Drones as Litany

The word "Litany" has a few different meanings, but the most common one is:

A long and repetitive list or series of something, usually complaints or problems.

For example:

“The customer service representative had to listen to a litany of complaints about the faulty product.”

“The politician’s speech was just a litany of empty promises.”

The word originates in a religious context:

‘’Litany’’ is a prayer that includes a series of requests or supplications from the worshipper or the prayer leader, followed by repetitive responses from the congregation or group of worshippers.

For example, in a traditional prayer, the cantor might say "God! Please have mercy" and the congregation would respond "Have mercy, please have mercy." This repetition creates a sense of call and response, or a dialogue between the leader and the congregation.

The word's origin is in ancient Greek, λιτανεία (litaneía), which means "prayer, supplication." From there it passed into Latin (litania) and finally into English.

Although its religious origin is still in use, today the word litany is mostly used in a broader context to describe any long and repetitive list, usually of complaints or problems.

So, when someone says "a litany of..." they are emphasizing the length and repetitiveness of the list, often with a slightly negative connotation.

In the context of ‘’Drones’’ as the nickname inspired by the meaning of the word "refrain" for UAVs or unmanned aerial vehicles, the word "litany" can be used to describe: a list of negative claims or concerns about drones.

In these days of reciting the Selichot prayers in preparation for the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the supplications uttered in the wee hours of the night chillingly echo the harsh reality of the military conflict unfolding on the banks of the Litani River.

The Camera's Evolution From Tool to Consciousness

 

The Camera Eye - A New Collective Unconscious

The process by which the camera transformed from subject to object, from an auxiliary tool for documentation to an integral part of consciousness, has been evolving since the early days of photography and continues to this day.

The camera's eye is a means that fuses the eye and the camera into one, altering the rules of art and creating a collective optical unconscious.

The 1980s - The Camera as an Extension of Self

In the 1980s, with the transition to video, the compact camera became an organic part of the body. It began to capture the personal point of view. The boundary between the camera's eye as an organ of observation and a means of expression nearly vanished. As video cameras became smaller and more sophisticated, the continuous flow of photographic language became a direct part of the body and mind through continuous documentation. Personality was henceforth shaped through the camera.

The 2000s - The Camera's Ubiquitous Presence

In the 2000s, tiny and sophisticated video cameras in smartphones became constant companions for everyone, both as creators and viewers, and an integral part of cyberspace culture. The close connection to visual media transformed them into entities of self-expression, shaping perception and content. The camera acquired a consciousness of its own.

Technology and the Simulated Self

The camera simulates the self with the aid of complex technological and social processes. On the technological level, sophisticated digital tools have been developed, enabling the design and distribution of visual content in various formats. On the social level, social networks allow for the unlimited distribution of personal content.

The 2020s - Virtual Realities and a New Consciousness

In the 2020s, the culture of virtual space is developing through artificial intelligence, which includes instructions for rephrasing and redesigning the image and plot in interactive communication. The simulated content creates the future way of life. The connection with reality is nullified in a holistic experience. The camera's eye shapes a new consciousness of absolute time and space. The familiar chronological perception of reality fades, also due to the "production machine" of electronic communication, which transmits endless fabricated content at the speed of light, and as a result of extensive engagement with computer games, which present spectacular virtual worlds in an imaginative perspective, creating an illusion of the sensation of flight.

A New Language

The "camera's eye" creates the totality of relationships between the mind, body, and media. It is culturally ubiquitous and has become a substitute for the experience of direct observation and a developed subject of thought and ideology. The camera has transformed from a conceptual metaphor to a method of discourse. Photography has become a grammatical system seeking new forms. This ambiguity of the camera's eye as a system of expression results in photography being a direct language to the body and mind. Following the development of digital photography technologies, the personal camera's eye has evolved from an auxiliary mirror to a model of the self. The personal camera reflects the self as an image. Through it, one re-experiences the self as a performative image, a "selfie" that blurs the distinction between the image and its creator.

From Gaston Bechelard to Paul Virilio

Gaston Bechelard and Paul Virilio are two of the greatest French philosophers of the twentieth century. They have many similar characteristics: Phenomenological and the anti-structuralist approach. Cognitive fracture as a key for understanding human behavior. Existence of eternal movement, speed and present. Flight and aviation as key amplifiers of consciousness. Importance of material reality and especially architecture. Negation of Post-modrnism. Poetic writing style. Affinity for physics of relativity. Different characteristics are: Purification versus accident. Psychoanalysis versus technology. Classics against Hyper-modernism.

Bechelard [1884 - 1962] was a senior member of the French Academy of Sciences, and greatly influenced postmodern French philosophers. He contributed greatly to the study of the poetics and philosophy of science. He developed the concept of the "cognitive rift", which is essential for the progress of science out of crises. He has extensively developed the concept of "dynamic imagination", according to which the main function of the creative imagination is to refute existing images.

Virilio [1932 - 2018] was a cultural theorist, urbanist and aesthetic philosopher. He is best known for his writings on technology, as it has evolved in relation to speed and power, architecture, the arts, the city and the military. The major concepts he developed are "Dromology" ["Racing"] and "Global Accident". According to them, modern culture, the cyberspace, is instantly virtual. It moves at the maximum speed of light, creating a reality of a uniform world, a huge global city, which is a terminal saturated with detached images and prone to accidents.

For both, fliht and aviation are key to creative thinking. They are  a male-female creature alike and the deity in person. The attributes embodied in these concepts becomes for them, automatically and involuntarily, the creative intuition. This is similar to the reliance of many other creators on these concepts as a starting point for thinking. For example, the issue of UAVs stands out today. It has become a tool through which one can review and summarize any human phenomenon. For Bechelard the UAV is another good conductor, an amplifier, for the imagining mind. For Virilio, it is another link in the de-localization and global accident of humanity.

The difference between Gaston Bechelard and Paul Virilio is the difference between the optimist and the pessimist. Bechelard's point of view is personal and intimate, compared to Virilio's global-cosmic point of view. Bechelard observes in space what the near and familiar reality is, on the personal and private scale. Virilio is replacing Bechelard's dream and reverie with technology and media. He looks at the world from the outer and unfamiliar space, on the superpersonal scale and on society as a whole. Bechelard is the desire, the passion and the hope. Virilio is the surrender and defeat, the inevitable global accident. In Bechelard the world is as round as a well. For Virilio, the world is as square as a screen. Bechelard is innocent and Virilio is cynical. In Bechelard the world opens up and in Virilio it is closing.

While Heidegger, Virilio's spiritual teacher, view the radio as superficial and a reduction, Bechelard saw it as a possibility for deepening and uniting hearts, a kind of universal utopia. The conversations in cafes are loud, but in the universal world of radio, everyone hears each other, and everyone can listen comfortably.

Clues to Bechelard's critique of the "distressed philosophy", as he called existentialist philosophy, can be found without difficulty in all his writings. The refusal of distress was inconsistent with the fashion order of his time, but Bechelard remained consistent in his positions. Boldness was needed to write, in the middle of the twentieth century, in France, in the days of the existentialist climax, that "distress is false: we were created to breathe well''.

Many writers note the psychic powers that Bechelard's philosophy imparts to those who come through its gates, the healing quality inherent in his philosophy, in the possibility he offers, in which man and the world are in constant poetic dialogue. There is indeed a lot of loneliness in Bechelard's philosophy. This is, without a doubt, a philosophy of the individual, the loner. But he is not alone, he is always in the company of the world. Moreover, he is in the company of the beauty of the world. The natural destiny of dreaming, Bechelard believed, is to see the beauties of the world. You can not dream of ugliness in a reverie. Beauty is not only aesthetic, it also a need of the cognitive, ethical and mentality of the person.

Virilio is replacing Bechelard's dream and reverie with technology and media. The sorting and comparison based on the classicical writers by Bechelard, alternates with him to the sorting and comparison based on the present reality. Bechelard's point of view is personal. Virilio's perspective is global. According to Virilio, the world has changed. It is not the same world known by classical works and history. It all became a bustling mega city. We can no longer rely on our natural perception. It was completely distorted by the Tele-Media. The original and new poetic image can not exist in the world of electronic consumerism images, which enslave the imagination and cognition. Loneliness is no longer a sacred value. It is mechanical, and stems from the social split into "human points" created by technology.

The words, too, became worthless. Only the oral experience, the continuity that the delay and acceleration in speech are capable of, remained. It is the stops speech can create, by the wisdom of the thinker, in the mind of the listener. Virilio, through his stretched paragraphs, brings back the reader to the beginning of the social consciousness, of the shoutings of primitive man. He does not have a dialogue with the reader, as does Bechelard. There is hom survival for its own sake. No hand caressing. There is a finger that press the destruction button.

Virilio is one of the most prolific and poignant critics of the drama of the modern technological age. The enterprise of his life is an ongoing reflection on the origins, nature, and influences of the technologies that make up the modern  and postmodern world. He was particularly interested in military technology, representation technologies, computer and information technologies and biotechnology. The question of aviation as a dystopia is central to his thinking, as aviation is a key factor in the creation of the visual world and the global city, a world-terminal that is negatively interactive. Although Virilio does not ruling out technology, he radically criticizes the ways in which it changes the world, and even the human race. The criticism towards him is that he has a flawed perception, which is too negative and one-sided, and loses the empowering and democratic aspects of new computer and media technologies.

Sources:

Gaston Bechelard. The poetics of space

John Armitage. Virilio Live: Selected Interviews

Paul Virilio - Camera movement over eighty years

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.

The critical space according to Paul Virilio

Global urban geographical decentralization, which is a major phenomenon nowadays, has led to the creation of huge cities and an endless, legal and illegal suburban expansion that extends across entire countries. The State of Israel, in particular, has long since became, due to its small size, population density, and lack of governance in the area of ​​regional planning, a single suburban city. This situation is changing the definition of sovereignty. It marks the end of the uniqueness of the place, which characterizes the old political stage and the historic city, and its replacement by the principle of immediacy, the unity of time, which is a politics of intensity and interactivity, of a technical set-up. Systems architecture has finally replaced the historic architecture and urbanism system.

The ubiquitous, immediate presence is being followed by the replacement of the traditional agenda, which was based on the solar cycle,  with accelerated technological agenda, realized by the electronic and digital media. The accelerated agenda is pushing past habits of populating space. The stable regional and urban planning of the space has long been replaced by a general lack of restraint, under social enslavement to accelerated technology. Accelerated technology accompanies humans on their daily journey by high-speed means of transportation, aircraft, cars and trains. These means of transportation greatly eroded the importance of the traditional urban space. Humans have become transfer players in the geographic space, where they are constantly mobile.

A third reason for the disintegration of traditional space is modern weapons, the operation of which is characterized by automatic remote decision-making at lightning speed. A heavy critical mass has been created, heralding a catastrophe of the dismantled historic city, of the traditional urbanization, as well as of the state.

Because the cohesive spatial layout was lost in favor of an invisible morphological configuration, a committed personal, interactive isolation was created. An atomization of the individual was created. In this accelerated process, the individual is awaiting return to the homeland, but has no escape from life in the suburbs.

The endless urban expansion marches along with the inner urban collapse. Both together eradicated the distinction between urban population and colonial settlement. They obscure national citizenship, the very obligation to grant significant political citizenship to populations under authority. Separating colonialism from state citizenship is completely impractical, given these urban processes. The sense of enclosure in the kibernetic space is common to all sectors.

Both sides live on the scale of individual survival. Each of the two types of citizenship has, in practice, rights and obligations that equal their status. The "colonial" citizen is exempt from military service and other civilian duties. He is able to build his private home on state land without obtaining building permits, not paying taxes, marrying several women and more. The "state" subject is obligated to obey every law, mild or severe, and the authorities take every opportunity to impose authority on him. Both types of citizens enjoy free basic social and health insurance. The economic ties between them are numerous and diverse.

The traditional extroverted international colonialism, which was characterized by the occupation of territories far from the homeland, has now become an internalized colonialism, dominated by global technology and media corporations. The traditional city collapsed into itself and crumbled. The centers of major cities around the world have become slums.

The immediate interactivity of the technologies has led to the decline in the value of the local human workforce. It gives priority to multinational monopolistic centralism. This is an ideology that denies the rule of national freedom movements. It creates opposing niches for the pursuit of self-management. It corresponds to a minimum country claim presented by economists. This claim enables the creation of technologies that do not require full employment and a real and practical presence of employees.

The pursuit of sovereignty today is a symptom of a simultaneous search for momentum. It is an acceleration that characterizes all separation movements, that exists between all contemporary urban classes, regardless of their national identity. The aspiration for political isolation is of extraordinary dimensions, and includes all sectors of the population. The anti-establishment ecological movement has long exhibited its enormous dimensions, for example in the North American survival movements. Survival movements can also serve as a touchstone for their absurd chances as a counterculture.

Today the spatial disruption has become the disruption of time. Transience has become a key concept in employment. Technical unemployment, temporary employment, dispersal of the wage burden, fragmentation of the labor system, fragmentation of residence, fragmentation of the family, and so on, have become the distinctive hallmark of life today. In addition, a culture of online social networking has been created, based on similar principles.

The traditional family and community, which were the building blocks of national identity, have disappeared. They fell apart following the modern lifestyle. This disintegration also has negative consequences for the status of citizenship, as it allows for disobedience to state institutions, such as through a tax revolt and a lack of governance. There is no real civic center, almost no valuable political center. The real weapon is first and foremost the position, array and direction of the forces present in the current systemic deployment, which tends to completely neutralize the ties between the citizens, the neighborhood unit.

As a result, the development of terrorism today is limited. Terrorism has nothing to do with substansive actions today. In fact, the various national terrorist movements have never had anything to do with opposition to the collapse of traditional urban systems. They expressed a utopian connection to the homeland, while the land of their longings had long since became a suburb. 

Traditional terrorist bodies are today  inefficient and irrelevant, in the reality of mega cities, which are spreading and collapsing simultaneously and uncontrollably. First, they arose to present a false utopian vision of the homeland, but not to deal with the urban issue as reality requires, by way of presenting an independent alternative to urban renewal. Second, they operate in a crumbling society, because the family and the traditional community, which are the source of classically organized resistance, no longer exist for all the inhabitants of the mega cities. Third, they operate in an outdated strategy, of conventional weapons, while the key today is the technological weapon, based on speed.

Military technological progress, which nowadays dictates political decision-making, is characterized by ballistic missiles. Everything is known today in very short durations, a few minutes and sometimes even less. The first response doctrine argues that in order to achieve the target, the nuclear missiles must be launched before those of the enemy have left the ground. These characteristics are similar to those of unmanned aerial vehicles, which are currently the most common weapons in the war against terror.

In order to be able to express themselves, the various political resistance bodies must adopt quick quantum thinking like lightning, based on time and not on space, and act according to commutes between center and fringe, in the territory in which they are located. Speed also requires action in attacks instead of defense. This is at the risk of losing self-identity, which is typical for quantum decision makers. They also run the risk of lack of public support, engaged in time management in a technological and informative race, and baseless political promises, in an urban environment that has lost its original identity.

The article was written based on Paul Virilio's book "The Critical Space".

Style and Content in Paul Virilio's Works

Quotes on Paul Virilio, the French Post- Modernist thinker, from the book: The Virilio Reader,  editor James Der Derian:

Preview: Reading Paul Virilio's writings is an oral reading. It is well understood only when read. This is because the word being heard has the ability, because of the time needed to be spoken, to pause on the visual image for the appropriate period of time to decipher it, while producing and creating the appropriate mental stimulus for deciphering, something which is impossible when the eye experiences constantly changing images in silent reading, or as in the everyday reality in general. In this respect, Virilio is like other Post Modern French thinkers, including Gaston Bacheler, who also create difficulties in understanding them without getting into their shoes. Thus, any reading of a summary or article of their writings is worthless. Read the source first to understand what it is all about, like reading a song.

Paul Virilio character impression was of  of a proud yet somewhat shy man, with none of  the character that marks many of the nouveaux philosophes. He was popular and received many invitations to speak, and accepted only few.  Born in 1932, as a child his first encounter with the speed of the war machine came at the outset of the Second World War, listening to the radio in his hometown of Nantes, hearing that the Germans had reached it, and then, almost simultaneously, hearing the sound of tanks outside his window. It was his first brush with Blitzkrieg. Aerial bombardments also left a deep impression, as they destroyed the city completely. He was drafted to fight in France's war with Algeria, before taking up a career practicing and teaching urban architecture. In between he learned the art of stained-glass making.  His official bios usually begin with his tenure as professor (1969), general director (1975), and president (1990) of the Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture.

Beside his contributions to the philosophy of technology and society he wrote numerous shorter pieces on film, art, architecture, and current diplomatic-military affairs.

Virilio represents the power of will, intellect, and belief over the technological predestinations of late modernity. Virilio believes that accidents play a double game, as both disaster and diagnostic of the human condition. They can serve as a powerful agnostic wrench in the works of the new techno-deities. 

Virilio's gift for original and often un anticipated transition from seemingly commonplace discussions to profound, at times transcendent, critical syntheses, requires a particular attentiveness to the interplay of the topical and rhetorical. He is able, in part, to accomplish these transitions - which might best be described as accidental syntheses – by virtue of the specific sensibilities of the French language and culture not easily reproduced in other lenguages. 

What is for some panache, others will consider indulgent. At times these unwieldy sentences appear to be nothing more than an expedient means for imparting raw information. In other instances the task of reading him involved recognizing moments in which a shift in registers occurs from what at first appears only to be informational, to what finally amounts, in a quasi haphazard fashion - by virtue of a sheer glut, a vertiginous welter of references - to one of those unique accidental syntheses. 

The task may then best be described as sensing, approximating, or even guessing in a manner which strives for a certain rapport.

Internet browsing, hypertext and other computer-related stuff, goes well with Paul Virilio's theories about the impact of speed on the western world as we know it. Climbing up across Searching in the Internet tree, one will find the complete collapse of distance accompanied by a radical attenuation of identity. Lost sight, as well as the original site of the "Person'' are characteristic to browsing. He - or she are thinned out, disappearing into the infosphere, seven degrees removed from everything. Something that one moment had been so close, seemingly so significant, had become nothing at all.

Virilio is not the first to discern this dark side to an Enlightenment which had, for the most part, contracted a new happy, progressive marriage of self, reason, and technology. Earlier warnings about the possible perils of technologies of reproduction have been powerfully and persuasively voiced. 

First on just about every list would be Walter Benjamin. Writing in Germany in the 1930s, he observed how mechanically reproduced art, especially film, would become useful for Fascism, for the rendering of politics into aesthetics, with the advantage of mobilizing the masses for war without endangering traditional property relations. In the essay, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” he anticipates Virilio's linking of technologies of acceleration and war in citing an early analyst and advocate of speed, the Futurist, Filippo Marinetti.

Second is Guy Debord, leader of the Situationniste movement in France in the 1950s and 1960s, author of the short but highly influential, Society of the Spectacle. Surveying the spread of spectacle, the fetishization of the image, and the rise of a consumer society, he anticipated the failure of conventional, radical, spatial politics in May of 1968 in France. 

Third, there is Michel Foucault's extra-disciplinary genealogies of politiwas techniques of control arising from pan-opticism. Displaying no anxiety of influence, Virilio takes Foucault's pan-opticon model to an extraterrestrial level of discipline and control, offering a microanalysis of how new technologies of oversight and organizations of control, innovated by strategic alliances of the military, industrial, and scienti communities, have made the crossover into civilian and political sectors create a global administration of fear. 

All of these critical thinkers and others have provided key insights into the political and social implications of the advent of new technologies of reproduction. Yet they seem out of date, stuck in place, when compared to the restless yet, in all its timefullness, strangely rustless conceit of Virilio, that the proliferation of highspeed, realtime, cinematic, global, computer networked - in a word – virtual systems of how we see, has forever changed how we know. 

In an essay which originally appeared in Le Monde Diplomatique, Virilio maps the social consequences: What lies ahead is a disturbance in the perception of what reality is; it is a shock, a mental concussion. And this outcome ought to interest us. Why? Because never has any progress in a technique been achieved without addressing its specific negative aspects. The specific negative aspect of these information super highways is precisely this loss of orientation regarding the other and with the world. It is obvious that this loss of orientation, this nonsituation, is going to usher in a deep crisis which will affect society and hence, democracy. In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.

In short, virtuality destroys reality. On its own, perhaps not a great loss; but Virilio has his eye where others do not, on the collateral damage done to the ethos of reality, the highly vulnerable public space where individuals responsively interact. For Virilio, the interconnectivity of virtual systems is not ushering in a new day for democracy but a new order of telepresence; high-paced interconnectivity is becoming, technically and literally, a substitute for the slower-paced intersubjectivity of traditional political systems. He sees the self as a kind of virtually targeted ground-zero; once voided, concentric circles of political fallout spread, leaving in the vitrified rubble.

reading Virilio will, inevitably, leave one feeling mentally disturbed, usually compounded by a bad case of vertigo, since speed is not only the subject but also the style of Virilio. In a typical Virilio sentence, which often elongates a full paragraph, the concepts can spew out. Many get recycled in later books. Some, benefiting from a new empirical settings, stand out like polished gems. But almost all of them them provide radically different takes on the social implications of technological forces, liberating their analysis from the customary.

a very important and central claim of his books is ''Critical Space'': The exo-colonialism of the industrial, imperial period has become introverted – internally, by the de-industrialization and pauperization of the urban center, and externally by the rise of an intensive transnational capital and transpolitical megalopoles. Mega cities are in   a post-industrial endo-colonization. 

Virilio was arguing from the perspective of a post-Einsteinian relativity, that not only seemed to play fast and loose with analoging, but also seemed to violate some of the basic laws of physics. The inadequacy of language to describe results and the field of quantum mechanics in general, confirmed with Virilio's point of view. The reader might have to suffer some conceptual gymnastics to get it. Yet, for every one of Virilio's oblique concepts or extravagant theoretical claims, there are others which slice right through the sludge that is served up as political analysis.

By this quality alone, there is no question that he belongs in the company of Benjamin and Adorno, Debord and Baudrillard, Foucault and Deleuze, Barthes and Derrida, for taking our understanding of the discursive relationship of technology, society, and politics to a higher plane of political as well as critical consciousness. After the millennium turn he stands out from the critical crowd, as a conceptual innovator and intellectual provocateur, the one who goes to the edge and sees beyond the traditional maps of modernity. 

Startup Nation

The international financial press and propaganda machine of Israel crown the state as the "start-up nation". To understand the meaning of it these days we should remember, on the eve of the signing of the the "gas agreement layout", the difficult years beore the current economic realities.

1968-1973 - During these five years the State of Israel was supposed to celebrate its victory in the Six Day War. The military achievement was dissolved in the War of Attrition with Egypt, international boycott, and the development of Palestinian terrorism that culminated in the murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Economically it was the peak years, when Israel had oil supplies in the Gulf of Suez which provided all the needs, and the defense budget was reduced. Sinai has provided countless potential for employment, prosperity and residence and it seemed that every citizen has come to rest and tranquility.

1973-1978 - During these five years the country faced a grave combined defense, economic and political crisis. Results of Yom Kippur War forced the state to greatly increase the defense budget, relying on loans and grants from the United States and to deal with international boycott, which peaked with the declaration of Zionism as racist on UN podium. Its arrow head was OPEC cartel that had raised oil prices to a level that forced most countries to limit the use of private transport.

1978-1983 - During these five years, after the peace agreement with Egypt and the full granting of the Sinai Peninsula for a document, some believed that the good intentions of Menachem Begin bring will desirable results, and the state will recover quickly from the the political-economic-social-defense crisis. It was not what happened. Uncertainty about the intentions of the Egyptians led to continued high defense budget, OPEC cartel became stronger, together with increased dependence of Israel on the United States. Israelis migrated in masses  abroad. But worst of all was the  destructive inflation of hundreds percents a year, which raged in those years and has caused irreparable damage. Causes of the inflation were not yet been clarified, although that citizens thought that the government prints paper money backed by grants from the US. It was accompanied by serious a case of corruption known as ''the bank shares crisis'' that led to the conviction of the largest banks of running their shares. First Lebanon War began with the invasion of Beirut, in what appeared to be a political distraction. The country was on the verge of collapse, but the founding generation, who knew much more difficult times, did not failed to meet the test again.

1983-1988 - IDF soldiers in the reserves, so deeply sunk in the Lebanese mud, realized that it is "the same lady with another dress'' and thought of new mind patterns which will provide insights and tools for the future. Original thinking of few individuals formulated the starting process of changing the sad reality.

1988-1993 - the revolutionary mind change in Israel as a result of Lebanon war led to a global chain reaction, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the blessed immigration of one million Jews to Israel. The intelectual efforts made in order to deal with their absorption was at the expense of solution of structural problems in society and economy and the awakening of reactionary forces from various sectors.

1993-1998 - Cancellation of the "Lavi" aircarft project gave the signal to launch the first Intifada. Palestinians, in the two Intifadas, slaughtered helpless Jews and the government was powerless. From Lebanon and the Gaza Strip landed consant attacks of rockets  on Israel, with no solution in sight. In the defense chaos the immigration from the Soviet Union got estqblished, togehther with the reactionary forces that have arisen. Privatization process gave to few tycoons families the best state assets. Religious reaction was on the rise, together with huge budgets to religous settelments. The most significant reaction occurs in the field of urban and regional planning, which continued to be utterly neglected. Neglect in planning has created a clash between two territorial masses of Israelis and Palestinians, which has become a form of terrorism.

1998-2003 - The people were "Waiting for the Messiah" and the messiah came in the form of "Internet". The Internet has created the socio-economic transformation that the generation of IDF soldiers in Lebanon were looking for. The PC plus Internet had become the tool  which allowed expanding the mind to horizons hitherto unknown in the history of mankind. Borders limits were erased and it allowed for working from home and for many Israelis jobs were created in this way. The Startup Nation was born.

2003-2008 - The process of globalization Internet has created became central to economic and social development world wide. Global balance of power changed with the rise of China, the formation of the European Union and the creation of online commerce and social networking. The relative advantage of the state of Israel faded.

2008-2013 - There is a serious housing shortage in Israel and the government is trying to encourage the Israeli entrepreneurial flair through "urban renewal" programs, a failed venture that leave the people at the mercy of real estates sharks.

2013 onwards - The circle of poverty is widening and the country's demographic is crystallized to three blocks, equal in size and power more or less: Secular, Religious, Arab. The secular block, which established the state and was a demographic majority and its economic engine, is completely eroded under the title: "The middle class has disappeared".

Aviation and the 1960th

Spiritual flight is central symbol of the human spirit and freedom. Aviation, so important to national security, is a center of human interest and endeavor. Naturally, mechanical aviation is associated with spiritual flight. Aviation development allows short and sound historical commentary of modern times.

‘Sixties’ in popular culture is a term used to describe counterculture and social norms revolution in clothing, music, drugs, art, customs, emancipation of women and others, which characterized the decade from 1963 to 1974 or so, and has significant influence to these days. Conservatives condemned the decade as suffering from excess of extravagance, responsibility and social order decay, because of social taboos relaxation that occurred during the period.

Sixties have become synonymous in politics around the world with new, radical events and trends and political subversion. In Africa it was major period of radical political change and approximately 32 countries received their independence from colonial rule. Equal rights demands in the developed world, especially demonstrations of blacks in U.S. under leadership of Martin Luther King, changed the political map. In Middle East, Israel won the Six Day War of June 1967 with a quick and glorious victory over the enemies surrounding it.

More than any decade, 1960th will be remembered because of the permissive youth culture, developed mainly in Western developed world in North America and Europe as Hippie Subculture. It evolved together with the expansion of mass media but rejected it. Subculture activists, pacifist and anti-capitalist, rejected the values ​​of their parents' generation and spoke out against old sexual and social taboos, with marijuana and birth control pill at their hand. Rock bands and Pop art were pioneers of this culture. London was known as celebration capital excelled in Hippie culture of manners, style, music and art, all young and original.

The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, initiating a major cultural and political shift. Although Hippies also gathered in major cities across the U.S., Canada and Europe, San Francisco remained the epicenter of the social earthquake that would come to be known as the Hippie Revolution. The city became even more of a melting pot of politics, music, drugs for mind expansion, creativity, and the total lack of sexual and social inhibition than it already was. As the Hippie counterculture movement came farther and farther forward into public awareness, the activities centered therein became a defining moment of the 1960s, causing numerous 'ordinary citizens' to begin questioning everything and anything about them and their environment as a result. This unprecedented gathering of young people is often considered to have been a social experiment, because of all the alternative lifestyles which became more common. Woodstock Music Festival in August 1968 is considered to be the definitive nexus for the larger counterculture generation.

Some commentators see this period as end of classic cycle of ending of a rigid culture, unable to contain requirements for greater individual freedom of the younger generation, who freed themselves from social constraints of the previous age through extreme behaviour. However, this alone does not explain the mass nature of the phenomenon.

In the International relationship arena world peace has deteriorated considerably during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, which almost resulted in nuclear holocaust in 1962 and 1973. Establishment of Berlin Wall and Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia demonstrated the ongoing diplomatic rift between the two superpowers. Cold War was manifested in conventional military wars, specially in Vietnam and the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was manifested especially in technological arms race. Most of this arms race was of ballistic missiles with atomic warheads.

As part of military balance of terror the super powers were armed with thousands of missiles with nuclear warhead. This race lasted about thirty years, from the 1950th to the 1980th. It stopped after U.S.A and U.S.S.R signed agreements of partial dismantling of these weapons which a small percentage of them could destroy the whole world.

The arms race of the Cold War created hostility and cultural and social disconnect between the capitalist and communist blocks. The nuclear confrontation created a strange time for the individual too on both sides. World was controlled by a small number of politicians and generals, so none of ordinary citizens, everywhere, knew what will bring next day. Sense of logic was missing in world politics. Insanity of the arms race created suspicion among the youth in every corner on the planet. It created the post-modern, underlying despair and skepticism towards the establishment, with a need for relying only on self and search for alternative culture haven.

Arm race had a by product of civil race to space with a relatively small budget and using military technology. It began by sending the first satellite and first man into space by U.S.S.R and reached its climax in landing of the first man on the moon by U.S.A. In sharp contrast to the early Hippies culture, 1960th technological achievements were outstanding.

Missiles reached very important place in the media after World War II. The front place in the headlines was analogous to that of the airplanes before the war. Missiles had become the largest flame in the global campfire. Television was nicknamed Global Electronic Campfire, referring to the few available channels where all news and entertainments programs were broadcasted.

Subject of nuclear missiles is seemingly incomprehensible by ordinary citizens. In fact it is nothing but a modern form of the intense and irrational fire which is the basis of civilization, as Freud described. These are the instincts that are operating and simmering beneath civilization. Ballistic missiles are perceived in human consciousness as most dangerous weapon on one hand, but as exhilarating means of transportation to conquer space on the other. Ballistic missiles, as result of the terror balance they created with global armament, are paralyzing the spine with fear reflex. Paradoxically, through the powerful vertical flight to uncharted boundaries, they also free us from this fear.

In the 1950th fear of atomic missiles attack was in top of global agenda. In 1960th conquest of space, managed by the same rocket scientists, became gradually the most important issue.

In 1959, first cosmonauts and astronauts were chosen. Golden Age of the race to conquer space started. Short time intervals occurred between launching missiles of the parties, each of which represented a significant technological improvement over its predecessor. Each launch was more impressive. It was a race similar any race, vivid, fascinating, prestigious and with lots of followers. The Space Race was with stressed schedules, so countless rockets and satellites of both sides crashed. Biggest failures were that of the Soviets.

On 12 April 1961 Yuri Gagarin was launched into space and became first human who view whole planet earth. First American astronaut, Alan Shepard , was launched a month after Gagarin flight.

Experience of Gagarin and all cosmonauts and astronauts after him is holistic experience of united world, a result of a floating weightless in space, along with viewing beautiful planet earth, knowing that they are at the top of an advanced technology enterprise and eyes of the world are watching them. This holistic world view penetrate gradually to the international political arena.

Ecstasy gripped the Soviets after the landing and was used by their political leaders for expanding internal and international influence. Sending the first man into space created a global resonance. It was a tremendous blow to American prestige that forced president Kennedy to announce launch of a man to the moon within ten years. Kennedy turned to former Nazi rocket scientist Von Braun to formulate a plan that would put U.S.A back in first place. Von Braun wrote in reply that he believes it is possible to land on the moon before the Soviets. Kennedy made historic speech to the American people to devote themselves to achieving this goal by the end of the 1960th.

Second half of the 1960th were climax of the race to conquer space with the American program to land a man on the moon on top. American Apollo program began to take shape, while Gemini program progressed rapidly at the same time and pairs of astronauts were launched almost every two months in competition with the Soviets.

Koriolov, head of the Soviet space program, also received approval to fly to the moon, with rocket N-1, but with a limited budget. At the same time he designed the spacecraft to carry cosmonauts there. In 1969 N-1first launch failed in a huge explosion on the launch pad, thus ended the space race between the United States with secret decision of Soviet leaders to stop investing in it. It was fatal mistake of the Soviet leadership which preferred to invest instead in military missiles. Soviets opened the space race and led at first by a big margin. Not only they launched the first satellite, first animal and the first man, but also the first satellite to the Moon. They made the first spacewalk and created the first and very successful space station. All of this may have led to complacency sense down the road, which U.S. utilized to catch up.

Even today the achievements of the U.S.A does not overshadow those of the Soviets. Soviet experience in space was well expressed during the construction of the International Space Station. They recognized before the Americans the importance of the near space and operated large space station for decades. Their lessons were important for the construction of the ISS, of which the first component was launched in 1998 and it is in ongoing construction in 2013.

Half a billion people worldwide watched TV broadcasting launching Apollo -9. On 20 July 1969 Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. It was a small step for man, a giant leap for mankind. It took all of humanity to a new reality, seemingly magical.

Von Braun initiated another five successful manned flights to the Moon. The fact that the Nazi rocket scientists ran the space program of U.S.A added confusion for the younger generation, who could not tolerate it, together with the continuing arms race, regional conflicts and dictating media dominance.

1960th were the best example of the gap that existed between government aviation programs and personal spiritual flying experience. Although in this period mankind had reached the peak in mechanical flight, on Earth drug culture was developed with many young people engaged in it, looking in this way for their the personal flying experience. It could perhaps be concluded that Western countries civilization has reached maturity with the understanding that there is not allegedly a link between the spiritual flying experience and the fascinating flight of airplanes and spaceships. Large passenger airplanes became common in the 1960th and flight in them became dull as bus traveling. But the extensive drug culture for mind expansion shows rather that the youth felt frustrated as a result of the control of a small elite of all aviation and space technology, together with all economic, technological and cultural advantages it gave them.

Since all significant aviation and space operations were in exclusive control, political, social and economic elite concluded that they can create direct continuation of this situation through a strategy to create stable society. It was called Strategy of Desire. Psychological advertisement was main tool for distributing this strategy which was originally created by Freud’s nephew in the 1930th and adopted by totalitarian and democratic regimes as well. It is psychological conditioning where the material new product is not intended to provide just direct need, but also indirect psychological need. It create material surrounding to strengthen the self with consumer products that have ability to uncover hidden desires and give people sense of common identity with those around them. Most powerful people in the world were those who could read or even generate public opinion, in order to satisfy the masses by providing profitable products, through advertisements in the then few existing mass media channels.

But psychologists have discovered how difficult it is to understand and influence the internal structure of personality. They chased a ghost idea by which the human mind can be manipulated and influenced from outside by external factors. They found that humans are much more complex creatures. Application of childish psychoanalysis received sharp criticism for not answering fundamental problems and needs, such as  neglect of youth and creating problems of surplus products.

Emptiness created by artificial abundance resulted in emotional frustration. Humans have a wide range of emotional expressions that need a living space and should not be forced with normative consumerism. Source of evil is not internal conflict but society itself. This debate spilled over into violence in the 1960th. Resistance to mass consumer culture brought waves of protest, influenced by thinkers who opposed the theory of Freud as interpreted by the establishment. Student protest movements have been established, they tried to confront directly with the ruling establishment which shaped their lives not according to their will.

May 1968 events in France, birth place of modern aviation and French Revolution, were a volatile period of civil unrest punctuated by massive general strikes and the occupation of factories and universities across France. It was largest general strike ever attempted in France and first ever nation-wide wildcat general strike. In the height of its fervor, the unrest virtually brought the entire advanced capitalist economy of France to a dramatic halt. The events had a resounding impact on French society that would be felt for decades to come.

Events began with a series of student occupation protests, followed by strikes involving 11,000,000 workers, more than 22% of the total population of France at the time, for two continuous weeks and its impact was such that it almost caused the collapse of French President Charles de Gaulle's government. The movement was characterized by its spontaneous and de-centralized wildcat disposition. This created contrast and sometimes even conflict between itself and the establishment trade unions and workers parties.

Student occupations and wildcat general strikes initiated across France were met with forceful confrontation by university administrators and police. Tall de Gaulle administration's attempts to quell those strikes by police action only inflamed the situation further, leading to street battles with the police in the Latin Quarter, followed by the spread of general strikes and occupations throughout France. Protests reached such a point that government leaders feared civil war or revolution. Tall de Gaulle went to a French military base in Germany and after returning dissolved the National Assembly and called for new parliamentary elections for 23 June 1968. Violence evaporated almost as quickly as it arose. Workers went back to their jobs, and when elections were finally held in June, the Gaullist party emerged even stronger than before.

Uprising failed. As a result, young people began gradually thinking that if it is impossible to eliminate the mind police by eliminating corporations and the state, there should be a way to enter the mind and get rid in it of the control mechanism they implanted in it. This in purpose to create a new self and consequently a new society, by reaching full human potential through internal search. One of the dominant techniques designed to release the mind and teach the human being to be itself was the seminars of Werner Erhard. According to Erhard, the idea that every individual has a core of self is another way to limit personal freedom. In reality there is no fixed self. The purpose of his seminars was to expose the layers of personality up to the last and most internal ones, to find out that the nucleus is essentially meaningless. As humans shed all their personality layers to the last one, they found that what remains is an empty space.

Empty space is a great place to stand and an outstanding starting point to start from. Only from empty space it is possible to create originality and design life that are invented honestly. Be what you want to be. Without linking to it directly, Erhard's teachings have a direct connection to the conquest of space. One can compare the astronaut in white space suit, a tiny figure floating in outer space against the dark void, to the insights of personality’s internal empty space.

There are many similarities between 1960th to the 1930th. Fascism and Nazism were carried out by young people in a radical turn to the nationalist right, as a result of what they thought was irresponsible and decaying social order.

Futurism was dominant artistic and social movement that flourished in Italy at the first half of the 20th century and is significant to these days. It was largely Italian, but there were parallel movements also in Russia, England and many other countries. Futurism turned to the feelings of modern man with his experiencing of new means of mass production, electricity grid, radio, television, cinema, phones network, modern home appliances, advanced cars and highways, airplanes and fast food. These changes influenced all aspects of life and in this way altered the modes of expression of the poet and painter. Futurism expressed an intense loathing for all that is old, especially political and artistic tradition. Futurists admired speed, technology, youth and violence. They liked the car, airplane and the industrial city. All of these represented for them triumph of human technology over nature. Futurists artists were in most art fields, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, graphic design, industrial design, interior design, theater, film, fashion, literature, music, architecture and even gastronomy. Airplane became major player in the Futurist drama. Aerial paintings were at top of Futurist art achievements and typical of the final stage of Futurism development in the late 1930th and early 1940th.

There were many links between Nazism and Futurism. Love of the future and youth, love of modernization and technology, violence, nationalism, war and more. Hitler and other leaders of the Nazi movement started their ideological career in the spiritual associations 'Tula' and 'Vril'. These were just two of many cults for spiritual development, inspired by famous spiritualist figures from the 19th century. Tula was the cult were Hitler practiced his mental skills in his early stages. Berlin’s Vril and Munich’s Thule were interested in society and politics as well as with personal development and science. Members held concentration exercises, yoga and meditation. Head of the cults was professor Karl Haushofer, a retired general from World War I and a student of Japanese samurais, Tibetan shamans and famous Russian mystic Gurdjieff who was popular in the 1960th as well. Haushofer eventually became central pillar in the Nazi movement as professor of Geopolitics who conceived the notion of Living Space, was mentor of Mein Kampf and designer of Nazi’s international strategy and extreme form of eugenics policy.

In early 20th century use of intoxicant drugs, nowadays forbidden by law, was legal and common. There is a theory that one source of Hitler's mental distortion and that of many of his followers originates from drugs use, including hallucinogens. Hitler recognized the immense popularity of intoxicants in his time and his Nazi party offered colorful substitute for drug addiction which became another addiction for childish minds. Hitler was addicted to drugs, including amphetamines from his personal physician. They were originally used to calm tensions but they had huge impact on his fateful decisions. He acted under influence of euphoric feeling. During the war use of stimulants was common among front line fighters of German army with prescriptions from military doctors.

Feminism, sexual tolerance and equal rights were a major difference between 1930th and the 1960th. Futurist and Nazis believed that women's place is at home.

However, debate regarding Nazism and Holocaust in particular were deleted in 1960th from public agenda of the establishment and that of the Hippies as well. Rocket scientists did not like recalling their dark past and Hippies did not like the similarity between their youth subculture to that of the 1930th. Holocaust became a Black Hole in the public mind in the same fashion of black holes of deep space.

In 1960th long wild hair was very common among the youth. Long hair, flapping in the wind, is best expression of the air element in human body. The musical ‘Hair’ is one of most important cultural symbols of the 1960th. 'Hair' depict the short life of a rebellious young man, who is sent to Vietnam as a soldier and dies in the war.

As in the musical, the era of 1960th ended with defeat, in Vietnam and Yom Kippur wars, of United States and its Western allies.

Cold War continued after these wars, but the parties understood that the arms race is too dangerous and acted for arms reduction. Although at first defeated in the Domino game of international relationship, achievements of the Americans in the race to space, particularly manned missions to the moon and space shuttle launches, kept their political, social and technological advantage up to the 2010th. 

Cold war walls collapsed because of the revolution in sport aviation in the West during the 1980th. During this period the wind glider and and ultralight airplane were invented and became very popular among the youth due to their cheap cost. Private pilot liscence which was until those days very expansive to get, became affordable to the average youth and with it came immense creative energy input to society. Communist U.S.S.R was more oriented then the West toward regarding aviation as cultural trademark for society mobilization, but its dictatorial regime was indoctrinating and could not assimilate the free spirit needed for personal aviation.

Oigins of the world energy crisis, which effects even the economies of 2010th, are in Yom Kipur war of 1973. In retrospective the energy crisis can be described as a plan from outer space to take care of fragile planet earth ecology, in times when global heating is of great danger to it. High prices of oil force developing substitutes technologies of clean energy.

1960th ended with a crisis that strengthened the alternative cultures of the period in western democracies. Alternative culture became progressively central, through engaging topics such as environment, sustainability, self improvement, spirituality, religion, Holocaust, individual rights, cultural pluralism and more. these are nowadays in the core of Western culture.

Ex Hippies from California developed the personal computer as new form of self expression. Most international media and communication today is via the Internet which gradually replace the traditional newspaper, television and phone. Internet, with its infinite channels, symbolize the potential for personal aviation and spiritual flight experience for every human being.

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Holocaust and Aviation

Nazi Germany Aviation as Major Cause for the Holocaust