There can be no doubt about this. It even held true for the soldiers involved in the Kosovo War. For the soldiers stayed mostly in their barracks! In this way, polar inertia has truly become a mass phenomenon. And not only for the TV audiences watching the war at home but also for the army that watches the battle from the barracks.
Paul VirilioLook at the US, look at Russia. Both of these countries are immense geographical territories. But, nowadays, immense territories amount to nothing!
Paul VirilioThe Gulf War may not have occurred in the actual global space, but it did occur in global time. And this thanks to CNN and The Pentagon.
Paul VirilioThe high level of the technologies used during the Gulf War makes this conflict quite unique, but the very process of de-realization of the war started in 1945. War occured in Kuwait, but it also occured on the screens of the entire world. The site of defeat or victory was not the ground, but the screen.
Paul VirilioPossession of territory is not primarily about laws and contracts, but first and foremost a matter of movement and circulation.
Paul VirilioWhen you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution...Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.
Paul VirilioThere cannot be an animal body without a territorial body: three bodies are grafted over each other: the territorial body - the planet, the social body - the couple, and the animal body - you and me. And technology splits this unity, leaving us without a sense of where we are. This, too, is de-realization.
Paul Virilio