dromology

is that body of knowledge concerned with the way speed influences the manner in which phenomena appear to us (due to technological changes in transport and communication via the railroad, air travel, or radio, the telephone, television, or the internet).

Dromology, then, is that body of knowledge concerned specifically with the phenomenon of speed, or more precisely, with the way speed determines or limits the manner in which phenomena appear to us. According to Virilio we cannot properly approach the reality of social, political or military history unless we first realize that social space, political space and military space are, at a decisive and fundamental level, shaped by vectors of movement and the speed of transmission with which these vectors of movement are accomplished. p.29

is a body of knowledge concerned with the way in which speed shapes or determines the appearance of phenomena.

Dromology, then, as a body of knowledge concerned with the way in which speed shapes or determines the appearance of phenomena, is grounded in a work of conceptual re-figuration and of stylistic innovation which takes speed as its guiding motif. p.42

is grounded in a work of conceptual re-figuration whose guiding motif is speed.

is an account of speed’s negative impact on the shaping of perception and of social or political space.

In ‘The Founding Manifesto of Futurism’ (1909) F. W. Marinetti (1876–1944) asserted that modernity could be defined as an age of speed and proclaimed: ‘Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed’ (Apollonio 1973: 22). Yet far from celebrating speed in the manner of Marinetti, Virilio’s dromology offers a sustained account of its negative impact on the shaping of perception and of social or political space. p.46

is a perspective which doesn’t distinguish between means of transport and means of communication, seeing them both as speed machines, both giving rise to mediation through the production of speed.

Rather than their apocalyptic or catastrophic tone, what is perhaps most interesting about the comments cited above is the manner in which means of transport and means of communication become almost interchangeable: the ‘super-conductibility of milieus’ effected by high-speed travel is in no way different from the ‘hyper-communicability of means’ afforded by modern communications. This may appear to be a rather strange conflation of divergent experiences. According to our everyday way of thinking the ability to move rapidly through space by means of high-speed transport is very different from our ability to communicate quasi-instantaneously over vast distance by means of modern telecommunications. p.46 henceforth [there is] only one mediation, not that of the vector, of the vehicle, but that of its speed; between the audiovisual media and the automobile (that is the dromovisual), there is no difference; speed machines, they both give rise to mediation through the production of speed. Negative Horizon (Virilio 2005a: 116)

dromology, n.Definitions

dromology