The University of Disaster

Citation

Maximiliano E. Korstanje (2013), "The University of Disaster", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 94-96. https://doi.org/10.1108/09653561311302005

In last years, some scholars denounced that the acceleration of hyper-reality would cause an indescribable panic in the society. This is exactly the line of investigation where the book, the University of Disaster is enrooted. Paul Virilio does not need presentation. His theory is aimed at exploring the role of “dromology,” a neologism coined to denote the study of velocity, in late modernity. The advances of technologies and mobilities not only have created new forms of displacements, but also blurred the relation between time and space. As a result of this, Virilio adds, people have fully access to any geographical point of this globe in hours. The time of waiting has changed forever. Travelers now are moved by the indifference and visual consumption, there is not genuine contact in the visited lands. At some extent, The University of Disaster not only synthesizes years of investigation, but represents the corollary of a critical thought respecting to mobility and mass media.

On preface, Virilio writes “faith becomes a primary necessity, an urgent necessity, in the face of the panic of total disorientation” (p. 4). The events in past formed the history as a continuance of ordered facts, but the real-time makes people any longer would be able to synchronize watches. Citizens has transformed in consumers. Certainly, the history has been emptied in a fragmentation of events, dispersed elsewhere and broadcasted once and once again. The knowledge that characterized the labor of University has been polarized to delocalize territories. Based on an ongoing future that never takes room the presentiment of disaster announces the eschatology of neurosis. In other terms, Virilio argues that everything happens at the same time in the hyper-reality without a logical sequence. The world stage is being represented outside the planet, in an exo-earth. The days of science, as an all-encompassed instrument based on rational understanding, has changed. Transformed in an exo-science that promotes the simultaneous globalization of fear, biology and astronomy are eclipsed by the “eternal present.” As the previous argument given, the “University of Disaster” reminds the “mea culpa” of science for its failure in creating an ethic of life. Based on the belief that the global warming is not reversible in the short-run terms, Virilio strongly believes in the importance to analyze the sense of homeland safety and security.

To be protected, the big corporations, banks and capital elite call climatologists and geographers (experts) to design the necessary catastrophe simulation software that provides some information where the next disaster will take hit. In this vein, a new profession is uprising, the “economic-disaster-modeling-geek.” This expert seems to be more interested in finding and eliminating the risks of businesses than in protecting the environment. The philosophy of the science is today determined by the logicism of digital screens. The simulation of future that characterizes the digital world has replaced the daily life. Of course, this begs an interesting question, what is the role of experts in this process?

At some extent, Virilio recognizes that modern science has lack its own spirit and criticism to become in an ally of the market. His main thesis may be exemplified in the following excerpt: “we might note a recent project whereby detection of major risks is reversed, since the computer in question is involved in producing said major risks. At the end of 2006, IBM effectively decided to build the most powerful super calculator in the world […] to do so, it will use processors capable of up one million billon operations per second, accelerating by as much the reality of the disastrous progress in weapons of mass destructions […] which prompts personal question: after having resorted to meteorologists and other climatologists to calculate the economic risk of catastrophe, will the insurance and reinsurance companies one day have to call on the army and their new strategists to detect major ecological risk of nuclear proliferation” (p. 18).

In past time, geography remained immutable before disasters, impermeable to tragic issues. The advance of science moved to snail ' s pace by prioritizing the quality of knowledge. Its objectivity lies in the observation of facts enrooted in reality. However, things have changed a lot. The digital world has blurred the time, prompting the science to study thousand of simultaneous events, which do not lead to any coherent logic. The reality is not any longer the object of scientific research. Virilio ' s book inspires a new reflection about the design of disasters in the early modern times. His critique view gives a conceptual model to understand the current “show of catastrophe” televised 24 hours day to a wider globalized audience. Similar in the argument to Baudrillard or Augé, Virilio is convinced that humankind has to come back to an ethic of the science whose concerns have been aimed at protecting the integrity of human beings.

The technology expanded the limits of cities towards the border of planet. The contours are drawn while the deep space is situated as the only line of horizon that defines human habitat. Virilio insists on the belief that “the technical consciousness is what you put on the screen.” What is important to discuss here is not the “Techno-phobia,” but “techno-philia” which prioritizes the measure than meaning. The growth of simulation software has been adopted in the domain of education, administration and sports. Basically, these types of tools intend to lead people to the most efficient decision to optimize their performances. It is important not to loose the sight that knowledge only may be understood in accordance to a specific time and space. Without places and present, the information is circulating through the lens of televisions. The problem seems to be that the existent flow of information created by technology, which accompanied the transport in other times, is now the transport itself. Proponents of ecology, climatologists, geographers and other scientists concerned in global warming have no clue in what is going to happen, but they are recruited by insurance companies and corporations to design the next protection-related products in the market. How do we explain this paradox?

The bombing on Atocha ' s station, is for Virilio, the more vivid example of how the era of synchronization set the pace to digital world. Undoubtedly, this terrorist attack would be a real tragedy unless by the lack of synchronization to coordinate all the involved trains arrive together. This delay not only saved many lives but also paves the ways for the advent of a new way of cultural entertainment, the acceleration of history and the end of chronological time. But if the disaster is fictionalized over and over again, there would be no liable information to face the threat when it takes hit. Following this, Virilio says that the science was a medieval project moved by the curiosity to study and watch the animals and environs, what today remains, unfortunately, is only a planet in bias of extinction. In the times of turbo capitalism, any specie may be cloned. What is the object of the science now? Virilio goes on to acknowledge that “after Marx ' s historical materialism, what we are witnessing, with globalization, is not only the emergence of a progressive idealism of high turnover information, but the even more perverse progressive idealism of public formation- education- in this digital age, thanks to denial of the knowledge once dispensed by university” (p. 36).

The mobile industries of tourism and insurance are progressively eroding the barriers of the city. The market system obliterated the sense of places. The importance of risk are not determined by its effects, but by their substance. Everything what is important in this world cannot be acquired without loss of substance; this means that there is no real knowledge without risk. Reducing to zero, the major risks, as the modern science attempts to do, is not only a serious error but also a way of obscuring the truth.

This philosophical book, something hard to read for unspecialized readers, gives a clear conceptual framework to understand the role played by the media, science and technology in the mitigation of risks. Virilio warns precisely that the problems are not risks but “the dessert of the mind” inherited in the “turbo-capitalism.” If human beings do not change their values introducing the ethic, the problem of climate change will be aggravated with the passing of decades. Ironically, the globalized capital is not willing to change its current ways of production and pollution. Rather, experts and universities are called by insurance corporations and banks to predict the effects of next disasters. As a result of this, the applied research serves to the interests of the market. Any attempt for mitigating the greenhouse effects are not aimed at tackling off the problem of air pollution. While only the superfluous aspects of global warming are considered by the financial center, the underlying values of globalized capital that generated the problem remains. This represents a valuable book that gives hopes to overcome the fragmentation of knowledge that today prevent an all encompassing understanding of reality. What Virilio wholeheartedly reminds is that we need to reconsider the nature of disaster prevention of modern science.