The Information Bomb

Paul Virilio does not believe in technology as a salvific force. Like Baudrillard, he is a skeptic when it comes to electronic culture, but unlike Baudrillard, who is really a disguised mystic, Virilio is an apocalyptist leaning over the edge of history and gazing out upon its serrated contours. Virilio is grittier than Baudrillard; he is more direct and to the point, whereas Baudrillard wishes to light candles and put on soft music before dazzling us with his aphorisms. For Virilio, the main point seems to be that our world culture of electronic screens has replaced local, chronological time with "real time," the time of instantaneity, in which there is neither time nor room for the leisure of reflective thought. When everything happens all at once, there is no space for the accumulation of a cultural memory with which to absorb the impacts, and so all is instantly forgotten the very moment it arises. Virilio sees us headed for a global catastrophe of some sort; this is the shadow side of the globalization of the planet, which hangs suspended in its electronic ether. This book was written in the years immediately preceding Y2K -- the great catastrophe that never took place -- and so it is possible that this may have colored his perceptions. However, in later texts like "The Original Accident," Virilio insists that the great work of global catastrophe, whatever it may be, is still on its way. And he may be right. "The Information Bomb" is a media studies classic that belongs on the shelf right beside your dog-eared copies of "Understanding Media" and "The Disapearance of Childhood." It is terse and rough-hewn, but it is also packed full of clever neologisms and insightful glimpses into the abyss that technological "advance" continues to open up before our feet. How long until we fall into the chasm specially made for us by our machines? Virilio doesn't know and neither do I. But I do know one thing: we need more, rather than less, questioning of the advances of technology, for each new gadget that is thrust at us brings along with it a horde of internal disruptors which will implode our cultural landscape from within. Remember record players, eight track tapes, VCR's, drive ins? (As Virilio remarks, with the advent of the elevator, the grand staircase was relegated to a mere fire escape). Those things are all gone now, and so too, the social horizons which they brought into being along with them. They have been replaced by newer and more refined gadgets with new potentialities for knocking our culture's equilibrium off balance, along with our perennially disturbed nervous systems. Virilio deserves a wider readership, and "The Information Bomb" is a good place for the new reader to become acquainted with him. --John David Ebert, author of Celluloid Heroes & Mechanical Dragons: Film as the Mythology of Electronic Society

A unique mix of Situationism, postmodernism, and Luddism! (With a dose of Foucault and a left-wing Catholic streak?!) Virilio's staccato, rapid-fire assault mostly dispenses with conventional argument or exposition, but that's what makes him so bracing. It's a hail of neologisms, newspaper headlines, and quotes from contemporary politicos and ancient philosophers. The main thesis seems to be we're flirting with disaster: under the pressures of the military-industrial complex, technoscience, telecommunications and surveillance technologies, etc., reality is steadily shrinking and accelerating, preparing us for some unknown "integral accident" waiting to happen: a global disaster, a Chernobyl or Hiroshima whose chain reaction will be at least "virtually" apocalyptic.

one of the two most original thinkers i have ever read, the other being jean baudrillard. buy this book, think about the psy and phys of current techno on humanity. learn and grow.