The ecstasy of communication (jean Baudrillard)

Private "telematics": each person sees himself at the controls of a hypothetical machine, isolated in a position of perfect and remote sovereignty, at an infinite distance from his universe of origin. Which is to say, in the exact position of an astronaut in his capsule, in a state of weightless that necessitates a perpetual orbital flight and a speed sufficient to keep him from crashing back to his planet of origin.


We are here at the controls of a micro-satellite, in orbit, living no longer as an actor or dramaturge but as a terminal of multiple networks. Television is still  the most direct prefiguration of this. But today it is the very space of habitation that is conceived as both receiver and distributor, as the space of both reception and operations, the control screen and terminal which as such may be endowed with telematic power— that is, with the capability of regulating everything from distance, including work in the home and, of course, consumption, play, social relations and leisure. Simulators of leisure or of vacations in the home — like flight simulators for airplane pilots — become conceivable.

obscenity



Investment, desire, passion, seduction or again, according to Caillios, expression and competition— the hot universe. Ecstasy, obscenity, fascination, communication or again, according to Caillois, hazard, chance and vertigo— the cold universe (even vertigo is cold, the psychedelic one of drugs in particular).

(Roger Caillois    Man, Play and Games, trans. by Meyer Barash. New York, Free Press of Glencoe, 1961)