Futurism of the Instant
Exploring the shifts in scale involved in such population flows and the fraught and complex relationship between sedentary settlement and globalization, Virilio considers what the resultant loss of identity might mean, not only in terms of the exhaustion of biodiversity, but also in terms of the catastrophic elimination of temporal diversity, with the compression and fragmentation of time enabled by the nanotechnologies in an ever increasing acceleration of reality. This previously unimaginable prospect is brought closer by the accident of an instant that wipes out all distinction between past, present and future within the black hole of globalized interconnectivity.
Paul Virilio is a leading cultural theorist and is well known for his writings on technology, war, speed and power. His many books include War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception, The Original Accident and The
University of Disaster.