We are effectively seeing the beginnings of a third revolution: following the transport revolution of the nineteenth century, which saw the flourishing of the railway system, followed by the automobile and aviation, we have, in the twentieth century, seen a second revolution, the transmission revolution, as a result of the implementation of the properties of instantaneous propagation of electromagnetic radiation in the form of radio and video. Behind closed laboratory doors, the transplantation revolution is now secretly gearing up, not only with the grafting of livers, kidneys, hearts and lungs, but with the implantation of new kinds of simulators, much more effective than the pacemaker, and the imminent grafting of micromotors capable of overcoming the defective functioning of this or that natural organ and so improving on the vital performance of this or that physiological system belonging to a person in perfect health - thanks to scanners that can be accessed instantly at a distance. [“The Law of Proximity,” 51]
Bibliography
Virilio, Paul. Open Sky. Trans. Julie Rose. London and New York: Verso, 1997.
Last modified 13 September 2006