I went to New York on Friday and it happened not only all of a sudden but also immediately. Following the example of Proust, I didn´t even need to leave my bedroom to be at the brand new Cooper Union auditorium accompanied by an immensely qualified audience. The difference between us was that I could stand up and go to the toilet anytime. They would even follow me if I wish, and the lecture wouldn´t stop unless I commanded it.
The information was all there, in my place. Due to the three things that, according to Thomas Friedman, are responsible for a change in the world in a transition from the 20th to the 21st centuries: the personal computer, the internet and the consequent new ways of doing things. And it was definitely a new way of attending a seminar. I didn´t take notes; I knew that, although it was a live transmission, very soon it would be available on You Tube to be seen as many times as necessary not to miss a word. I had coffee, I googled the names and books they mentioned, everything without feeling constrained or uncomfortable.
The seminar was on philosophy and politics and I didn´t feel sorry about the ideas I couldn´t understand. First and foremost I hadn´t put a penny in it and after all I could improve my knowledge on the subject and awaken myself to its importance. It´s actually something very connected to what interests me at the moment, and considering that the event´s main organizer is one of my preferred authors, Slavoj Zizek, I felt myself at home; literally.
Danell Standing is well known as the main character of The star rover – title that, in Portuguese, led to an idea similar to The wanderer of the stars, in which he describes the experiences of being out of his body through hypnosis. I, on the contrary, was very conscious. Through the mentioned words of Hegel, Marx, Kant, Heidegger, and others, I could catch a glimpse of one of the understandings we have to accomplish to be able to live in our times: we are eventually wanderers of bits and bytes, without which nothing is barely possible anymore. But with which our physical limits have vanished.
