Paul Virilio, architect, founder (with Claude Paran) of the group “Architecture Principe”, writer, author of the books “Bunker: Archaeology”, “Speed and Politics”, “Aesthetics of Disappearance”, “Critical Space”, “Information Bomb” ", "Landscape of Events" and others, Catholic, develops in the essay "The Vision Machine" his traditional theme of critical reflection on the phenomenon of speed. Social evolution, which, according to Virilio, is closely intertwined with the process of universal acceleration, is in this case considered in its visual aspect. Based on a unique brief history of lighting, the author builds a line of successive logics - from the formal logic of the image, corresponding to the era of fine art, through the dialectical logic of the image, a companion of the age of photography, to the paradoxical logic of the image, born in the era of video, in our days. The version of the theory of postmodernity proposed by Virilio convincingly links together such different and important factors for the current picture of the world as post-Einsteinian physics, the computer revolution, the virtualization of war and, say, the power of journalism. The landscape of these newest and, according to Virilio, decisive events unfolds against the backdrop of the art of recent centuries, their direct accomplice and at the same time a discouraged witness.