The central assumption of the essays collected here is that the historically bounded period known as the Cold War (1946–1991) does not fully capture the extent to which the institutional, technological, scientific, aesthetic and cultural forms decisively shaped during that period continue to structure, materially and conceptually, the twenty-first-century world. While it is not our intention to claim that the 1946–1991 period did not constitute a specific and distinctive set of historical, geopolitical and cultural circumstances, we are interested in extending the temporal frame in order to consider the intensifications, reversals and irreversibilities brought about by the politics and culture of the latter half of the twentieth century. In numerous ways, the essays gathered here insist that the infrastructure of the Cold War, its technologies, its attitudes and many of its problems continue to shape and inform contemporary responses to large-scale political and technological issues. The essays also explore the various ways in which the continued influences of the Cold War emerge in aesthetic and conceptual/theoretical engagements with contemporary geopolitical conditions. The introduction provides a theoretical and historical articulation of the notion of a 'long' Cold War that continues to shape the contemporary world.