"For François Paolini, Las Vegas is neither a dream nor a reality. From the beginning, this utopia existed as if it were an established fact, pushing it forward into a hyper-reality. Everything here is real and pragmatic; everything fills your mind with dreams. Las Vegas exorcises the very issue of origin. As it has not undergone the primitive accumulation of time, it lives perpetually in the moment. As it has not undergone the slow and secular accumulation of the principle of truth, it lives in perpetual simulation, in the perpetual contemporariness of signs. By doing so, Las Vegas is no longer the anathema or antichrist of America. Within its fantastic constructions lie the ingredients of our lives to come. The city no longer represents the decadence of a civilization, but rather its evolution and mutation towards a new configuration of society. Of course, the city of entertainment and gambling does everything on a huge scale, but this is simply a different viewpoint, not a difference in fundamental form. So, even at a distance from the south of Nevada, we remain inhabitants of Las Vegas."