Terrorism and Media
Global
media distribution and the communications systems infrastructure have
proven to be just as much a weapon as the force of terrorism itself. Tim
Druckrey has reminded me that French writer Paul Virilio wrote during
the Gulf War, "images have become munitions." Images of the
planes striking the World Trade Center, particularly the South Tower,
which was filmed from a multitude of perspectives, is now implanted in
our collective mind, as this devastating imagery reverberates throughout
the world.
While Roy Ascott has asked, "Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace," this attack has also proven that there can be fear and terror in the telematic exchange. The battlefield now seems to have spread to the network, whether it be broadcast or Internet, with its ability to transmit sound and image with the same violence, accuracy, and immediacy we once attributed to long range missiles. When Nam June Paik stated "the artwork of the future will have no gravity at all," he also could have been referring to the weapon of the future. The military keeps reminding us that this is the First War of the 21st Century, and no doubt that war will be fought as much in the virtual world with media as in the real one with bombs.
Ted Nelson has stated that "everything is deeply intertwingled," a prescient statement when one consider that we are now faced with a distributed enemy, which like the media it manipulates, is decentralized, global, and pervasive. How do we even respond to this "authorless" enemy, one that is constructed of vast cellular systems that are without a center, and would only multiply and divide when struck. This seems to be the dark side of what Pierre Lévy has referred to as "collective intelligence."
Ivan Sutherland was hauntingly correct when he stated in his essay The Ultimate Display, "The ultimate display would, of course, be a room within which the computer can control the existence of matter. A chair displayed in such a room would be good enough to sit in. Handcuffs displayed in such a room would be confining, and a bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal."
While such scientists as Vannevar Bush, J.C.R. Licklider, Douglas Engelbart, and Tim Berners-Lee had first envisioned the utopian possibilities of a worldwide media system that could extend human intelligence and knowledge, the violent images produced by the terrorists, flickering across our screens more real than Hollywood, now prove this dream can serve an act just as violent and devastating as any modern weapon. The possibilities of this violence is more terrible than anything even William Gibson could have imagined when he first painted in literary terms a dystopian view of cyberspace full of high-tech terrorists.
It is communications media that suggests both the opportunity to preserve and augment humanity, as well as destroy it, as America prepares to launch a massive retaliation against an enemy that is both real and virtual.