Search results for 'politics'

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Paul Virilio

Paul Virilio (b. 1932 in Paris) is a world-renowned philosopher, urbanist, and cultural theorist. His work focuses on urban spaces and the development of technology in relation to power and speed. He is known for his coining of the term 'dromology' to explain his theory of speed and technology. Paul Virilio is of mixed ancestry, being the son of an Italian father (who identified as a Communist) and a Breton mother. As a small child in France during the Second World War, Paul Virilio was profoundly impacted by the blitzkrieg and total war; however, these early experiences shaped his understanding of the movement and speed which structures modern society. In order to escape the heavy fighting in the city, he fled with his family to the port of Nantes in 1939.

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Media Darkness 

Reflections on Public Space, Light and Conflict

There is an unshakable belief in the idea that what defines the mass media is that they produce or constitute, in all their different ways, a public. So while there is agreement on the fact that not every public sphere is a communication medium, many people tend to think that every communication medium constitutes a public sphere - the most recent and prominent candidate being, of course, the Internet. But is this claim as to the public quality of all media, hegemonic as it may be today, really tenable?

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Fragmented Urban Topographies and Their Underlying Interconnections 

Topographic representations of the built environment of cities tend to emphasize the distinctiveness of the various socio-economic sectors: the differences between poor and rich neighborhoods, between commercial and manufacturing districts, and so on. While valid, this type of representation of a city is partial because there are a variety of underlying connections. Further, it may even be more problematic than in the past, given some of the socio-economic, technical, and cultural dynamics of the current era. One step towards understanding what constitutes the complexity of large cities is the analysis of interconnections among urban forms and fragments that present themselves as unconnected.

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