About Paul Virilio
Paul Virilio (French: [viʁiljo]; 4 January 1932 – 10 September 2018) was a French cultural theorist, urbanist, architect and aesthetic philosopher. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with diverse references to architecture, the arts, the city and the military. Virilio was a prolific creator of neologisms, most notably his concept of "dromology", the all-around, pervasive inscription of speed in every aspect of life. According to two biographers, Virilio was a "historian of warfare, technology and photography, a philosopher of architecture, military strategy and cinema, and a politically engaged provocative commentator on history, terrorism, mass media and human-machine relations." == Biography == Paul Virilio was born in Paris in 1932 to an Italian communist father and a Catholic Breton mother. After being conscripted into the army during the Algerian War, Virilio attended lectures in phenomenology by Maurice Merleau-Ponty at the Sorbonne. In 1998, Virilio began to teach intensive seminars at the European Graduate School. His final projects involved working with homeless groups in Paris and building the first Museum of the Accident. == Ideas == Virilio coined the term "dromology" (based on dromos, an Ancient Greek noun for race or racetrack) to signify the "logic and impact of speed". Dromology is important when considering the structuring of society in relation to warfare and modern media, as the speed at which something happens may change its essential nature, and that which moves with speed quickly comes to dominate that which is slower. Hence the study of dromology "necessarily implies the study of the organisation of territory, [as whoever] controls the territory possesses it.
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