Polar Inertia

This key work by Paul Virilio is a critical inquiry into the relations of space, time, and technology.Polar Inertia examines how the here and now' of space, territory and the body, are being redefined by new technologies and shows how this redefinition undoes simplistic versions of the globalization thesis. In a typically pyrotechnic overview - that considers Venetian gondolas and NASA technology, the Lumi[gr]ere cinema and particle accelerators - Virilio shows how technology has made inertia the defining condition of modernity. The principal argument of Polar Inertia is that the real time of action at a distance' - telecommunication - has replaced the real space of immediate action. An instantaneous present has been substituted for space and the sovereignty of territory; everything happens without the need to go anywhere. Illustrated with discussion of optics, vision machines', the body and its vehicles, surveillance and control, this book will be a key reference for students and scholars of the latest thinking in social theory.