Hanne-Louise Johannesen - forår 2005

Thomas in love af Pierre-Paul Renders: En historie om en eneboers vej ud af eremitboet.

Thomas lever sit liv i en total computerkontrolleret verden og hele filmen er set gennem hans øjne. Vi ser kun hvad han ser gennem hans visiophone. Thomas lider af agorafobi og sociofobi så han opholder sig i en specieldesignet lejlighed og hans kommunikation med omverdenen er udelukkende via computer. Thomas’ nærmeste menneskelige link er hans mor der velmenende ringer til ham, men for ofte efter Thomas’ mening, og som regel på upassende tidspunkter. Han prøver at begrænse hendes opkald til en gang om ugen så han kan holde hende på afstand som han gør med verden. Hans terapeut der er ansat til at varetage Thomas’ behov af forsikringsselskabet Globale virker mere instruerende for hans liv end støttende, hvilket kan forklares med hans instrukser fra forsikringsselskabet. I begyndelsen af filmen er Clara, en computergenereret avatar, Thomas’ eneste seksuelle kontakt, men da terapeuten er af den overbevisning at Thomas har brug for noget mere tilmelder han Thomas til en datingservice uden at konsultere Thomas først. Potentielle dating-partnere dukker op på skærmen i en lind strøm og oven i det tilbyder forsikringsagenten Thomas gratis service fra et prostitutionsbureau der har specialiseret sig i service til handicappede. Thomas kommer derved i første omgang gennem dating-bureauet i kontakt med Melody, som viser Thomas hendes videopoesi, og de opnår en intimitet der resulterer i et cyberseksuelt engangsknald. Men Melody er forelsket i Thomas og vil ikke nøjes med den ’virtuelle’ kontakt, deres forhold må ophøre da deres modsatrettede krav til samvær ikke kan forenes. I thomas’ gennembladring af de prostituerede støder han på Eva, der i øjeblikket hun kommer frem på visiophonen tørrer tårer væk fra øjnene. Thomas er tiltrukket af Evas på en gang sårbarhed og professionelle distance til hendes arbejdsmæssige forpligtigelser.    

Paul Virilio: Cyperspace Alarm: The big event looming upon the 21st century in connection with this absolute speed, is the invention of a perspective of real time, that will supersede the perspective of real space, which in its turn was invented by Italian artists in the Quattrocento. It has still not been emphasized enough how profoundly the city, the politics, the war, and the economy of the medieval world were revolutionized by the invention of perspective.

Cyberspace is a new form of perspective. It does not coincide with the audio-visual perspective which we already know. It is a fully new perspective, free of any previous reference: it is a tactile perspective. To see at a distance, to hear at a distance: that was the essence of the audio-visual perspective of old. But to reach at a distance, to feel at a distance, that amounts to shifting the perspective towards a domain it did not yet encompass: that of contact, of contact-at-a-distance: tele-contact.

Thomas’ fobier er et billede på hvad Virilio kalder et fundamentalt tab af orientering. The specific negative aspect of these information superhighways is precisely this loss of orientation regarding alterity (the other), this disturbance in the relationship with the other and with the world. It is obvious that this loss of orientation, this non-situation, is going to usher a deep crisis which will affect society and hence, democracy

The very word "globalization" is a fake. There is no such thing as globalization, there is only virtualization. What is being effectively globalized by instantaneity is time. Everything now happens within the perspective of real time: henceforth we are deemed to live in a "one-time-system"1.

For the first time, history is going to unfold within a one-time-system: global time. Up to now, history has taken place within local times, local frames, regions and nations. But now, in a certain way, globalization and virtualization are inaugurating a global time that prefigures a new form of tyranny. If history is so rich, it is because it was local, it was thanks to the existence of spatially bounded times which overrode something that up to now occurred only in astronomy: universal time. But in the very near future, our history will happen in universal time, itself the outcome of instantaneity - and there only.

Thus we see on one side real time superseding real space. A phenomenon that is making both distances and surfaces irrelevant in favor of the time-span, and an extremely short time-span at that. And on the other hand, we have global time, belonging to the multimedia, to cyberspace, increasingly dominating the local time-frame of our cities, our neighborhoods. So much so, that there is talk of substituting the term "global" by "glocal", a concatenation of the words local and global. This emerges from the idea that the local has, by definition, become global, and the global, local. Such a deconstruction of the relationship with the world is not without consequences for the relationship among the citizens themselves.

Nothing is ever obtained without a loss of something else. What will be gained from electronic information and electronic communication will necessarily result in a loss somewhere else. If we are not aware of this loss, and do not account for it, our gain will be of no value. This is the lesson to be had from the previous development of transport technologies. The realization of high velocity railway service has been possible only because engineers of the 19th century had invented the block system, that is a method to regulate traffic so that trains are speeded up without risk of railway catastrophes2. But so far, traffic control engineering on the information (super)highways is conspicuous by its absence.

Litteratur:

Sherry Turkle: Life on the screen

Paul Virilio: Cyberspace Alarm!