Lost Dimension.

To read these five essays of 1983 is to begin to come to terms with the theoretical cataclysm of the present. In Lost Dimension, Paul Virilio considers the displacement of the concept of dimensional space by Einsteinian space/time as it is related to the transparent boundaries of the postmodern city and contemporary economy. Virilio imagines a coming world of interactive, informational networks offering a prison-house of illusionary transcendence. He pictures global terrorism (perpetrated by and against technological states) filling up the surreal void of an abandoned real. In a multidisciplinary excavation of contemporary physics, architecture, esthetic theory, and sociology, Virilio traces the dystopic unity of the contemporary Western predicament with lightning prescience and clarity.

About the Author

Paul Virilio was born in Paris in 1932 to an immigrant Italian family. Trained as an urban planner, he became the director of the �cole Speciale d'Architecture in the wake of the 1968 rebellion. He has published twenty-five books, including Pure War (1988) (his first in English) and The Accident of Art (2005), both with Sylvère Lotringer and published by Semiotext(e).