IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 86

According to Baudrillard, there are two levels of simulation. The first is when a commodity must have a usevalue in order to sustain the system of exchange-value.
The second is when a commodity must function as an
exchange-value in order to better hide the fact that it circulates like a sign and reproduces the code (representation). Our world today seems to function at Baudrillard's
second-order (or level) simulation, where dialectical
materialism (profit, surplus value, mechanics of capital,
and class struggle) is not being deconstructed by the
forces of production, but rather, the relations of production tend to submit to the forces of production (science,
technology, etc.) and find a new legitimacy in them.
Baudrillard found that the dramatization spectacle of a
political economy and the threat of its symbolic destruction are necessary for maintaining a perpetual simulacrum of a crisis, like the spectacle of a Global Financial
Crisis or a European Debt Crisis. He believes that crises
are fundamental to the very existence of a Capitalist system, because they provide it with the ethical meaning,
such as that of the perpetual idea of "scarcity of 'economic' resources." Capital can only avoid imploding from the
very myths that it propagates (e.g., wealth accumulation
and job creation?), if it resorts to nostalgia and the need
for its great epoch when production had meaning. This
means that we must "generate" or "create" shortages; a
certain spectacle about the scarcity of resources so as to
reactivate the principles of economics. For example,
imagination is strongest in anticipation, and the new economy strengthens this kind of "self-consuming passion"
[12, p. 136) both in shopping malls and in politics.
Is it any surprise the ecological turn in recent years
and the ensuing studies of environmental economics
and environmental accounting, where the danger of
absolute scarcity and an ethic of energy conservation
have given capitalism a renewed legitimacy? Production
is no longer the protagonist in this crisis, but rather
reproduction (representation), which makes it impossible
to know how much truth and how much simulacrum
may be in this crisis? Ecology is too slow to produce and
reproduce, to energize the imagination with more anticipation - which may explain why resources like oil and
minerals offer the perfect candidates for "sudden" crises,
or spectacles that are often associated with the threat of
a conflict in the Middle East. The shortage in oil illusion,
for example, makes us more aware, and accepting, of
the amount of production and reproduction - in terms
of its future contracts and higher prices.
The illusion comes from a naïve faith in a reality of
shortage and a reality of abundance, which reinforces
the illusion of a real opposition between them. When, in
reality, both "realities" are quite simply alternatives to
neo-capitalism, which swings from a phase of shortage
into not a phase of abundance, but rather, a systematic

alternation between the two states of shortage and
abundance. It does this because neither retains a reference, nor therefore an antagonistic reality, while the system is indifferent to their deployment, in so far as
preserving its own existence.
This structural alternation serves only to neutralize
any dialectical opposition between the shortage-abundance nexus, which leaves us feeling uncertain about
the reality of the crisis. The dialectical tensions between
scarcity and abundance allow the economy to produce
itself. In turn, the mythical operation of the economy
allows capitalism to reproduce itself. In essence, then,
the transactional exchange on the stock market is all
that is required for capitalism to reproduce itself, which
is why business reports often discuss the reproduction,
taking place on the stock market, as if it is the ONLY
reflection of the economy.
In this way, Baudrillard mirrors Debord's view of the
representation becoming the new real, while Virilio's
logic of speed (dromology) serves to explain why the
faster the movement and circulation of the swings from
scarcity to abundance and vice versa, as with high frequency trading (HFT) on stock exchanges, the more
enervating and believable the spectacle becomes. Dromology then becomes essential not only to the possession
of the territory, but to reconfiguring that territory as well.
The transition from feudalism to capitalism is a case in
point, where the mechanics of war had changed the
dynamics of societies, where siege warfare of feudal fortified cities had shifted to a war of movement because of
the increasing sophistication of weapons and possibilities for warfare.
Today, not only governments and militaries around the
world are involved in an online arms race, but also financial institutions are doing the same thing with billions of
dollars earmarked for their HFT capabilities. If history progresses at the speed of its weapon systems, then could
this online arms race spell the end of freedom? Distance,
which once sheltered us from the invasions of the barbarian hoards of afar, is no longer a deterrent with new technologies. The localized physical space that once
protected local jobs, for example, ceases to protect workers from the technologically efficient "armies" that are
driven by ideologies, economics, and speed facilitated by
technological innovation. Dromocracy ensures swift victory if you deploy resources rapidly: money, skill, ideology,
or weapons. This very idea of speed is at the heart of faster innovation that leads to faster revenue expansion,
which energizes the imagination with more anticipation ...
and anticipation enervates our ontological insecurity.
The unintended effect of this misplaced faith in technology is disengagement from trying to understand the
effect of the technology on our lives, which results in
the pacified submission to the divine ability of the

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SEPTEMBER 2017

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