Book Description
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.
