Notes on Becoming Virtual by Pierre L�vy

Introduction

L�vy is not so much concerned with virtuality, in the sense of a virtual reality, but, rather, with the virtual, as the opposite of the actual in the philosophical discourse of Deleuze (and Baudrillard and Virilio). His argument, unlike contemporaries he cites (Baudrillard and Virilio), is that the virutal is at the root of human history. The challenge, for him, is in distinguishing “between a virtualization in the process of creation, on the one hand, and its alienating, reifying, and invalidating caricatures on the other” (17).

His program also takes the shape of analyzing and illustrating ”the process of transformation from one mode of being to another” (though what that means is still unclear) (16).

1 – The Nature of Virtualization

Concepts

1. The real and the possible – “The possible is already fully constituted, but exists in a state of limbo. It can be fully realized without any change occurring either in its determination or nature. It is a phantom reality, something latent. The possible is exactly like the real, the only thing missing being existence. The realization of the possible is not an act of creation in the fullest sense of the word, for creation implies the innovative production of an idea or form. The difference between the possible and the real is thus purely logical” (24).
2. The virtual – “The virtual should, properly speaking, be compared not to the real but the actual. Unlike the possible, which is static and already constituted, the virtual is a kind of problematic complex, the knot of tendencies or forces that accompanies a situation, event, object, or entity, and which invokes a process of resolution: actualization. This problematic complex belongs to the entity in question and even constitutes one of its primary dimensions. The seed’s problem, for example, is the growth of the tree. The seed is the problem, even if it is also something more than that … Based on its internal limitations, the seed will have to invent the tree, coproduce it together with the circumstances it encounters” (24).
3. The actual – “Actualization thus appears as the solution to a problem, a solution not previously contained in its formulation. It is the creation, the invention of a form on the basis of a dynamic configuration of forces and finalities. Actualization involves more than simply assigning reality to a possible or selecting from among a predetermined range of choices. It implies the production of new qualities, a transformation of ideas, a true becoming that feeds the virtual in turn” (25).

• A computer running a program is a movement from the possible to the real. A programmer writing a program is a move from the actual to the virtual (this seems shaky).
• “The real resembles the possible. The actual, however, in no way resembles the virtual. It responds to it” (25).
• “Actualization proceeds from problem to solution, virtualization from a given solution to a (different) problem” (27). The problem with L�vy’s writing in this chapter is that he wants to move from virtual as a process to virtual as an adjective (the virtual company example on page 26). This seems to problematize his discourse.
• L�vy argues that much of what is “virtual” about contemporary technology has to do with the idea that these technologies (answering machines, computers, cars, etc.) virtualize our actualized sense of space-time as a result of the communication regime of analog society (writing, print, mail, etc.). This is a very difficult distinction to keep clear and L�vy isn’t coming out and saying it. Pages 28-31 are ripe for close reading.

6 – The Operations of Virtualization or the Anthropological Trivium

• “Rhetoric designates the art of acting on others and the world by means of signs” (104).
• Goes on to claim that rhetoric seeks, beyond grammar and dialectics, to act on the world, thus making it the domain of the virtual.
• “Language only truly comes into its own at the rhetorical stage, when it feeds off its own activity, imposes its objectives, and reinvents the world” (105).
• “The production of artifacts reaches the stage of rhetoric when it participates in the creation of new ends” (107) (this is contrasted with technological dialectics, in which current ends are made to be done faster or better).
• L�vy argues that technology has a grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric, just like language.
• On rhetoric: “technological activity discovers virtual worlds in which new goals are being developed” (108).
• “A real entity, embedded in its identity and function, suddenly harbors a different function, another identity, becomes a component in new assemblies, is swept away in the process of heterogenesis” (116).