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CULTURE AND
TECHNOLOGY 1 |
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From The Technology of the Bridge/The Bridge of Technology
"The bridge swings over the stream 'with ease and power.' It does not just connect banks that are already there. The banks emerge as banks only as the bridge crosses the stream. The bridge designedly causes them to lie across from each other."- Martin Heidegger
"The analogy of the abyss and of the bridge over the abyss is an analogy that says that there must be an analogy between two absolutely heterogeneous worlds, a third term to cross the abyss, to heal over the gaping wound and think the gap. In a word, a symbol. The bridge is a symbol, it passes from one bank to the other, and the symbol is a bridge."- Jacques Derrida
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Bridges are not new and not necessarily technological, as land bridges bear witness to, however, the development of the first cast-iron bridge built at Coalbrookdale in 1779 ushers in a new age. It leads to an infrastructure built around the transportation and transformation of goods, ideas, and people along points of transference and transition, embodying and enabling a more transient mode of being. Indeed, the new bridge of technology bears within it parallels to the communication revolution. On one level, the bridge of technology contains the ideas of efficiency, rationality, and order, an embodiment of Enlightenment humanism. On another level, the bridge of technology bears within it a social impact leading to the growth of cities, consumer products, department stores, the advent of the World's Fair, to the working conditions of factories, and the living conditions in the city.
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The bridge, however, bears upon it many traveling thoughts, thoughts on the move, moving across the technology of the bridge and the bridge of technology through the technology of the aphorism.
-We must never believe that the bridge is a natural space, even when it is a natural bridge. That which can emerge and re-emerge is the always present possibility of the bridge's absence.
-Meaning requires a bridging, a bridging that brings together what it holds apart and holds apart what it brings together.
-A medium is one who bridges worlds, the natural and the supernatural.
-The bridge is where meaning emerges and meaning can collapse. The bridge is an experience of being suspended, of being between, suspended between, by the between, by the gap.
-The bridge is indicative of a certain thinking brought about through technology, approaching the world from a scientific perspective, looking at the world as a problem to be solved, that can be solved, as opposed to chaos, viewing nature as controllable, as opposed to being uncontrollable.
-Does technology seduce us into thinking that we can bridge the gap? Is this the seduction of technology? Does technology enact a form of subjectivity by helping to construct an attitude towards nature that views it objectively, that masks, screens subjectivity?
-The natural always remains beyond the ability to anticipate the natural.
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The bridge of technology embodies a shift from a mystical view of the world to a scientific view and, while there is a scientific sublime within Romanticism and beyond, Romanticism also tries to think what is lost in this shift, the loss created by this shift, the loss of the experience of shifting, of residing in a tumultuous world. This loss can be tied to virtual reality and the construction of pristine worlds of order and ordered chaos, the differences played out in chaos theory and catastrophe theory and how one deals with disaster, anticipates disaster, awaits the disaster, tries to recuperate the disaster.
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The concept of space in technology is of moving from a physical bridging of distance to a struggle for the elimination of distance that leads to the virtualization of space. The bridge of technology and the technology of the bridge begin with transitional spaces, spaces between, the space of the gap opened up between the bridge of technology and the technology of the bridge. Technology seduces through its promise of extension, of bridging distance, space, and through the conquest of space, the promise of immediacy, the promise of extending the moment, our moment. Technology is about extension, extending our presence in the world, but a presence that is mediated by technology, a technology that marks the absence of humanity, an extension in terms of life expectancy, an extension through the archive, through virtual memory.
But within extension there is, of course, tension, the tension of the between, of the ever greater distance between us, the ever greater levels of mediation, and, yet, we shouldn't decree now as being more mediated. Indeed, if there is a single point to today's lecture, and, obviously there isn't a single point, but always at least two points that have to be bridged, it is that mediation through technology always already exists, and it becomes a matter, on the one hand, of examining the particular technologies involved in this mediating process at any particular moment, whether 2002 or 1779, and, on the other hand, perhaps more interestingly, a matter of looking at the underlying structure of technology, a structure of the between, and the bridge can serve as an emblem, perhaps. The bridge is emblematic of technology as the between, as the bridge is a space between, between self and other.
In conclusion, I would like to look to another bridge, language, our meta-linguistic technology that helps us bridge self and other, to examine some of the other contexts in which the bridge arises in order to unearth a few more layers to the bridge that approaches.
On one level, the bridge is about the body, not just a part of the human nose, but also a technological prosthesis, the bridge between lenses that rests on the bridge of the nose. Perhaps, more interestingly, there is the orthodontic bridge, the prosthetic bridge (bridgework) of the mouth that replaces a gap in the mouth, replacing natural teeth, but anchored by natural teeth, the mouth being one of the loci of communication, one of the loci of language, of speaking, of communication and community.
Of course, there are interestingly other bridges too. In music, a bridge is the transitional passage between movements. On ships, a bridge is the area of control. In pool, a bridge is a prosthetic device used to extend the reach of the cue. Bridge, the card game, requires one to work with a partner, and, in chemistry, a bridge is the intramolecular connection spanning atoms. Then there is a bridge loan, which is a short-term loan used to extend financing until a more permanent financial agreement can be made. There is also a bridgeboard which is used as a support in a staircase. Lastly, in computer technology, a bridge (router) is the device that connects two networks so information can be passed from one network to the other. Thus, while we started in Coalbrookdale, we can see that bridges are still being built to cross the gaps opened by Silicon Valley.
While this may seem to be rhetorical play, I would suggest that we take this convergence of meanings seriously as an indication of the longing that is involved in the concept of the bridge, a longing that spans many contexts, that attempts to ground the space between, between concepts, between ideas, between us. The bridge at its root is about longing, a longing to eliminate distance, to bring near what is irreducibly far away, the other shore, the shore of the other. The bridge between us, more beautiful than before, one day, between us, no more.
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