The compression of time: Virilio, info-war and the drug test
Charlotte Sanderson, University of Leicester
In Open Sky Virilio interrogates new information technology and, according to Kellner,
“[h]is central insight is that new information, communication, and transportation technologies are taking us out of this world, beyond the limits of space and time, outside of nature and the material world into a new dimension with its own temporality, spatiality and modes of being.” (Kellner, 1999: 110)
It is my contention that the workplace drug test is an example of such technologies, in particular because it signifies a change in our experience of time, blurring previously defined time boundaries and enabling the identification of previously obscured, unseen behaviour. Further to Virilio’s (1997: 139) argument that technology renders individuals perpetually present in the ‘already here tomorrow’ I suggest the drug test potentially also renders them visible in an ‘ever present/ inescapable past’. Thus the drug test seemingly eliminates the space between that which is now and that which has already passed, distorting previously accepted time-space conventions and seemingly traversing the boundaries of past and present. It can also be argued to extend into the future, given its apparently ‘predictive’ capacity. Subsequently the drug test, like CCTV and other similar technologies, is seemingly part and parcel of the disintegration of time barriers that characterises contemporary society.
However, despite the contestation that the workplace drug test is another technology of Virilio’s info-war, able to reveal previously unseen behaviour – to accurately represent the past and the present, and thus predict the future - and subsequently to identify the deviant - this possibility is reliant on the accuracy and capacity of the relevant technology. Importantly its potential to reveal the past is possibly only at the time of the physical enactment of the test. Subsequently it is important not to overstate the compression of time past, present and future that the drug test seemingly enables. Unlike other informatic technologies such as CCTV its vision is interrupted, representing a specific juncture in time through which the past and present may be revealed rather than a continuous ‘stream of vision’. Moreover this ‘vision’/ logistics of perception is limited by the test’s various failings, including the problems of laboratory technology, human error and varying ‘windows of opportunity’ during which it is possible to identify a drug in an individual’s system.
The claims above will be explored through a conceptual review and a discussion of empirical data collected with reference to workplace drug testing procedures and practices and employee understandings and experiences of, and responses to, them. In light of the imperfections of the test noted above I intend to question whether fears surrounding the development of workplace drug testing regimes and their seeming compression of time are justified. Thus the paper will end by considering the potential and actual power of the drug test to reveal the past, present and future of employee bodies and their relationships and responsibilities to organisations.