Open Sky

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 Virilio makes a powerful case for a new ethics of perception and a new ecology, one which will not only strive to combat the devastation of the urban, social world by proliferating technologies of control and virtuality. The writer and urbanist Paul Virilio 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 eighteen, inspired by the Abb? Pierre and the movement of the worker-priests, he became a Christian and a militant. In 1975 he was made Director of the ?cole sp?ciale d’architecture in Paris. With Georges Perec he created the ‘Espace critique’ series at the publisher Galil?e 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 arch?ologie in 1975 to Un paysage d’ ?v?nements. Those translated into English include Speed and Politics, War and Cinema, The Art of the Motor and The Vision Machine.