For me it was very interesting how human affairs like politics and history and influence of new concepts of space, time and for sure speed on these affairs is presented by Virilio. In some parts of the text, regarding my lack of history knowledge I didn’t find out the exact historical samples (or, I was “allergic to watermelons” in some parts.) but I tried to understand the general argument of the text.

One of the main points in his ” Politics and speed” text is the when he mentioned futurist artists and combination of war and speed. He was trying to show a very clear correlation between war and speed. he wrote: “history progress at the speed of its weapons system.” and I believe that it’s completely true. I also want to quote him again from “The lost Dimension” when he asked a question after arguing about mass destruction. “In a period of economic crisis, will mass destruction of the large cities replace the traditional politics of large public works?” he then added ” If that happens, there will be no essential difference between economic-industrial recession and war.” Interestingly he discussed once that the goals that were not achieved in war time  can be achieved in post war economic opening era. it seems that no matter how history moves forward, the speed of our tools plays a very important role in it.

The other interesting point for me is when he wrote about spatial changes in cities with no gates. “opacity of building materials is reduced to zero.” Once again in this semester we can see the huge impact of technology on real time and space; the comparison of cathode ray screen with roman forum and the fact that our cities are not any more limited to space but to time.

Finally I think it’s the best time, not only because we had November 9th last week, but also the clear relations of Virilio’s articles with concept of a wall passing through a city, to remember Berlin wall, and think about its meaning and its influences once again.