Top 170 Quotes & Sayings by Paul Virilio - Page 2

People agree to say that it is rationality and science which have eliminated what is called magic and religion. But ultimately, the ironic outcome of this techno-scientific development is a renewed need for the idea of God.

When I say: "I'm looking at you, I can see you", that means: "I can see you because I can't see what is behind you: I see you through the frame I am drawing. I can't see inside you". If I could see you from beneath or from behind, I would be God. I can see you because my back and my sides are blind. One can't even imagine what it would be like to see inside people.

In industrialized warfare, where the representation of events outstripped the presentation of facts, the image was starting to gain sway over the object, time over space. Soon a conflict of strategic and political interpretation would ensue, with radio and then radar completing the picture.

Already, viral contamination offers an initial response to the question of the downside of electronic circuits, but another area of research beckons the area of ecological pollution. The pollution not only of air, water, and other substances, but also the unperceived pollution of distances.

Earth is already being integrated into the Pentagon, and the man in the Pentagon is already piloting the world war - or the Gulf War - as if he were a captain whose huge boat would have become his own body. Thus the body simulates the relationship to the world.

I am always concerned with ideas of territory and movement. Indeed, my first book after Bunker Archeology was entitled L'insecurite du territoire (1976).

For me, the Asian financial crisis of 1998 and the war in Kosovo in 1999 are the prelude to the integral accident.

Technologies first equipped the territorial body with bridges, aqueducts, railways, highways, airports, etc. Now that the most powerful technologies are becoming tiny - microtechnologies, all technologies can invade the body. These micro-machines will feed the body. Research is being conducted in order to create additional memory for instance.

To me, dance is an extraordinary thing, more extraordinary than most people usually think. Dance preceded writing, speaking and music. When mute people speak their body language, it is true speaking rather than handicap, this is the first word and the first writing. Thus to me, the body is fundamental.

Look at the Intifadah in Jerusalem. One cannot understand that phenomenon, a phenomenon where people, often very young boys, are successfully harassing one of the best armies in the world, without appreciating their freedom to move!

One can't even know what it means to be lost in reality. For instance, it is easy to know whether you are lost or not in the Sahara desert, but to be lost in reality! This is much more complex!

In this way, history now inscribes itself in real time, in the 'live', in the realm of interactivity. Consequently, history no longer resides in the extension of territory.

Sovereignty no longer resides in the territory itself, but in the control of the territory. And localisation is an inherent part of that territorial control.

Concepts are mental images.

For the US, the Kosovo War was a success because it encouraged the development of the Pentagon's 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA). The war provided a test site for experimentation, and paved the way for emergence of what I call in Strategie de la deception 'the second deterrence'.

As I have been arguing for a long time now, there is a real need not simply for a political economy of wealth but also for a political economy of speed.

Jean Baudrillard is a friend of mine, I do not agree with him on that one! For me, the significance of the war in Kosovo was that it was a war that moved into space.

The high level of the technologies used during the Gulf War makes this conflict quite unique, but the very process of de-realization of the war started in 1945. War occured in Kuwait, but it also occured on the screens of the entire world. The site of defeat or victory was not the ground, but the screen.

There is, then, a link between the logistics of perception, the wars in Lebanon and the Gulf as well as with CNN and the Pentagon.

While the United States (US) can view the war as a success, Europe must see it as a failure for it and, in particular, for the institutions of the European Union (EU).

The Gulf War may not have occurred in the actual global space, but it did occur in global time. And this thanks to CNN and The Pentagon.

For the strategies of deception are concerned with deceiving an opponent through the logistics of perception. But these strategies are not merely aimed at the Serbs or the Iraqis but also at all those who might support [Slobodan] Milosevic or Saddam Hussein.

I pursue through my research on speed and on my study of the organisation of the revolution of the means of transportation.

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.

Today, almost all-current technologies put the speed of light to work.

I think that cinema and television have nothing in common. There is a breaking point between photography and cinema on the one hand and television and virtual reality on the other hand.

The body is extremely important to me, because it is a planet. For instance, if you compare Earth and an astronomer, you will see that the man is a planet.

Creation exists only in regard to destruction. Creation is against destruction.

Television is a media of crisis, which means that television is a media of accidents.

'Cyberwar' has nothing to do with the destruction brought about by bombs and grenades and so on.

We have already seen some instances of systemic risk in recent times in the Asian financial crisis. But what sparked off the Asian financial crisis? Automated trading programmes!

A museum of accidents is needed. This museum already exists, it's television.

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.

Today, the army only occupies the territory once the war is over.

Even among the elite, in government circles, technological culture is somewhat deficient.

Indeed, the truth, the reality of the Kosovo War, was actually hidden behind all the 'humanitarian' faces.

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.

As I have said many times before, I was among the first people to experience the German Occupation of France during the Second World War. I was 7-13 years old during the War and did not really internalise its significance.

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.

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.

What is going on now, or should happen in one or two generations, is the disintegration of the world. Real time 'live' technologies, cyberreality, will permit the incorporation of the world within oneself. One will be able to read the entire world, just like during the Gulf War. And I will have become the world. The body of the world and my body will be one.

Newshounds are people with mini-video cameras, people who are continually taking pictures in the street and sending the tapes in to CNN. These Newshounds are a sort of pack of wolves, continually looking for quarry, but quarry in the form of images.

The development and deployment of drones and Cruise missiles involves the continuing development of the vision machine. Research on Cruise missiles is intrinsically linked to the development of vision machines. The aim, of course, is not only to give vision to a machine but, as in the case of the Cruise missiles that were aimed at Leningrad and Moscow, also to enable a machine to deploy radar readings and pre-programmed maps as it follows its course towards its target.

There can be no doubt about this. It even held true for the soldiers involved in the Kosovo War. For the soldiers stayed mostly in their barracks! In this way, polar inertia has truly become a mass phenomenon. And not only for the TV audiences watching the war at home but also for the army that watches the battle from the barracks.

Television can only destroy.

I believe that philosophy is part of literature, and not the reverse.

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

However, the Kosovo War took place in orbital space. In other words, war now takes place in 'aero-electro-magnetic space'. It is equivalent to the birth of a new type of flotilla, a home fleet, of a new type of naval power, but in orbital space!

The information bomb gives rise to the integral and globally constituted accident.

The media is more concerned with what we feel about the refugees and so on rather than what we think about them.

For me, then, territory and movement are linked. For instance, territory is controlled by the movements of horsemen, of tanks, of planes, and so on.

I have said many times before, interactivity is the equivalent of radioactivity. For interactivity effects a kind of disintegration, a kind of rupture.

The globally constituted accident can be compared to what people who work at the stock exchange call 'systemic risk'.

I always write with images. I cannot write a book if I don't have images.

I could give examples of cabinet ministers, including defence ministers, who have no technological culture at all. In other words, what I am suggesting is that the hype generated by the publicity around the Internet and so on is not counter balanced by a political intelligence that is based on a technological culture.

In a way, everybody is wounded from the wound of the real. This phenomenon is similar to madness. The mad person is wounded by his or her distorted relationship to the real.

For the time being, technologies are colonizing our body through implants. We started with human implants, but research leads us to microtechnological implants.

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!

Let us put it this way, techno-scientific intelligence is presently insufficiently spread among society at large to enable us to interpret the sorts of techno-scientific advances that are taking shape today.

The automation of warfare has, then, come a long way since the Persian Gulf War of 1991.