In A Landscape of Events, consisting of 13 essays written between 1984 and 1996, French thinker Paul Virilio examines the effects of modern technology on our societies and psyches. The exercise is frequently both enlightening and bleak. Consider, for instance, this passage: "...in giving more depth to the present instant, these new electromagnetic technologies will ruin us and literally kill us; televisions so-called real instant only ever being that of the sudden disappearance of our immediate consciousness." Among the effects of these "new electromagnetic technologies" - essentially our digital "communication" tools - on humans, Virilio sees the atomization of cities, of communities of all sorts, with each person diverted into his or her own consumer-entertainment-lifestyle dreamworld. Here Heraclitus is kind enough to step onto Virilios stage and elucidate matters with this remark: "The world is one and common to those who are awake, but everybody who is asleep turns away to his own." On the debit side, Virilios nimble prose style can often be too fast for its own good, with quick jumps à la Baudrillard that sometimes seem to leave thought behind. And when it comes to politics Virilio exhibits an unconcern bordering on naivete - looking, for instance, at impacts of the Gulf War and never venturing any thoughts about the curious situation in which a single country, the United States, arrogates to itself the right to decide for the world who will be bombed and who will be spared, who will live and who will die.
