December 9, 1997

By BRUNO GIUSSANI

For a Philosopher, the Net Is a Whole New Perspective

ALENCE, France ‹ In the 17th century, Galileo and his telescope prompted a profound discussion among philosophers and theologians: "Can one claim to have really attended a mass if it has only been observed through a telescope?" the concerned and pious churchmen wondered.

For decades now we have been replacing direct experiences with a screen-assisted remote observations of them, and today no one even thinks twice about their proliferation.

Observation at a distance ‹ "tele-vision" ‹ seems a natural thing, and a growing number of people don't clearly differentiate reality from its artificial renderings. ‹ they just don't question anymore.

Related Column As Bookends to the 20th Century, 2 Views of Technology's Promise (February 5, 1997)

I've spent the weekend talking with the French architect and thinker Paul Virilio ‹ and he continues to ask questions.

Among the new-media gurus, Virilio can be considered the dramatist of the Internet, the man who says that the network is a great thing, but also points out its drama, its hidden negativeness.

For three decades now, Virilio, 66, has been writing and teaching about speed, the shortening of distances, and the social and human losses concealed into every technological advance.

"I'm not against new technologies. I think that everybody should enter the Internet," he said. "But too many intellectuals today have become the supporters and evangelists of technology."

"My job is to point out the negative leanings in order to raise awareness of the potential harmful sides."

Despite the current dominance of the written word on the Internet, Virilio firmly believes that it is a visual medium. "The only way for the billions of info-poor to get into the information economy will be through imagery," he explained.

Related Column Webcams: Around Our World in 80 Seconds (February 12, 1997)

Virilio said one of the most interesting yet underestimated aspects of the Internet is the proliferation of "webcams," digital cameras connected to Web servers, which let Internet users take a look at streets, offices, taxis, landscapes, and private bedrooms ‹ live.

"This goes beyond CNN. Actually, CNN is history," he added. "And it has nothing to do with the current surveillance of parking lots and street corners by security cameras."

While often regarded as mere gadgets, webcams are culturally and socially subversive, Virilio stressed.

"We're witnessing today the deployment of a new, global tele-surveillance system whose impact will be far more profound than that of the traditional television," Virilio said.

Credit: June Houston's GhostWatcher A shot from one of the Web camera's in June Houston's basement, where "ghosts are not disturbed at all by human beings, so we have a good chance of observing them."

Asked for an example, he points to June Houston, a young American woman paranoid about ghosts and scared about other people. She put several webcams on her home and asked viewers of her Web site to become ghost watchers and send her e-mail if they notice any ectoplasmic movement.

"A new form of tele-vision is emerging, which is no longer in charge of informing and entertaining the viewers but invades and exhibits in real time the domestic, private space," Virilio explained.

Thanks to this real-time experience, he added, "the local space and time of each one's home potentially communicates with every other's."

"The fear to expose our daily privacy and intimacy turns into a craving desire to over-expose it to everybody," Virilio stressed, to the point that June Houston's paranoia about ghosts became the pretext of her letting her home be invaded by the community of the "others" with whom she tended to avoid physical contact.

This is only apparently a paradox, Virilio explained. "The trend toward economic globalization calls for the overexposition of all activities, for the simultaneous competition of all companies, societies, consumers, and therefore of the individuals themselves."

"Globalization requires us to observe and compare with each other, endlessly."

Webcams are, of course, only a starting point. Satellite programs are putting commercial cameras on the sky, which could take pictures for any one with enough money to pay -- and give Virilio's views on the global tele-surveillance an even broader meaning.

The clash between the actual reality of life and the virtual reality of the webcams create the possibility of a new perspective.

"We will wake up in the 21st century and discover that we're looking at the world and at our place in it with a new perspective of the real time, which will replace the spatial perspective discovered by the Italian artists of the Quattrocento," Virilio said.

"We do not realize to what degree the city, as well as politics, war and economy of the medieval world have been disrupted by the invention of the perspective," he added. "There would have been no Machiavelli, no architecture without perspective."

"Cyberspace is a new form of perspective which will dramatically change the culture and redistribute power."

EUROBYTES is published weekly, on Tuesdays. Click here for a list of links to other columns in the series.

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• Earthcam's listing of Web cameras

• June Houston's Ghostwatcher

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Bruno Giussani at eurobytes@nytimes.com welcomes your comments and suggestions.

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