This text is the second portfolio-submission for the course “187.329 - VU Sociology of Technology” ) and deals with the the questions listed below. It's mainly based on pages 97-107 and 356-359 of H. Rosa's “Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity” (Translated by J. Trejo-Mathys, 2013) and explores the interplay of acceleration and (sense of) space and time.
The questions:
- Discuss the gradual separation of time from place in modernity. How did this separation occur and by what did it become necessary / possible?
- How did the awareness of space change in modernity and late modernity? Describe the reversal of the priority of space into the priority of time
- What does Virilio mean by terminal “polar inertia” or “frantic standstill” (= German title of Virilios essay “L’ inertie polaire” – “Rasender Stillstand”)?
- Give a concrete example each for the acceleration of the relationship
- to space,
- to human beings
- to things.
Task 2/1
Discuss the gradual separation of time from place in modernity. How did this separation occur and by what did it become necessary / possible?
The drifting apart of time and place as driven by an ever-increasing acceleration of transport and communication starting in the 17th centuries and technologies (e.g. extensive road-networks, clipper-ships and semaphore networks, trains and telegraphs, planes and ICTs) adopted that further supported and fueled that development.
During this time, wide-spread adoption of geographically ever more accurate maps, that changed e perception of place from “centered on a home village with concentric circles of decreasing familiarity” to a more abstract, “placeless” concept.
Additionally, the mechanical clock allowed having a time independent of place. Before it's adoption, time was highly localized, i.e. noon was when the sun had reached the highest point. Having accurate, mechanical clocks was a requirement e.g. for navigation at sea and operation of railway lines. These developments also lead to the establishment of world time in 1912.
Task 2/2
How did the awareness of space change in modernity and late modernity? Describe the reversal of the priority of space into the priority of time
The acceleration of transportation (e.g. via the use of trains, cars and planes) in modernity entails an ever-increasing disconnection from the surroundings one traveled through. Instead of seeing, smelling, hearing and feeling the environment one is in and having all the time in the world to ponder things along the path, the high velocity makes it impossible to focus nearby objects, movement is increasingly independent of the flow of the land it cuts through on bridges and in tunnels. The physical barrier of the cabin-walls in trains, cars and planes further separate from the environment. As a result and structuring principle of these modes of travel, space is perceived as a function of time, i.e. instead of experiencing a place one currently is in, the focus is on how long the arrival is away. Hartmut Rosa gives the example of being a driver of a car on a highway: instead of experiencing one's surroundings and the space one traverses, the driver can't take their eyes off the road and gets to perceive places in the form of names on road-signs zooming by and their position in the form of an abstract GPS-position marker on an abstract map.
Beyond that reinterpretation as space as a function of time, these accelerations meant that the perceived space was shrinking constantly due to the higher travel-speed, the world was becoming smaller. A clipper ship of the early 19th century would travel at 15 kmh, where trains traversed the land at 80kmh in 1920, thus “reducing Europe to the rough size of Germany”, as Hartmut Rosa writes. This is pushed further via the use of airplanes that, at 900kmh, cruise relatively close to the speed of sound nowadays.
In late-modernity, the adoption of ICTs led to the culmination of this process, where every digitally available resource on the planet can be available at an instant from anywhere in the world, thus detaching itself from space and dissolving the notion of it altogether. For this, McLuhan coined the metaphor of the “global village”. More on this late-stage process also in section 3.
This immense compression of space also shows itself in the fact, that phenomenons tend to appear relatively simultaneously around the globe in late modernity (think e.g. fashion, memes, epidemics, terrorism, etc) in accordance with the concept of globalization.
Interestingly enough, as Hartmut Rosa describes, this late-stage loss of space as an “immutable givenness” and “unchangeable background condition” has lead to a repoliticization and revaluation of space, where towns and regions try to highlight and market their regional identity and differences to their neighbors in a bid to attract investment via this brand of sorts.
Task 2/3
What does Virilio mean by terminal “polar inertia“ or “frantic standstill“ (= German title of Virilios essay “L’ inertie polaire“ –“Rasender Stillstand“)?
Section 2 already touches the transportation revolution of modernity (especially characterized by the adaption of the train) in the 19th and early 20th century and transmission revolution of late modernity in the (late) 20th century. As mentioned before, both of them compress space, but go about this differently. Where the transport revolution follows a dynamizing principle, where the tempo of the movement of goods and people is increased and humans are brought to the world, the transmission revolution rigidifies by duplicating resources, making them stationarily available without any movement and thus bringing the world to humans.
Virilio's “polar inertia” / Rosa's “frantic standstill” extrapolate this development to the extreme. The latter's scenario suggests fully immersive virtual reality technology paired with a global sensor and data-network, that literally makes the entire world available without moving anywhere.
Task 2/4
Give a concrete example each for the acceleration of the relationship:
- to space,
- to human beings
- to things.
Explain the transformation of the relationships in the wake of their acceleration on the basis of the chosen examples.
As already touched on in the previous sections, the acceleration of traveling lead to a changed relationship to (time-dependent and compressed) space. To give another example, where this change is especially noticeable, in an airplane cabin one is extremely disconnected from the countryside one travels across. Even for the few people with a window-seat, the size of opening, clouds and high altitude make it practically possible to even get a panoramic view of the ground. Additionally, the encasement in the cabin makes it impossible to experience the environment in any other fashion (except for the occasional drop caused by turbulence). As such, only the waiting time until landing remains.
Analogously, the transmission revolution has changed the relationship with other people. Thanks to the internet it's now possible to stay in touch over long distances and have significantly more potential communication partners. But this also means that connections are easier to dissolve, more fleeting so to say. Additionally, the quality of communication via ICTs is noticeably different from face-to-face communication.
Lastly, modernity also saw a very prominent acceleration of production as part of the industrial revolutions. As a result, our relationship to things has changed substantially. In-line with the capitalist imperative, goods (and thus capital) has achieved a much higher turnover. Objects are mostly discarded and replaced instead of repaired – often even before they have the chance to wear down. E.g. computers customarily have a lifespan somewhere around three years, when an upgrade to stronger hardware becomes necessary to be able to run new software.
Hartmut Rosa argues, that all of these accelerations influence each other and fit under the umbrella of accelerated social change. He further argues, that they increase the experience of detachment from places, groups and things as relationships with them can end or change at any time. Avoiding attachment saves one the pain of separation, and going counter to this Zeitgeist usually comes from having a good reason.
Reference
H. Rosa: “Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity“. Translated by J. Trejo-Mathys. p. 97-107 and p. 356-359. Columbia University Press: New York 2013.