Logistics of Habitable Circulation
A brief introduction to the 2006 edition of Sped and Politics
If there had never been a war, I would have made a very good architect.
\- Ahmed Shah Masoud, Afghan opposition leader reportedly
assassinated 9.9.01 by suicide bombers who were, it is
assumed, trained by Osama Bin�Ladan on behalf of the Taliban,
as quoted in the Los Angeles Times, the morning edition of
September 11, 2001.
PAUL VIRILIO'S MODERNITY is logistical. It doesn't directly deal with war, but with everything that makes it possible . Logistics is the preparation for war through the transfer of the nation's potential to its armed forces in time of peace as in times of war. 1 Modernity is a world in motion, expressed in translations of strategic space into logistical time, and back again. It is a history of cities, partitions, trading circuits, satellites, and software; of a political landscape governed by competing technologies of surveillance, mobilization, fortification and their interdependent administrations. It begins as an archaelogy of naval routes, strategic techniques and urban distributions, and becomes an integrated world of events reduced to shapes and symbols, viewed and manipulated instantaneously on screens. In Virilio's narrative,
Benjamin H. Bratton
7