When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution...Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.
Interpretation
Technological advancements come with inherent risks and potential negative consequences.
This quote by Paul Virilio highlights the dual nature of technological progress, suggesting that each innovation not only brings benefits but also its own set of dangers. As we create new technologies that improve our lives, we simultaneously introduce risks, such as accidents and disasters, that arise from their use. This serves as a cautionary reminder of the darker side of progress and the responsibility that comes with invention.
In practice
In a discussion about the risks of social media, one might say, 'Remember, when you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck.'
The field of vision is comparable, for me, to the terrain of an archaeological dig. To see is to be on guard, to wait for what emerges from the background, without any name, without any particular interest: what was silent will speak, what is closed will open and will take on a voice.
The hope is that, in not too many years, human brains and computing machines will be coupled together very tightly, and that the resulting partnership will think as no human brain has ever thought and process data in a way not approached by the information-handling machines we know today.
People will not die. Isn't this the creed of the new culture? People will be absorbed in streams of information. I know nothing about this. Computers will die. They're dying in their present form. They're just about dead as distinct units.
Without sounding too cliché, the Internet really is the birth of some kind of global mind.
The will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to slip from human control
We build our technologies as a way of addressing all our anxieties and desires. They are our passions congealed into these prosthetic extensions of ourselves. And they do it in a way that reflects what we dream ourselves capable of doing.
The Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see.
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