Paul Virilio quotes:

The speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. Globalization is the speed of light.

Art has become more than painting, sculpture or music: art is more than Van Gogh painting a landscape or Wagner composing an opera. The whole of reality itself has become the object of art.

As I have said many times before, I was among the first people to experience the German Occupation of France during the Second World War. I was 7-13 years old during the War and did not really internalise its significance.

Already, viral contamination offers an initial response to the question of the downside of electronic circuits, but another area of research beckons the area of ecological pollution. The pollution not only of air, water, and other substances, but also the unperceived pollution of distances.

Science, which is not so attached to 'truth' as it once was, ut more to immediate 'effectiveness', is now drifting towards a decline, it's civic fall from grace.

Cyberspace is an accident of the real. Virtual reality is the accident of reality itself.

Despite the economic disaster that is Russia, there are still air shows taking place in the country.

Images contaminate us like viruses.

As I pointed out in The Art of the Motor and elsewhere, from now on we need two watches: a wristwatch to tell us what time it is and a GPS watch to tell us what space it is!

Concepts are mental images.

It will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means.

War was my university. Everything has proceeded from there.

The invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck.

The thing about collaborators is that you don't know you are one whereas as a member of the resistance, you do. [In WWII,] the worst cases of collaboration weren't among the real collaborators, that official militia, but among the people at large, who were collaborators without knowing it, by a sort of laxity, an apathy.

... the blinding Hiroshima flash... literally photographed the shadow cast by beings and things, so that every surface immediately became war's recording surface, its film.

Art is alive because it is mortal.

As I have said many times before, the speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. Globalization is the speed of light. And it is nothing else!

Creation exists only in regard to destruction. Creation is against destruction.

Cyberspace is acting like God and deals with the idea of God who is, sees and hears everything.

Digital messages and images matter less than their instantaneous delivery; the shock effect always wins out over the consideration of the informational content.

As I said back in 1984, the idea of logistics is not only about oil, about ammunitions and supplies but also about images.

A museum of accidents is needed. This museum already exists, it's television.

All future wars, all future accidents will be live wars and live accidents.

All of us are already civilian soldiers, without knowing it...The great stroke of luck for the military class's terrorism is that no one recognizes it. People don't recognize the militarized part of their identity, of their consciousness.

Art is drama. Any relationship to art is also a relationship to death.

Art used to be painting, sculpture, music, etc, but now, all technology has become art. Of course, this form of art is still very primitive, but it is slowly replacing reality.

As I have been arguing for a long time now, there is a real need not simply for a political economy of wealth but also for a political economy of speed.

Because Man is God, and God is Man, the world is nothing but the world of Man - or Woman.

'Cyberwar' has nothing to do with the destruction brought about by bombs and grenades and so on.

Earth is already being integrated into the Pentagon, and the man in the Pentagon is already piloting the world war - or the Gulf War - as if he were a captain whose huge boat would have become his own body. Thus the body simulates the relationship to the world.

Even among the elite, in government circles, technological culture is somewhat deficient.

For all the sophistication of GPS, there still remain numerous problems with their use. The most obvious problem in this context is the problem of landmines. For example, when the French troops went into Kosovo they were told that they were going to enter in half-tracks, over the open fields. But their leaders had forgotten about the landmines. And this was a major problem because, these days, landmines are no longer localized.

For example, it was this pack of wolves that sparked off the Rodney King affair a few years ago in Los Angeles. Let us consider the situation: a person videos Rodney King being beaten up by the cops. That person then sends in the footage to the TV station. Within hours riots flare up in the city!

For example, we have developed an artistic and a literary culture. Nevertheless, the ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside of popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy.

For instance, in 1999, Bill Gates not only published a new book on work at the speed of thought but also detailed how Microsoft's 'Falconview' software would enable the destruction of bridges in Kosovo.

For instance, the Persian Gulf War was a miniature world war. It took place in a small geographical area. In this sense it was a local war. But it was one that made use of all the power normally reserved for global war.

For me, Sun Tzu's statement that military force is based upon deception is an extraordinary statement.

For me, the Asian financial crisis of 1998 and the war in Kosovo in 1999 are the prelude to the integral accident.

For me, then, territory and movement are linked. For instance, territory is controlled by the movements of horsemen, of tanks, of planes, and so on.

For the strategies of deception are concerned with deceiving an opponent through the logistics of perception. But these strategies are not merely aimed at the Serbs or the Iraqis but also at all those who might support [Slobodan] Milosevic or Saddam Hussein.

For the time being, technologies are colonizing our body through implants. We started with human implants, but research leads us to microtechnological implants.

For the US, GPS are a form of sovereignty! It is hardly surprising, then, that the EU has proposed its own GPS in order to be able to localize and to compete with the American GPS.

For the US, the Kosovo War was a success because it encouraged the development of the Pentagon's 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA). The war provided a test site for experimentation, and paved the way for emergence of what I call in Strategie de la deception 'the second deterrence'.

France and Germany were opposed to a maritime blockade of the Adriatic Sea without a mandate from the United Nations (UN). So, what we witnessed in Kosovo was an extraordinary war, a war waged solely with bombs from the air.

From the original watchtower through the anchored balloon to the reconnaissance aircraft and remote sensing-satellites, one and the same function has been indefinitely repeated, the eye's function being the function of a weapon.

Globalization cannot take shape without the speed of light.

GPS are everywhere. They are in cars. They were even in the half-tracks that, initially at least, were going to make the ground invasion in Kosovo possible.

GPS not only played a large and delocalizing role in the war in Kosovo but is increasingly playing a role in social life.

Hence not only the crisis of geopolitics and geostrategy but also the shift towards the emergence and dominance of chronostrategy.

How can we live if there is no more here and everything is now?

However, the Kosovo War took place in orbital space. In other words, war now takes place in 'aero-electro-magnetic space'. It is equivalent to the birth of a new type of flotilla, a home fleet, of a new type of naval power, but in orbital space!

I always write with images. I cannot write a book if I don't have images.

I am always concerned with ideas of territory and movement. Indeed, my first book after Bunker Archeology was entitled L'insecurite du territoire (1976).

I am of course thinking here about new planes such as the Sukhois. There is very little discussion about such developments but, for me, I am constantly astonished by the current developments within the Russian airforce.

I am very interested in and that is what Sun Tzu in his ancient Chinese text calls The Art of War.

I believe that philosophy is part of literature, and not the reverse.

I believe that the military-industrial complex is more important than ever. This is because the war in Kosovo gave fresh impetus not to the military-industrial complex but to the military-scientific complex. You can see this in China.

I believe that the politics of intervention and the Kosovo war prompted a fresh resumption of the arms race worldwide.

I could give examples of cabinet ministers, including defence ministers, who have no technological culture at all. In other words, what I am suggesting is that the hype generated by the publicity around the Internet and so on is not counter balanced by a political intelligence that is based on a technological culture.

I don't believe in simulationism, I believe that the word is already old-fashioned. As I see it, new technologies are substituting a virtual reality for an actual reality. And this is more than a phase: it's a definite change.

I have always been interested in the architecture of war, as can be seen in Bunker Archeology. However, at the time that I did the research for that book, I was very young. My aim was to understand the notion of 'Total War'.

I have said many times before, interactivity is the equivalent of radioactivity. For interactivity effects a kind of disintegration, a kind of rupture.

I pursue through my research on speed and on my study of the organisation of the revolution of the means of transportation.

I repeat what I suggest in my book [ Strategie de la deception]. The first deterrence, nuclear deterrence, is presently being superseded by the second deterrence: a type of deterrence based on what I call 'the information bomb' associated with the new weaponry of information and communications technologies.

I think that cinema and television have nothing in common. There is a breaking point between photography and cinema on the one hand and television and virtual reality on the other hand.

If we consider my latest book, Strategie de la deception, what we need to focus on are the other aspects of the same phenomenon.

If we look at the Gulf War, the same is also true. Indeed, my work on the logistics of perception and the Gulf War was so accurate that I was even asked to discuss it with high-ranking French military officers. They asked me: 'how is it that you wrote that book in 1984 and now it's happening for real?' My answer was: 'the problem is not mine but yours: you have not been doing your job properly!'

If we turn to the war in Kosovo, what do we find? We find the manipulation of the audience's emotions by the mass media.

If you look at the Gulf War or new military technologies, they are moving towards cyberwars. Most video-technologies and technologies of simulation have been used for war. For example, video was created after the Second World War in order to radio-control planes and aircraft carriers. Thus video came with the war. It took twenty years before it became a means of expression for artists.

In a way, everybody is wounded from the wound of the real. This phenomenon is similar to madness. The mad person is wounded by his or her distorted relationship to the real.

In a way, technologies have negated the transcendental God in order to invent the machine-God. However, these two gods raise similar questions.

In industrialized warfare, where the representation of events outstripped the presentation of facts, the image was starting to gain sway over the object, time over space. Soon a conflict of strategic and political interpretation would ensue, with radio and then radar completing the picture.

In the very near future, and I stress this important point, it will no longer be war that is the continuation of politics by other means, it will be what I have dubbed 'the integral accident' that is the continuation of politics by other means.

In this way, history now inscribes itself in real time, in the 'live', in the realm of interactivity. Consequently, history no longer resides in the extension of territory.

In this way, it seems to me that, since 1984, my book on the logistics of perception has been proved totally correct. For instance, almost every conflict since then has involved the logistics of perception, including the war in Lebanon, where Israel made use of cheap drones in order to track Yasser Arafat with the aim of killing him.

Indeed, the truth, the reality of the Kosovo War, was actually hidden behind all the 'humanitarian' faces.

It was a total and absolute surprise to find out that what was inside the concentration camps was a sea of skeletons. What is clear to me, therefore, is that while the tragedy of war grinds on, the contemporary aesthetics of the tragedy seem not only confused but, in some way, suspicious.

Jean Baudrillard is a friend of mine, I do not agree with him on that one! For me, the significance of the war in Kosovo was that it was a war that moved into space.

Let us put it this way, techno-scientific intelligence is presently insufficiently spread among society at large to enable us to interpret the sorts of techno-scientific advances that are taking shape today.

Let us start with the title of War and Cinema. The important part of the title is not War and Cinema.

Look at the Intifadah in Jerusalem. One cannot understand that phenomenon, a phenomenon where people, often very young boys, are successfully harassing one of the best armies in the world, without appreciating their freedom to move!

Look at the US, look at Russia. Both of these countries are immense geographical territories. But, nowadays, immense territories amount to nothing!

Many people question their religious identity today, not necessarily by thinking of converting to Judaism or to Islam: it's just that technologies seriously challenge the status of the human being. All technologies converge toward the same spot, they all lead to a Deus ex Machina, a machine-God.

May I remind you that the bombs that were dropped by the B-2 plane on the Chinese embassy  or at least that is what we were told  were GPS bombs. And the B-2 flew in from the US.

Moreover, I would like to say that the sort of polar inertia we witnessed in the Kosovo War, the polar inertia involving 'automated war' and 'war-at-a-distance' is also terribly weak in the face of terrorism. For instance, in such situations, any individual who decides to place or throw a bomb can simply walk away. He or she has the freedom to move. This also applies to militant political groups and their actions.

Moreover, it is clear that the era of the information bomb, the era of aerial warfare, the era of the RMA and global surveillance is also the era of the integral accident.

Newshounds are people with mini-video cameras, people who are continually taking pictures in the street and sending the tapes in to CNN. These Newshounds are a sort of pack of wolves, continually looking for quarry, but quarry in the form of images.

Now all we have to do to enter the realm of art is to take a car.

Nowadays, the tragedy of war is mediated through technology. It is no longer mediated through a human being with moral responsibilities.

Of course, one of the most disturbing features is the fact that while we have had roughly a ten year pause in the arms race where a lot of good work was done, this has now come to an end. For what we are seeing at the present time are new developments in anti-missile weaponry, drones, and so on.

One can't even know what it means to be lost in reality. For instance, it is easy to know whether you are lost or not in the Sahara desert, but to be lost in reality! This is much more complex!

One day the virtual world might win over the real world.

People agree to say that it is rationality and science which have eliminated what is called magic and religion. But ultimately, the ironic outcome of this techno-scientific development is a renewed need for the idea of God.

People make fun of cybersex, but it's really something to take into account: it is a drama, a split of the human being! The human being can now be changed into some kind of spectrum or ghost who has sex at a distance. That is really scary because what used to be the most intimate and the most important relationship to reality is being split. This is no simulation but the coexistence of two separate worlds.

Possession of territory is not primarily about laws and contracts, but first and foremost a matter of movement and circulation.

Resistance is always possible! But we must engage in resistance first of all by developing the idea of a technological culture.

Some of the most dramatic consequences of the Kosovo war are linked to the resumption of the arms race and the suicidal political and economic policies of countries like India and Pakistan where tons of money are currently being spent on atomic weaponry. This is abhorrent!

Sovereignty no longer resides in the territory itself, but in the control of the territory. And localisation is an inherent part of that territorial control.

Speed now illuminates reality whereas light once gave objects of the world their shape.

Television can only destroy.

Television exposes the world to the accident. The world is exposed to accidents through television.

Television is a media of crisis, which means that television is a media of accidents.

Television was first conceived to be used as some kind of telescope, not for broadcasting. Originally, Sworkin, the inventor of television, wanted to settle cameras on rockets so that it would be possible to watch the sky.

The atomic bomb provoked a specific accident.

The automation of warfare has, then, come a long way since the Persian Gulf War of 1991.

The body has a dimension of simulation. The learning process, for instance: when one learns how to drive a car or a van, once in the van, one feels completely lost. But then, once you have learnt how to drive, the whole van is in your body. It is integrated into your body.

The body is extremely important to me, because it is a planet. For instance, if you compare Earth and an astronomer, you will see that the man is a planet.

The body is not simply the combination of dance, muscles, body-building, strength and sex: it is a universe.

The cinema was certainly an art, but television can't be, because it is the museum of accidents. In other words, its art is to be the site where all accidents happen. But that's its only art.

The creation of a virtual image is a form of accident. This explains why virtual reality is a cosmic accident. It's the accident of the real.

The development and deployment of drones and Cruise missiles involves the continuing development of the vision machine. Research on Cruise missiles is intrinsically linked to the development of vision machines. The aim, of course, is not only to give vision to a machine but, as in the case of the Cruise missiles that were aimed at Leningrad and Moscow, also to enable a machine to deploy radar readings and pre-programmed maps as it follows its course towards its target.

The field of vision is comparable, for me, to the terrain of an archaeological dig. To see is to be on guard, to wait for what emerges from the background, without any name, without any particular interest: what was silent will speak, what is closed will open and will take on a voice.

The globally constituted accident can be compared to what people who work at the stock exchange call 'systemic risk'.

The 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.

The 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.

The ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside of popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy. This is also why society as a whole has no control over technological developments. And this is one of the gravest threats to democracy in the near future. It is, then, imperative to develop a democratic technological culture.

The information bomb gives rise to the integral and globally constituted accident.

The media is more concerned with what we feel about the refugees and so on rather than what we think about them.

The research on cyberspace is a quest for God. To be God. To be here and there.

The research on vision machines was mainly conducted at the Stanford Research Institute in the US. So, we can say that the events that took place in the Kosovo War were a total confirmation of the thesis of The Vision Machine.