The Original AccidentThe future once promised the certainty of a better life for all but now it is full of uncertainty, danger and fear. Our lives are surrounded by the threats, imaginary or real, posed by terrorist outrages, natural catastrophes and disasters of all kinds. The future is overshadowed by the nightmare of an outmoded humanity overwhelmed by a catastrophe of its own making, a kind of catastrophic grand finale that would mirror the original accident - the Big Bang - that some scientists believe created the universe. A biting meditation on Progress technoscientific progress, at any cost and without any limits this book defines the ways in which postindustrial science has merged with out-and-out hyperterrorism to threaten the foundations of Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian civilization, and the future of the planet with them, through innovation of mass catastrophes that are part and parcel of its panoply of inventions. Urging us to face up to the consequences of our brave-new-world technologies, Virilio calls for the creation of a Museum of the Accident to fight our habituation to horror and violence, and our daily overexposure to terror, in the name, not of some preventive war, but of a preventive intelligence that would help us deal with both natural and artificial disasters. |
Contents
1 Caution | 3 |
2 The Invention of Accidents | 9 |
3 The Accident Argument | 15 |
4 The Accident Museum | 23 |
5 The Future of the Accident | 31 |
6 The Expectation Horizon | 38 |
7 Unknown Quantity | 47 |
8 Public Emotion | 57 |
9 The Original Accident | 70 |
10 The Dromosphere | 83 |
Notes | 102 |
109 | |
112 | |
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Common terms and phrases
acci accident argument accident in knowledge accident in substances Alphonse Allais Aristotle atomic balance of terror become bomb cataclysms catastrophe Chernobyl civil death democracy dent deterrence dimension disasters dromosphere Earth ecology eschatological expectation horizon exposing the accident extermination fact fatal fear finiteness future Gallimard genetic geopolitical geostrategy globalization human Ibid illusion industrial instantaneous integral accident invention Jean-Pierre Vernant Karl Kraus longer Martin Rees mass destruction military Monde Museum nations nature nuclear once Original Accident panic Paris Paul Valéry Paul Virilio planet political pollution production public emotion race real space recent revolution risk road Sadako Ogata scale scientific September 2004 society Solly Zuckerman speed suddenly synchronization technoscientific telluric telluric planet temporal compression terrorist attack threat tion Toulouse tragedy triggered twentieth century twenty-first century Unknown Quantity Ursula Le Guin vehicle victims Victor Hugo weapons of mass Whence whole words