Virilio’s exploration of the relationship between technology, speed, war and information technology weaves together a breathtaking worldview of horror, exhilaration and hope.

“Civilization or the militarization of science?” With this typically hyperbolic and provocative question as a starting point, Paul Virilio explores the dominion of techno-science, cyberwar and the new information technologies over our lives . . . and deaths. After the era of the atomic bomb, Virilio posits an era of genetic and information bombs which replace the apocalyptic bang of nuclear death with the whimper of a subliminally reinforced eugenics. We are entering the age of euthanasia.

These bulletins from the information war extend the range of Virilio's work. The Information Bomb spans everything from Fukuyama to Larry Flynt, the Sensation exhibition of New British Art to space travel, all seen through the optic of Virilio's trenchant and committed theoretical position.

“Virilio’s cyber-skepticism is a refreshing antidote to the ‘global village’ mantra of Net gurus … Virilio writes in the subversive tradition of Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard and Theodore Roszak.” — Publishers Weekly

“One of the most original thinkers of our time.” — Libération

Paul Virilio was born in 1932. After the war he trained as an artist in stained glass, working with Braque and Matisse, as well as studying philosophy at the Sorbonne. At the age of eighteen, inspired by the Abbé Pierre and the movement of the worker-priests, he became a Christian and a militant. In 1975, he was made director of the École spéciale d'architecture in Paris. He has written fifteen books, including War and Cinema, Open Sky, and Ground Zero.

145 pages

Paper
ISBN-13: 978 1 84467 059 8
US$12 / £6 / CAN$14