Complicated As an Onion

The first section of Paul Virilio’s work Open Sky was enigmatic at the very least, and downright foreign at most.  I have never encountered a reading like this, in all the  Communication Studies’ classes I have taken at Furman.

In a lot of ways, actually, Virilio’s work reminded me of an onion.

It wasn’t something that I could chop through and easily skim.  I had to peel it back, layer by layer, example by example.  Many of the vocabulary words that Virilio addressed were new to me, but the essential concepts, once I was able to sift through the layers of complicated examples, were simple.

Part I of Open Sky is an original collection of Virilio’s thoughts that are scientifically geared towards analyzing communication, specifically in terms of foreign/international communication, and the many accompanying features of it.  The author is fascinated with the instantaneous properties of global communication, and offers scientific explanations and practical examples to demonstrate them. 

For example, he says “the question is then no longer one of the global versus the local, or of the transnational versus the national . . . . it is, first and foremost, a question of the sudden temporal switch in which not only inside and outside disappear, the expanse of the political territory, but also the before and after of its duration, of its history; all that remains is a real instant over which, in the end, no one has any control.” 

The ideas and concepts he presents are fresh and innovative, and deepen concepts like international communication in a way that I have never experienced before.

I question though, why Virilio makes all these concepts so complicated.  Is it really necessary?  Are things really this complicated?

One of my other Communication Studies classes this semester, International Com certainly suggests that while interactive global communication is complicated, but not in quite the same way Virilio states.  More so, in the case of my International Com class, we have focused on the various barriers that are in the way of smooth, coherent global communication, of the issues such as decreased technological access and development for Third World Countries being primary in the inherent lack of fair, equally accessible international communication.

So my question remains whether or not all of Virilio’s terminology and examples are valid – are all of these concepts really this complicated?  Why or why not?  If these concepts really are so complicated, how can they be simplified?