Paul Virilio
Some quotes from The Administration of Fear, –a meditation on technology, globalization, mass communication, and fear.
The earth is shrinking and space is dwindling, compressed by instantaneous time. Carried along by the headlong rush of an increasingly accelerated world, all we can do is manage and administer this fear instead of deal with it fundamentally. The administration of fear is politics without a polis. P 10
It is a question of the diversity of rhythms. Our societies have become a-rhythmic. Or they know only one rhythm: constant acceleration. Until the crash and system failure. P 27
With the industrial revolution of the second half of the 19th century, the democracy of opinions flourished through the press, pamphlets and then the mass media—press, radio and television. This first regime consisted of the standardization of products and opinions. The second, current regime is comprised of the synchronization of emotions, ensuring the transition from a democracy of opinion to a democracy of emotion. For better or for worse. P 30
Our reality has become uninhabitable in milliseconds, picoseconds, femtoseconds, billionths of seconds. P 35
We lack a political economy of speed. …we will need one or we will fall into globalitarianism, the totalitarianism of totalitarianism. I believe that the mastery of power is linked to the mastery of speed. A world of immediacy and simultaneity would be absolutely uninhabitable. P 37
Speed, the cult of speed, is the propaganda of progress. The problem is that progress has become contaminated with its propaganda. P 38
The rhythms of the past were tied to seasons, the liturgical calendar, Sunday holidays, the Sabbath;–they have been pushed aside in favor of 24×7. P 44
Temporal compression, as it is technically called, is an event that concretely modifies everyone’s daily life at the same time. In the face of acceleration of daily life, fear has become the environment, even in a time of peace. P 45
Getting carried away, has taken the place of enthusiasm, and reaction, action. We are in a fit of rage. Along with a lack of verbalization, a deficit in the mastery of language. P 53
Paul Virilio is trained as an urban planner. In 1975 he became director of the Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and trained as an artist in stained glass. He has published 25 books.
