PAUL VIRILIO

The speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. Globalization is the speed of light.

War was my university. Everything has proceeded from there.

Science, which is not so attached to 'truth' as it once was, ut more to immediate 'effectiveness', is now drifting towards a decline, it's civic fall from grace.

It will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means.

Images contaminate us like viruses.

Globalization is the speed of light.

The first deterrence, nuclear deterrence, is presently being superseded by the second deterrence: a type of deterrence based on what I call 'the information bomb' associated with the new weaponry of information and communications technologies.

The simulator is an object in itself, which is different from televison and leads to cyberspace.

For instance, the Persian Gulf War was a miniature world war. It took place in a small geographical area. In this sense it was a local war. But it was one that made use of all the power normally reserved for global war.

As I pointed out in The Art of the Motor and elsewhere, from now on we need two watches: a wristwatch to tell us what time it is and a GPS watch to tell us what space it is!

The territorial body has been polluted by roads, elevators, etc. Similarly, our animal body starts being polluted. Ecology no longer deals with water, flora, wildlife and air only. It deals with the body itself as well. It is comparable with an invasion: technology is invading our body because of miniaturisation.

Television can only destroy.

What brought me to Christianity is Incarnation, not Ressurection.

The creation of a virtual image is a form of accident. This explains why virtual reality is a cosmic accident. It's the accident of the real.

Thus my research on dromology, on the logic and impact of speed, necessarily implies the study of the organisation of territory.

Digital messages and images matter less than their instantaneous delivery; the shock effect always wins out over the consideration of the informational content.

War is cinema, and cinema is war

For example, it was this pack of wolves that sparked off the Rodney King affair a few years ago in Los Angeles. Let us consider the situation: a person videos Rodney King being beaten up by the cops. That person then sends in the footage to the TV station. Within hours riots flare up in the city!

I believe that the military-industrial complex is more important than ever. This is because the war in Kosovo gave fresh impetus not to the military-industrial complex but to the military-scientific complex. You can see this in China.

Thus it is no longer a Caesar or a Napoleon who decides on the fate of any particular war but a piece of software! In short, the political intelligence of war and the political intelligence of society no longer penetrate the techno-scientific world.

It was a total and absolute surprise to find out that what was inside the concentration camps was a sea of skeletons. What is clear to me, therefore, is that while the tragedy of war grinds on, the contemporary aesthetics of the tragedy seem not only confused but, in some way, suspicious.

There is a French expression that says: to be exposed to an accident, to cross a street without looking at the cars means exposing oneself to be run over. This is more than a play with words, it's fundamental.

Nowadays, the tragedy of war is mediated through technology. It is no longer mediated through a human being with moral responsibilities.

From the original watchtower through the anchored balloon to the reconnaissance aircraft and remote sensing-satellites, one and the same function has been indefinitely repeated, the eye's function being the function of a weapon.

When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution...Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.