Deterrence of the future as well as of the past

In the nineteenth century, Progress meant the Great Commotion of the railways. In the twentieth century, still meant more the Great Speed of the bullet train and the supersonic jet. In the twenty-first century, it means the Instantaneity of the intereactive telecommunications of cybernetics. So the anachronistic acceleration of present reality certainly does not spell the end of historicity. More importantly, it does spell the emergence of lying, not by omission any more, but by deterrence of the future as well as of the past.

This involves a sudden loss of memory, every bit as much as of imagination, about the future of a too-cramped telluric planet, cluttered – and rendered insalubrious – not so much by rubbish these days as by the illusion it entertains, its great progressive illusions.

Paul Virilio, The Futurism of the Instant (Polity Press, 2010) pp. 70-71