The Lost Dimension

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