Already Einstein predicted the "second bomb" , the bomb of information, today we are living in the middle of its detonation. The nuclear bomb lead to several measures of security - the cold war being one way to protect the world from catastrophe as fear of the bomb became our rescue from it. The world of the second bomb does not yet know of such defence - how do we protect ourselves from the bomb of information? As long as no real debate, nor criticism of this field is taking place, no development will take place either and no rescue will be found. We might all push the button without even thinking of the consequences...

Today we live the revolution of transmissions, the turn of the last century lived the revolution of transports, or more generally said: "the Industrial revolution" - both are very important in the way they change our socio-political and geopolitical view of the world. When the railway was invented the vision of distances in the world changed - the railway was the start of the creation of a "new world" and was said to bring democratisation between people, an open world and a friendly, international community. Today the same slogans are used about the effects of internet - without any second thought on how, and if, such a society would be possible or even desirable. There is an illusionary vision of the "salvational speed" - the exaggerated technical closeness of people will not bring conflicts but love.

With every invention comes its’ disaster, as well as every accident can be seen as a miracle "backwards" - with every change comes its’ consequences. When we invent the elevator we stop taking the stairs (and the staircase changes from entrance to emergency exit). When we invent nuclear power we invent Tjernobyl, when we invent the aircraft’s we invent the flight-crashes, and with the railway came the derailment. The problem is that we do not yet know what accident we have invented with internet , and as long as we do not criticise it - as a fact and as the urban and global development it is bringing with it - we cannot avoid it’s disaster.

Speed has changed the vision on the world. It does not only permit to arrive faster to ones destination, but it also changes the concept of the voyage. In the 19th century - with the invention of photography and cinema, the world became objective. The aesthetics of disappearance and of movement followed the aesthetics of appearance. On the inventions of film and photography followed severe criticism - which also permitted to neutralise these languages. The impressionistic painting developed, in the same time as photography, as another vision of the world in contrast and criticism. With the invention of cinema - that first was used for propagandistic images of the war - the documentary film evolved as an auto-criticism of the use of the media.

The world became mediated, but the artists of media itself auto-criticised the evolution of objectiveness and neutralised its tyrannical truths. This auto-criticism, through opposition views of the media, has to evolve also towards internet, and its tyrannical truth of information, instantness and immediateness - if not we will never be able to neutralise its languages into common use but be ruled by their "no-time-no-place" (non-hic et non-situ).

With photography and film came also publicity - the illusionary image, the propagandistic image - by the possibility to show a "reality" to others than the ones living it. The entire world became territory for technology, images and mediatisation. Even the wars were fought through media and its possibility to transmit "truths" through radio and images. In our time this evolution comes to its extreme, where the entire Gulf-war was a mediated event, and where Irakian soldiers gave in to small flying surveillance-cameras connected to weapons - a strong image of man giving in to the evil eye, to omni-power, represented by a small camera on a technical device.

History no longer excists but in the present and catastrophic events from all over the world reach our living rooms as pornographic reviews. We tend to care more about the starvation in Africa or migration in Asia than about the people dying from hunger in our own street. We fear people close to us as we cannot zap their feelings, their despair, their homelessness, their smell and their closeness. We tend to hate our neighbour because he is present and thus different to the easy-go relationship via media where no feelings are implicated if I do not want them.

There is no evolution without loss, without accident possible, but where there is danger is also the cradle of salvation and of help out of the catastrophe - if there is criticism there is also development.

Without a critical vision of the new world that we are again creating (by accepting the informational society without any doubt nor attention) we are heading straight towards its’ accidental shift. The dangers and accidents we have lived so far has all been local, or regional. With the global network of information we are inventing the global accident, with total and immediate consequences. The crash of the stock-markets in 89 was only a small prediction on the disastrous economic consequences we are building up to by our blind faith in global technical and economical "self-evolution" to the best of worlds. We need to become critical to make things change to the better, and as architects we have an important role in this development.