Franz Kafka thought that letters were already an inhuman medium of communication; they had caused terrible spiritual destitution. In a letter of his own, he wrote,
How did people ever get the idea they could communicate with one another by letter! One can think about someone far away and one can hold on to someone nearby; everything else is beyond human power.1
Letters circulate among ghosts. Written kisses never arrive at their destination. On the way, ghosts snatch them up and suck them dry. Postal communication simply provides them further nourishment. Because this fodder is so rich, the ghosts are multiplying without end. Humankind does what it can to combat them. This is why railways and automobiles were invented: “in order to eliminate as much of the ghosts’ power as possible and to attain a natural intercourse, a tranquility of soul.”2 But the other side is much stronger. After it invented the mail, it discovered telephones and telegraphs. Kafka draws the conclusion: “[The ghosts] will not starve, but we will perish.”3
Since then, Kafka’s ghosts have also invented the Internet, smartphones, email, Twitter, Facebook, and Google Glass. Kafka would say that the new generation of ghosts—digital ghosts—are more gluttonous, more shameless, and noisier than ever. Isn’t it a fact that digital media reach “beyond human power”? Aren’t they leading to a racing, uncontrollable proliferation of ghosts? Are we not, in truth, losing the ability to think of someone far away and hold on to someone nearby?
The Internet of Things is bringing new ghosts into the world. Physical objects, which used to be mute, are now starting to talk. Automatic communication between them—which happens without human beings doing anything at all—will feed the ghosts. It is making the world more and more ghostly, as if guided by a spectral hand. Maybe digital ghosts will see to it that, at some point, everything winds up spinning out of control. E. M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” anticipates such a catastrophe. Here, swarms of ghosts put an end to the world.
The history of communication may be described as the progressive illumination of stone. The optical medium that speeds information along as fast as light has finally drawn the curtain on the Stone Age of communication. Even silicon points to the Latin silex, which means “pebble.” Stone appears often in the works of Heidegger as his preferred example for the “mere thing.” In itself, stone is something that withdraws from visibility. Thus, in an early lecture, Heidegger claims that “a mere thing, a stone, has no light within itself.”4 Ten years later, in “The Origin of the Work Art,” one reads: “The stone presses downwards and manifests its heaviness. But while this heaviness weighs down on us, at the same time, it denies us any penetration into it.”5 As a thing, stone represents the antitype of transparency. It belongs to the earth, the terrestrial order; as such, its stands for what remains concealed and sealed off. Today, things are becoming less and less meaningful. They are giving way to information. Information is what feeds ghosts now, “not the thing, but information is economically, socially, and politically concrete. Our environment is becoming markedly softer and foggier—more spectral.”6
That said, digital communication is not just assuming spectral form; it is also becoming viral. Digital communication is contagious insofar as it occurs on an emotive or affective register, without mediation. Contagion represents a form of posthermeneutic communication that, in fact, offers nothing to think about. It does not presuppose any kind of reading (which admits acceleration only within modest limits). Digital “content,” even if it holds very little significance, spreads like an epidemic, a pandemic racing through the Net. It is unburdened by the weight of meaning. No other medium can effect such viral infection. Writing is far too sluggish.
Like stones and walls, secrets belong to the terrestrial order. The secret is incompatible with accelerated production and the dissemination of information. It represents the antitype of communication. Digital topology consists of flat, smooth, open spaces. In contrast, secrets prefer spaces that impede the spread of information—nooks, corners, crannies, hollows, and hideouts.
The secret loves silence. This is what differentiates the secretive, or mysterious [das Geheimnisvolle], from the ghostly. Like the spectacle, the spectral depends on seeing and being seen. That is why ghosts are noisy. The digital wind blowing through our houses is ghostly:
In any case, the wind is for the nomad what the ground is for the settled. … There is something ghostly and spiritual about it. … The wind, this phantasmical intangibility that drives the nomad and whose call he obeys, is an experience that we describe in terms of calculus and computation.7
Their high degree of complexity makes digital things spectral and uncontrollable. In contrast, the secret is not defined by complexity.
Transparency society has a flipside—indeed, a dark side. In certain respects, it amounts to a surface phenomenon. Behind or underneath it, spectral spaces open up that defy transparency altogether. Dark pools, for instance, refer to anonymous financial transactions. Ultimately, so-called high-speed trading is commerce with, or between, ghosts: algorithms and machines are communicating and fighting with each other. As Kafka would say, these spectral modes of action and exchange reach “beyond human power.” They give rise to unpredictable, spectral events such as flash crashes. Today’s financial markets also breed monsters. Because of their exceedingly high level of complexity, they can stir up trouble—and worse—and do so without any supervision. Tor is the name for software enabling one to travel through the Net anonymously, in quasi-subterranean fashion. It is the digital deep sea, where all visibility vanishes. The more transparency increases, the more the darkness grows.