THE

VECTOR

SPACE

Almost twenty years ago I had a telling conversation with a retired military officer who had served as an air force pilot during the Vietnam War. When asked about his experiences in and of that country, he replied, "Vietnam didn't exist for me as a place; it was more of a target." Pushed to expand on his statement, he explained that he mostly interacted with Vietnam from above as he traversed the region by plane. He went on to describe his visual memories of the country as framed by the shape of and technologies in the cockpits he inhabited -- as vast, panoramic fields of green and brown punctuated and made meaningful by the overlays of his viewfinder and the contours of his windshield. People, houses, even whole villages were abstracted into a machinic vision that served to sever action from effect. Pilots, he asserted, just "saw things differently" and had an "easier time" during the war, a veiled reference to the devastation left...