Virilio starts off by taking about speed as a relationship between phenomena. He claims that "the speed of light is so important, not only in physics or astrophysics, but in our daily lives" (12). This part of his chapter reminded me of some other articles we have read that mentioned the "three second rule" for a page loading. No, that does not have anything to do with the speed of light, but the whole section that Virilio has is talking about speed itself. Speed is relative to our daily lives in that one of the past articles that we read stated that we would lose interest in a website if it had not loaded in three seconds or less. Another example that I have relating to speed is a video that I have seen that uses jelly beans. This does relate, I promise! It is a stop motion video in which each shot was taken individually. It took over a year to film this 2 minute and 50 second video. Was is worth it? Should they have just used special effects to make this happen? Is it worth more because of it? Why or why not?
At the end of the first section in Part I, Virilio mentions that "cities must adapt to their citizens and not the other way round" (21). This made me think of when cities were first developing. This could be interpreted as when America first was settled or as far back as Ancient Rome. When the US was initially settled, it was done so in a fashion that fit what the settlers wanted. They left Europe to live how they wanted to, and that is just what the did with the new land. They developed it how they wanted and the city adapted to their wants and needs. Ancient Rome became what it was because the people wanted it to be that way and they worked towards getting it so. Yes, cities can adapt to their people, but the people also have to work to get that to happen. Do you agree? Or is this a chicken and the egg situation? Why? Why not?
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