week 9

If time is matter, what is space? (p.5) Virilio discusses “space” in terms of relativity of time and nature at the beginning of the book open sky. If nature abhors a vacuum, so too does life-size. Without weight or meausure, these is no’nature’any more or, at least, no idea of nature. Without a distant horizon, there is no longer any possibility of glimpsing reality...(p.6) In some classic physicists’ eyes (like Newton), time and space absolute existence, which means all the matters and events are being measured on the dimension of transcendentality (see wiki). That seems pretty simple that people do not waste time thinking the fourth dimention of time and space. However, when Einstein proposed the relativity, we are introduced into a “expanse of real world”(p.15): in this world, when we reached the speed of light, we could catch up with the time. In other words, when we get to the limit of speed, we could see the end of time. Could we say, at that moment, that we win the time, or we maybe at the same time lose the space? Then what is the nature, or our life would be? And how do we measure things then? In light of Bergson (see wiki), time is a kind of inner experience, a psychological time that does not depend on clocks in physical world. It is a time that instinct by our own heart. Thus, philosophers like Bergson, or Proust (see his In search of time) believe that it is hard to say space and time which one is more essential, but our own spiritual activities, our own psychological peace seems more important than them.
It seems to me that Virilio uses this relativity of time as a metaphor to reflect the obscurity that exists between virtuality and reality caused by modern technology or civilization to human beings’thought (p.13). “ Speed enables us to see, to hear, to perceive and thus to conceive the present world more intensely(p.12)...but it is not so much light illuminates things(the object, the subject, the path)...(p.13) Distance, speed, geography actually lost their meanings in traditional sense, and instead, they are equipped by modern technology and obtained the power of simulating real world. “The question is then no longer one of the global versus the local, or of the transnational versus national...to gain real time over delayed time is thus to commit to a quick way of physically eliminating the object and the subject and exclusively promoting the journey...”(p.20). Therefore, not just time, but space/distance is also granted a relativity. If we follow this logic, many art majors, like literature, philosophy, logics, psychology, etc., they all go in for pursuing the relative infinity of time under the context of the relative finite space, and one of their ways it to close the door and read all day long, like Kant, who spent like 80 years staying at his hometown: though he was invited to teach in some university at other places, he refused for the reason that new environment would influence his thinking. So from the perspective of space, he had not been to anywhere, but from the perspective of time, he became the explorer of the eternal spirit of human beings.