In the near future, the human body will become the training ground for micromachines that will travel through it in all directions and do so, they say, without causing any pain. So here then are the latest prostheses, the new automatons: these animates that will colonize our organism, just as we ourselves have colonized and controlled the expanse of the earth's body.
Today . . . smart pills are being concocted for the human organism that are capable of transmitting information long-distance concerning nerve function or blood flow; and later on we will have microrobots capable of circulating in our arteries to treat diseased tissue. [49]
And soon, more or less as passive witnesses, we shall see the imminent invasion of our bodies, the control of an 'endogenous' environment, that of our entrails and viscera, thanks to the interactive feats of a biotcchnological miniaturization that will finish off the job of those flourishing large-scale mass communications tools that already govern our society. [“The Law of Proximity,” 50]
Bibliography
Virilio, Paul. Open Sky. Trans. Julie Rose. London and New York: Verso, 1997.
Last modified 13 September 2006