9781844672080-frontcover

Open Sky

by Paul Virilio

Translated by Julie Rose

A passionate critique of information technology and the global media.

“One day the day will come when the day will not come.” Bleak, but passionately political in its analysis of the social destruction wrought by modern technologies of communication and surveillance, Open Sky is Paul Virilio’s most far-reaching and radical book. Deepening and extending his earlier work, 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 in the context of global electronic media. 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. Virilio 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.

 

Paperback, 162 pages

ISBN: 9781844672080

January 2008

$15.95 / £10.99

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

Discussions

Begin a discussion

Other books by Paul Virilio

  • 9781859844168-ground-zero

    Ground Zero

    by Paul Virilio

    This book seeks to comprehend the philosophical meaning of September 11 and will leave untouched none of the prevailing views currently propagated.

    1 post