viewers in the command rooms. The ability to carry out nocturnal attacks using bright lighting and the use of radar added to the sense of cinematic detachment from reality. The speed of the decision became more important than its correctness. Mobility, the hallmark of the military force, has become a series of means of communication, sent only by the commander-in-chief to any force on the ground. Statistics have become a major tool for him in decision making.
The citizens of the home front have also became partners to the reality of the command rooms. They were attentive to alarms, under the cloud of uncertainty of the bomb approaching them on the one hand, and watched at night the spectacular spectacle of the air defense spotlights and light bombs.
A similar spectacle is currently being experienced by Israeli citizens watching from a protected area in the background during clashes in Gaza, such as in Operation ''Wall Guard'', in which trails of thousands of missiles illuminated the sky. The first Lebanon war is an early and different example of the means of sight taking over the war, using the unmanned aerial vehicles to asist the airplanes.
In World War II, the culmination of the spectacle of light and fire was the atomic bomb. Immediately after the war it was replaced by the exhaust from the jet aircraft engines, and a few years later the fire emitted by the missile engines launched into space. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which required an immediate response from the United States following fears of launching missiles from the island, expressed the empowerment of the processes that connected the observation, immediacy and weapons, that are a modern incarnation of primodial fire.
In the Vietnam War, unmanned jet aerial vehicles were used for the first time, as part of a sophisticated electronic system of aiming and collecting data from various sensors. The UAVs, and the missiles launched by pilots remotely using the Send and Forget method, contributed to the disengagement of the fighters from the war. What remains is the link between the flash of light and the war. For war as a vision in Vietnam contributed the use of drugs by soldiers. War as a cinema has become a default.
In the 1970s, the advanced flight simulator was developed, which enabled full simulation of operational flight, and became almost its replacement. The flight has become a cinematic misenscene. Strategic deterrence was also practiced through electronic war games. The computerized maps, created using the aerial scan of the surface, created a new world of computer mapping, imaging and navigation. The pilots were given an overhead display, sophisticated helmets, and the ability to fly and launch through speech and eye focus. The flight became automatic. The eye and the weapon merged.
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