Open Sky

Open Sky

by Julie Rose (Translator), Paul Virilio (Author)

Synopsis

One day the day will come when the day will not come. Bleak in its analysis of the social destruction wrought by modern technologies of communication and surveillance, but passionately political, Open Sky is Paul Virilio's most far-reaching and radical book for many years. Deepening and extending his earlier work on speed perception and political control, and applying it now to the global 'real time' of the information superhighways, he explores the growing danger of what he calls a generalized accident, provoked by the breakdown of our collective and individual relation to time, space and movement. But this is not merely a lucid and disturbing lament for the loss of real geographical spaces, distance, intimacy or democracy. Open Sky is also a call for revolt - against the insidious and accelerating manipulation of perception by the electronic media and repressive political power, against the tyranny of real time, and against the infantilism of cyberhype. Paul Virillo makes a powerful case for a new ethics of perception, and a new ecology, one which will not only strive to protect the natural world from pollution and destruction, but will also combat the devastation of urban communities by proliferating technologies of control and virtuality.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 21 Jul 1997

ISBN 10: 1859841813
ISBN 13: 9781859841815

Media Reviews
One of the most original thinkers of our time. -- Liberation A refreshing antidote to the 'global village' mantra of net gurus, Virilio writes in the subversive tradition of Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. -- Publishers Weekly Virilio is an impressive commentator on the conditioning power of the mass media ... he has become essential reading for anyone trying to make sense of America's out-of-control war of prevention. -- Guardian
Author Bio
Paul Virilio, writer and urbanist, was born in 1932. After the war he first trained as an artist in stained glass, working with Braque and Matisse, as well as studying philosophy at the Sorbonne. At the age of 18, inspired by the Abbe Pierre and the movement of worker-priests, he became a Christian and a militant. In 1975 he was made Director of the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture in Paris. With Georges Perec he created the Espace critique series at the publisher Galilee, and he has worked on a number of journals, including Esprit and Cause Commune. His political activities have included campaigns against homelessness and participation in the free radio movement. He has written 15 books, from Bunker archeologie in 1975 to the forthcoming Un paysage d'evenements. Those translated into English include Speed and Politics, The Art of the Motor, The Vision Machine and War and Cinema.