Cologne, 19 September 1996
Dear Annette-cum-Rafael,
I don't know whether the "warm wind of the spoken word", as you say, is more in
a position to kindle understanding in the psyche than the cold inscription of
writing.
If the wind of beyng is captured today in in-formation, information itself, far
>from coming to rest in its de-fining limits, itself becomes a whirlwind of
beings. The bringing-forth of beings reached a crescendo in capitalist
production within the ever-circling circuits of capital. Now, with the advent of
Information Technology (IT), these circuits accelerate even more with a new kind
of commodity: in-formation, i.e. beings stripped to the skeleton of in-formed
matter. Human beings in their bodiliness are thereby transformed into the doughy
mass for receiving the impressions of information. The flood of images pounds
away at human flesh, and that all because we are open to receiving the being of
beings. Dogs have it better, I'm sure. If there were still such a thing as a
typewriter, I would feel occasionally like its worn-out rubber roller that
cannot receive any more impressions.
Standing presence as delimitation does indeed now seem to diverge from constancy
of presence. For some time now, beyng seems to have gone into a spin. Just think
of Marx's endless valorization of capital, Nietzsche's eternal recurrence of the
same, his ever-expanding will to power, Heidegger's reformulation of this as the
will to willing, the ever-accelerating circulation of the standing reserve in
the set-up. Today, "it gives" translates as "IT gives" -- in superfluity.
The need to control information has already surpassed anything that IT itself
can deliver. Did you know, e.g. that the U.S. Department of Defense currently
spends USD 5 billion annually on documentation for its equipment, that the U.S.
Navy has over 200,000 manuals for its military hardware? The whirlwind of
information gains strength exponentially.
What do you do with a whirlwind? Batton down the hatches and wait for it to
pass. Is there something self-consuming about the information whirlwind? Does it
lead of itself to its own weakening? Is this where letting-be comes into PLAY?
Information arises and disappears today (almost?) without cause. This is like
Aristotle's symbebekota: the accidental, the occurrences subject to no principle
(_arche_ as dominating point of origin). Because the deluge of information can
no longer (could it ever?) be gathered into the limits of knowledge, it
resembles more and more a flow of accidents or incidents, a differenceless
stream. The "blur" to which you refer could perhaps be the self-consuming of
beings in their being.
Nihilism is not making any difference.
Fire is self-consuming if it has no more matter to burn.
Does 'weak technology' mean technology where accidents do not matter? Where they
cannot fuel a fire? What does it or could it mean to let accidents be accidents
(unprincipled happenings)?
Bottoms up!
Michael
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