Masaryk University, Faculty of Social Science

Concept of Time in the Work of Thomas Hylland Eriksen (Master Thesis) Pavol Fabuš

Brno 2008

Declaration of authorship I hereby declare that I have written this thesis without any help from others and without the use of documents and aids other than those stated in literature.

In Brno, 29. 5. 2008.

Acknowledgements I thank my supervisor, Mgr. Jakub Macek, for many insightful conversations during the development of the ideas in this thesis, and for helpful comments on the text.

Some people cry out against the acceleration of time, others cry out against stagnation. They’re both right.

Henri Lefebvre

CONTENT

1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………7 2. ACCELERATING PACE OF LIFE IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY AS A SUBJECT OF INQUIRY……………………………………………………………… 9 2.1 Laymen’s Point of View as a Starting Point……………………………………..9 2.2 Methodology……………………………………………………………………10 3. THOMAS HYLLAND ERIKSEN: TYRANNY OF THE MOMENT……………….12 3.1 Norwegian Social Anthropologist T. H. Eriksen……………………………….12 3.2 Tyranny of the Moment. Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age………...12 3.2.1 The Problem of Growth in the Information Society……………………...13 3.2.2 Acceleration as the Historical Process……………………………………16 3.2.3 Tyranny of the Moment and Its Consequences...... ……...... …...16 3.3 The Role of Media in Tyranny of the Moment……………………….………...19 4. ACCOUNT OF ACCELERATING PACE OF LIFE IN WRITINGS OF OTHER AUTHORS……………………………………………………………………………...23 4.1 James Gleick: Faster. The Acceleration of Just About Everything……….……23 4.2 Heather Menzies: No Time. Stress and the Crisis of Modern Life……….……25 5. TIME AND SOCIAL THEORY……………………………………………………...28 5.1 All Time is Social Time…………………………………………….………….28 5.2 What is Time?...... 29 5.3 Time as a Medium of Social Interactions………………………….…………..31 5.3.1 Ordering and Repetition………………………………….……………....32 5.3.2 Time as a Scarce Resource……………………………………………….34 5.3.3 Modernity and Time-space Distanciation………………………………..35 5.3.4 Impact of Time-space Distanciation on Social Formations……………...37 5.3.5 Complexity and Fragmentation………………………………………….38 5.4 Speed and Accelerating Pace of Change………………………………………40 5.4.1 Accelerating Pace of Life Is Nothing New……………………………....42 6. THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN CONSTRUCTION OF TIME………………………..44 6.1 The Media as Inhibitors or Accelerators………………………………………46 6.2 Time and ICT……………………………………………………………….…48 6.2.1 Flexibility and Attention………………………………………………...49

6.2.2 Fragmentation and Inequalities…………………………………………52 7. EVALUATION OF ERIKSEN’S NOTION OF TIME………………………….…54 8. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………….…....60 9. NAME INDEX………………………………………………………………………..62 10. SUBJECT INDEX……………………………………………………………………63 11. LITERATURE……………………………………………………………………….64 10.1 Other Internet Sources………………………………………………………70 12. SUMMARY, KEYWORDS…………………………………………………………72 11.1 Summary…………………………………………………………………….72 11.2 Keywords……………………………………………………………………72 13. APPENDIX…………………………………………………………………………..73

1. INTRODUCTION

We are living in quick times. So they say. But asking ourselves what is the reason and nature of the speed, we come to a battery of interpretations and every one of them should be taken as an invitation to its scrutiny. A special position among them is held by the concept of time perception. Speeding of time is truly a commonsensical consequence of times saturated with information – the times we live in. “Time is flying”, “hours have changed into minutes” and other similar phrases are used on daily basis, when we experience a discrepancy between our subjective notion of time and its clock measure. There are many reasons why to study the phenomenon of speed and acceleration. Among the most crucial is ever-present question why do we have less and less, when we are using technologies, which ought to save it. Poses acceleration a threat to our coherent relation to the world and to its understanding? Aren’ we driving up to the situation when we won’t have a time for our close friends and relatives, for ourselves? Aren’t we victims of our pursuit for greater effectiveness? Or is it so, that we are actually gaining more from the life, which is going to end one day? All these question are really hard to answer but we should at least try to understand this situation better. Writings like Tyranny of the Moment by Thomas Hylland Eriksen are addressing this anxiety and are too often disconcerted about the point of history we are situated in and the future in front of us. Therefore, in this thesis we would like to analyse the Eriksen’s account together with writings by other authors in order to find out how relavant and on what basis are they criticizing the value of speed we are ascribing to speed since the 19th century. In chapter 3 we will look closely into Eriksen’s book Tyranny of the Moment and pinpoint his main arguments, warnings and suggestions. A special section will deal with media and their role in acceleration according to Eriksen. Chapter 5 will then serve as an addition to the analysis of Eriksen’s account regarding what both of these authors share and what do they add up to the subject. In the next chapter entitled Time and Social Theory we will look into how has the social theory dealt with time so far, what are the main concepts of time and what role does it play in the social world according to various authors. We will see that time itself has been for a long time neglected in social sciences but in recent decades gained its meaning and now is a part of vast research efforts both theoretical and empirical. With the help of time-space

7 distanciation concept by Anthony Giddens we will see how the current society came to the state analysed by Eriksen and others and in what relation is speed and acceleration with fragmentation and complexity. Finally, we will go through a set of notions on accelerated pace of life and valorization of speed throughout the history. In chapter on the role of media in acceleration we will show how media function as “sources of time” (Zeitgebers) and present a comparation of their slowing and accelerating effects. Both chapters 5 and 6 will serve as a theoretical framework for the final evaluation of Eriksen’s account in chapter 7. There we will use Eriksen’s own summary of the most crucial aspect of accelerated society and allocate them in the theoretical framework. This will help us to decide to what extent do we have to take Eriksen’s warning seriously or refuse them in the light of their insufficient grounding.

8 2. ACCELERATING PACE OF LIFE IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY AS A SUBJECT OF INQUIRY

The experience of acceleration in its general understanding is no doubt a persistent part of our day-to-day life. We feel that our days are more and more filled with impulses of steadily growing variety. Moreover, it seems the more sophisticated technologies designed to be ever more effective if not downright time-saving we use the more we feel the scarcity of time we dispose of.1 In the time of writing this thesis the American alternative rock band R.E.M. released an album titled Accelerate. And this is just a drop in a vast ocean of speed-soaked culture we live in. “(…) fast ovens, quick playback, quick freezing, and fast credit,” laments James Gleick in his book Faster. The Acceleration of Just About Everything. Speed is power. Speed is blessing. And “before it meant velocity, Old English spede or spēd meant something more like success and prosperity.” (Gleick 2000: 51) Thus English phrase “God speed” refers to wishing a good luck. But speed is also a potential threat to deep engagement either in thought or in politics. We will argue later that speed can’t be dealt with as a single thing for it bears different meanings in different contexts. As we will see, speed or acceleration is to inconsiderable extent associated with superficiality, fragmentation, health issues and general insecurity. Moreover, we ourselves, know from our day-to-day experience what does it mean “to keep pace”, “to have a lack of time” or “to be engulfed by a multitude of information”, which is incoming faster and faster. It is necessary then to look closer into this subject and find out whether the warnings about increasing speed we are witnessing are based on solid ground or they are touching a mere surface of the complex issue.

2.1 Laymen’s Point of View as a Starting Point

Speed is a status-marker and those, who nowadays want to be successful, must be fast and flexible. But is accelerated society a beneficial one? Are its members prospering and living healthy lives? Isn’t the accelerated pace of life putting us under too much strain? These are

1 Moore (1963: 31) refers to the study by William Goode and Sebastian de Grazia, who demur that labor-saving machines designed for households are time demanding both when they are operating and when they are not and waiting for repairs.

9 legitimate questions, because a day-to-day impression of such culture yields mixed feelings about it. One day we complain about the haste and the other we are enjoying the fast pace of problem-solving. However I dare to say, the remarks on accelerated culture comes mostly within critical rhetoric, which even corresponds with its commonsensical understanding. And exactly this common-sense, the knowledge of the laymen, is going to be an ever- present background of the following analysis. Because not just that the knowledge of laymen is partially composed of results of scientific inquiries, but “as a series of factual beliefs, it is in principle open to confirmation or otherwise in the light of social scientific analysis.” (Giddens 1976: 166) Last but not least it is important to note, that common-sense is not just a set of practical knowledge, to the contrary, it is in some substantial degree derived from, and responsive, to the knowledge and activities of experts, which directly contribute to the rationalization of culture (Giddens 1976: 115). In his treatise on cyberculture, Pierre Lévy understands acceleration as one of the most poignant characteristics of current world: “The acceleration is so strong and so general that even the most “sophisticated” individuals find themselves overtaken by change, since no one can actively participate in transforming the entire range of technological specializations or even follow them closely.” (Lévy 2001: 9) But he is not the only one coming to this conclusion; we will address this issue in 5.3.5. Finally, for Christopher Lasch is “growth” – which, as we will see later, is inseparable from speed – a euphemism for survival (Lasch 1979: 50). This should be for a start sufficient enough to unfold the complexity of subject.

2.2 Methodology

In this work we would like to address the social problem of acceleration as analyzed in writings of Thomas Hylland Eriksen and other selected authors. Providing that, they (meaning Menzies and Gleick) would function as the representatives of commonsensical understanding of acceleration in contemporary society we would analyze their main arguments and evaluate their cogency or fallacy. We will therefore establish a theoretical framework by sketching up how the social theory have treated the subject up to date, allocate analyzed arguments in this framework and evaluate them in its light. This is to be accomplished through study of primary literature, comparison of views on subject and their critical analysis with emphasis on the role of media in construction of

10 time. In the end, we will use this theoretical framework as the basis of final analysis of Eriksen's notion of time. Such subject as the one we address requires unavoidably an interdisciplinary approach. It means that we will work with writings from the wider area of social theory, including sociology, anthropology, media theory and philosophy.

11 3. THOMAS HYLLAND ERIKSEN: TYRANNY OF THE MOMENT

3.1 Norwegian Social Anthropologist T. H. Eriksen

Thomas Hylland Eriksen is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway. His academic writings aim at politics of identity, ethnicity, cultural complexity, nationalism and globalization from a comparative perspective (href 1). Among his most appreciated books are Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives (Eriksen 1993), Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology (Eriksen 1995) and Globalisation: Studies in Anthropology (Eriksen 2003). He has also vastly contributed to the popularization of science in Norway (Eriksen 2007-a). Tyranny of the Moment: Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age (Eriksen 2001) and Stacking and Continuity: On Temporal Regimes in Popular Culture (Eriksen 2007-b)2 are his only writings on time and temporality that are known to me. There aren’t any remarks on time in his other work, or if there are they are negligible.

3.2 Tyranny of the Moment. Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age

As it has been already stated (2.1), there is no scarcity in the literature on accelerating pace of life. But I dare to say none of the other books appears as considerable as the Eriksen’s one. I ground this claim on the acknowledged academic background of its author, even though the title has to be regarded as a popular scientific literature. Czech publisher Jan Šabata claims Tyranny of the Moment (TotM) became a bestseller both in Norway and England (Šabata in Eriksen 2005: 164), thus acquiring a potential influence in public discourse and therefore being an appropriate starting point for the following analysis. TotM contains a lot of reference to the Scandinavian culture, but with no great restrictions can be understood as an analysis of a global trend. Its core lies mainly in a scrutiny of “the relationship between technology, society and culture.” (Eriksen 2001: 31). Production and consumption proper is continuously gaining a momentum and with increased

2 In this article Eriksen only summarizes his main arguments of Tyranny of the Moment.

12 speed and the cycles of change seem to be shortening. In a search of what stands behind the overall pursuit Eriksen (ibid: 138) refers to the Swedish economist Staffan Linder, who in his study entitled The Harried Leisure Class3 argues that the goal of economic growth is a mutual stimulation of production and consumption, so “it becomes necessary (…) to consume more and more in less and less time.” (ibid: 138) A culture which favors fast thinkers upon slow ones (ibid: 117), in which superficiality and simplification flourishes at the detriment of deeper engagement (ibid: 60- 61), is according to Eriksen a culture, in which “Something has run out of control.” (ibid: 77) Therefore he states “categorically that:

(1) A fragmented and rushed temporality is typical of a growing majority of the population in the rich countries. (2) Acceleration affects both the production of knowledge and the very mode of thought in contemporary culture, and therefore concerns everybody. Even an unemployed person with aeons of ‘time to kill’ is sucked up by the side-effects of acceleration the moment he or she turns on the TV or opens the newspaper.” (ibid: 148)

While asking the questions like “Why do most of us have less time to spare than before, contrary to what one might expect? Why does increased access to information lead to reduced comprehension? (…) And why do we still feel that the loading of Microsoft Word takes too long?” (ibid: 4-5), Eriksen offers preliminary answer, which is – in his words – “to do with too much complexity of the wrong kind and the increased rate of turnover in the rhythm of change.” (ibid: 5)

3.2.1 The problem of Growth in the Information Society

As the subtitle of TotM suggests, the bedrock of present situations lies in the ongoing era of information society, which is “characterized by the integration of information

3 New York: Columbia University Press 1970.

13 technology as a key factor in all kinds of production.” (ibid: 14) Eriksen finds many of discussed phenomena intrinsically related to computerization.4 (ibid: 4) To support his notion of information society he turns to one of the most frequent arguments regarding information society (Webster 2002): “A more familiar aspect is the fact that a growing part of the working population spends most of their time processing information.” (Eriksen 2001: 16) Explosive proliferation of ‘information consultants’ since 1990s, growth of administrative processes leads him to conclusion that information can be characterized as a driving force of the present Western economy and the Internet plays a leading role in its distribution (ibid). Even though the growth of information is the focal point of Eriksen’s account5, he adds a set of various empirical data on growths throughout the book: titles submitted to the Norwegian national library6, number of telephone lines across the Atlantic7, total use of telecommunications8 in the world9, and other various industrial progressions depicted in figures 1-5. Last but not least there is a 1,000 per cent of growth of world capital since 1975. (ibid: 97) In the chapter Exponential growth he shows that many current tendencies might be described by exponential growth curves with varying rates of doubling, like air traffic since Second World War, global population growth over the last 200 years, turnover at the NASDAQ stock exchange since its foundation, number of Internet servers since 1995, the traffic on Internet since 1991, the size of Microsoft Word since 1985, the number of murders an average American teenager has seen on television since 1950, the number of academic journals published since 1950, the number of television channels since 1980… (ibid: 81) The growth of information is definitely considered an issue here. Moreover, Eriksen finds this issue as insistent as the population growth or growth in industrial pollution (ibid: 99). He suggests that as modern societies draw on shared mechanical time-structure, they create the foundation for nearly infinite social complexity (ibid: 46) and poses an important argument: “Forever new millions of people can be drawn into the system through its simple common denominators, without it changing character or needing reorganization.” (ibid) Differently put, the growth Eriksen is concerned about is actually its speed of piling up. Despite of his declaration, that speed “is excellent where it belongs”, he is convinced that

4 “Whether one is about to blast a mountain, build a ship, sell a bag of crisps, investigate a case of arson, perform a heart bypass operation or give a lecture in social anthropology, people in our kind of society are increasingly dependent on computer technology.” (Eriksen 2001: 14-15) 5 “What we now seem to run out of, is lack of information.” (ibid: 19) 6 “(…) from 48,400 in 1991 to 100,008 in 1998.” (ibid: 17) 7 From 100,000 to 1,974,000 between years 1986 and 1996, which is a growth of nearly 2,000 per cent. (ibid: 93) 8 Telephony, fax, data transmission. 9 Addition of 15 billion minutes in 1985. (ibid)

14 “it is contagious, and it has possibly serious side-effects.” (ibid: 59) Information society imposes on us demands of ever-increasing flexibility. “Decisions have to be taken at the speed of light, otherwise, one is squeezed out by those who act faster. This principle is as valid in the global financial markets as in politics or marketing.” (ibid: 65) Even the meaning of ‘epidemic’ has changed as Eriksen shows on the difference between speed of spreading of plague over a couple of years in 14th century and ‘The Love Worm’ computer virus infecting between 60 per cent and 80 per cent of the computers in USA in the span of three days (ibid: 50-51). Moreover, “Speed is not just contagious; it is addictive as well. (…) Just as it is easier to make people increase their consumption than to make them reduce it, it is easier to increase than to reduce the tempo of transmission.” (ibid: 85) These processes are to come unavoidably with unintended consequences (ibid: 61). The feeling, that something is terribly wrong, and that the world is not necessarily becoming a better place is according to Eriksen caused “by a time perception which is no longer sufficiently linear.” (ibid: 47) Drawing on the characteristics of modernity, he suggests: “Linear time is an important dimension of the faith in progress, and (…) its failure is a key factor in creating the tyranny of the moment.” (ibid: 47). Compression and fragmentation of time into smaller and smaller pieces have limits “before it ceases to exist as duration, and the only time in existence is a single, manic, hysterical moment which is continuously changed, but which does not point any further into the future than to the next moment.” (ibid: 47) It is important to note that Eriksen doesn’t argue there is a complete novelty in described phenomena. On the contrary, he acknowledges tyranny of the moment10 has accompanied our civilization since the discovery of physical symbol as a representation of spoken word (ibid: 33). Eriksen sees the seed of contemporary state in historical pursuit for efficiency, standardization and acceleration, which have been perhaps too successful. “Change, or ‘progress’, now takes place so fast that it has become impossible to relate to it sensibly. And when something happens all the time, nothing really happens.” (ibid: 47-48). In order to defend the lack of grounding of his arguments, Eriksen says:

“This process can only to some extent be quantified and ‘proved’; its results can only be experienced. More and more of every kind of information is stacked, like gigantic Lego towers where the bricks have nothing in common but the fact that they fit.” (ibid: 119)

10 For description of “tyranny of the moment“, see further in the text.

15 3.2.2 Acceleration as Historical Process

In order to lay historical background of tyranny of the moment, Eriksen explains how the metric system of measurement implied standardization, chopping up and finally eradication of subjectivity in the realm of work through a method of taylorisaton, created by Frederic W. Taylor at the end of 19th century. Its purpose has been to make production more efficient by measuring the duration of every act the workers did, and then to eliminate the ‘wastage’ by optimizing their tasks and even movements (ibid: 56). And on the example of music notation, which has been largely in place since the beginning of the 16th century and which is supposed to lay condition for a complexity that wouldn’t otherwise be possible, Eriksen shows how the abstract systems lead necessarily to a larger complexity (ibid: 42). As noted earlier, Eriksen sees “little or nothing new under the sun” in the technologies enhancing speed and to support that, he offers examples of such historical breakpoints as the Roman two-wheel chariot, the steamship or the telegraph. But it is truly time-space distanciation of the communication being liberated from its immediate context with the help technologies as writing, money, printing and the clock (ibid: 53). However not just speed, even the worries about it have its predecessors. Eriksen comes here with example of reactions to the new mean of transport – train: as the first trains were moving at an average speed of 20 miles an hour, the passengers were complaining about the difficulty to take in the details of the landscape and saw it as a challenge of supposed natural boundaries of human perception (ibid: 55). The cultural value of speed in the history is illustrated by the first advertisements of Coca-Cola at the end of nineteenth century, which promised that it countered ‘slowness of thought’ (ibid: 56).

3.2.3 Tyranny of the Moment and Its Consequences

Eriksen finally suggests that in a certain point of growth quantity transforms into quality. When the threshold value is reached, the entire system flips into something completely different (ibid: 86). “We are talking about nothing less than a new pattern, a new code and a new set of organizing principles that may be about to dominate our kind of society.” (ibid: 6)

16 The curves of exponential growth imply, in Eriksen’s view, that more and more events11 are squeezed into the time span, which is relatively constant. And when “the line is perfectly vertical, time has ceased to exist.” (ibid: 100-101, my emphasis) But this exponential growth will sooner or later alter its course. Eriksen illustrates the flattening of growth curves on phenomena like Ebola virus in 1990, population growth and predicts a development of this kind for the AIDS virus or disappearance of the rain forests (ibid: 101- 102). To support the thought, he talks about congestion illustrating it on growth of cars demanding more lanes. The point is once the limits of space are reached, the speed actually decreases (ibid: 68-69). In his view we are already now supposed to experience the price of this growth as the “time approaches zero” (ibid: 102, my emphasis), posing thus one of his main arguments on tyranny of the moment. The key point lies in vertical stacking manifested for instance in special interest groups, where more and more is stacked up on ever-smaller space. The temporal dimension is compressed in continuously shortening time spans (ibid: 109-110). In other words, as the gaps are being filled, the density of time increases (ibid: 21). One of the unintended consequences, Eriksen points to, is a loss of security as an epiphenomenon of increased freedom. Outcome of all the technologies designed to save our time and be more flexible like time-managers, e-mail or mobile telephony has been the exact opposite. Being possible to communicate anytime and increasingly even anywhere, the dark side of this freedom is widening of our accessibility. So, in a sense, we are never entirely out of the office (ibid: 142). The much discussed phenomenon of the distinction between work and leisure being erased is crucial. “Restlessness is the Siamese twin of flexibility.” (ibid: 128) Last but not least, Eriksen addresses the health issues such as burnout and anxiety (ibid: 126-127). Regarding computers Eriksen notes that we didn’t anticipate their disruptive impact on our ability to concentrate while working. Therefore he argues that as the multimediality of contemporary computers is sufficiently developed and the internet connection is a standard, disturbance due to multitasking is a growing problem (ibid: 145). Moreover, the supposed time-saving and efficiency-boosting features of new technologies only end up as time- devouring, eg. the situation with advanced software, when every other version requires another time for adaptation (ibid: 142).

11 Information, consumption, movement and activity.

17 Supposing the time went a bit more slowly, Eriksen speculates, we would have time for the second thoughts and our decisions would be based on deeper thought. He gives an example of haste in global markets:

“The domino effects in the global financial markets, further, now take place at incredible speed – a ripple in Hong Kong reverberates immediately in Singapore, spreading repercussions to LA and London literally before anyone has the time to raise an eyebrow.” (ibid: 65)

Not surprisingly, Eriksen is convinced, that with speed comes necessarily fragmentation; “it becomes increasingly difficult to create narratives, order, developmental sequences.” (ibid: 113) which is affecting journalism, education, work, politics and domestic life. When it comes to consequences within culture, Eriksen draws on the book of American philosophy professor Bill Martin Listening to the Future: The Time of Progressive Rock 1968-197812. To support his claim that “stacking of trends implies that there is no change, but mere recirculation” (ibid: 112), he refers to Martin’s account of the music and culture, who says that “there is no real creativity, but a continuous stream of new combinations.” (ibid) The cult of youth and the crisis in knowledge transmission are two of the most serious symptoms of the tyranny of the moment: “A culture that does not value maturity and ageing also does not care where it comes from, and can therefore be quite clueless as to where it is heading.” (ibid: 135) Last but not least Eriksen comes to the question of power and influence, where he refers mainly to the work of Pierre Bourdieu, concretely On Television13. The fast-thinkers, who are – in Bourdieu’s words – “thinkers who think faster than an accelerating bullet”, are supplanting the sharpest minds, who “need time to reflect and more time (…) to make an accurate, sufficiently nuanced statement on a particular issue.” (ibid: 114) And this kind of thinker is to become “invisible and virtually deprived of influence”. Fast-thinkers are then, in Bourdieu’s view, given airtime and influence ahead of the slow and systematic ones (ibid).

12 Chicago: Feedback 1997. 13 London: Pluto Press 1998.

18 One has to necessarily ask himself about the future of knowledge, deep thinking and even the fate of culture. Here Eriksen gets by with a mere sharing of belief with Johan Galtung14, who writes about his experience with students in 1990s:

“And far too many suffer from chronic image flicker, a synchronic experience of reality as images rich in details, not as lines across time, causal chains, reasoning. One needs both, but the way it is today, the ability to think is slowly killed, to the advantage of the ability to see and hear, taste and feel – an orgy of the senses that gives little space for intellectuality.” (ibid: 117)

So in order to identify one of the main problems – “the lack of coherence and overview as a particulary important threat to democracy and liberating values” – he refers to thinkers like aforementioned Pierre Bourdieu, Umberto Eco and Paul Virilio, oft-cited throughout the book (ibid: 151). To sum up the discussion on tyranny of the moment, Eriksen suggests that beside the general scarcity of time, there are new forms of deficiency emerging in the information society: slow time, security, predictability, belonging, stable personal identity, coherence and understanding (ibid: 30).

3.3 The Role of Media in Tyranny of the Moment

The media play in Eriksen’s account an important role, even though they are not directly pointed to in all of the cases. It means that the intensifying flows of information is intrinsically associated with media as the carriers and a as one of phenomena characterized by the aforementioned exponential curve. But the speed of information flows is in the context of media as institutions preceded the speed of media technologies proliferation in history. “It took the radio 38 years from its invention until it reached 50 million people. In the case of television, some decades later, the same figure was reached in 13 years. With the World Wide Web, it took four years.” (ibid: 97). Similarily to other phenomena, Eriksen points at various quantitative developments in media industry depicted in figures 6-12. Generally speaking, each of the new media

14 Manuscript to Johan uten land (Oslo: Aschehoug 2000).

19 technologies that were put into use throughout the history have been adopted in shorter time then its predecessor.15 (ibid: 32) More interestingly, Eriksen stresses the notion of media production and consumption proper going to extremes. In the pursuit for spectators’ attention television producers skillfully react to the viewer’s power to flip channels when bored by shortening of commercials, scheduling of ‘headline news’ programmes and further exploiting of the soundbytes format (ibid: 85). And consequently, as the viewers get accustomed to the quickened rhythm, visitors of cinema are according to Eriksen in a need of fast forward button (ibid: 85). He further points to ephemerality of items published by Internet newspaper as the news addicts refresh their web source of information in a hectic manner. Restlessness is therefore an intrinsic part of new routines in the news consumption (ibid: 66). “Readers, listeners and viewers have less and less time,” argues Eriksen, “to spare for each information snippet,” which consequently leads editors to publishing shorter and shorter pieces of content no matter what media in (ibid: 116). “The producers chase the ‘market’ and cut, abbreviate, compress and tailor.” (ibid: 139) And as the audiences become accustomed to speed and explosive form of communication, the media producers is forced to create ever-stronger effects (ibid: 115). Together with compression this goes hand in hand with supposed growing shallowness of perception experience: “It can also be assumed that when there were fewer television channels, people watched TV in a more calm and continuous mode. When there were fewer professional journals, readers spent more time on each article. When there were fewer CDs on the shelf, one played each of them more often and became more familiar with each piece of music.” (ibid: 84) But this simplification is a direction runned both by consumers and producers. On the example of Reader’s Digest Eriksen illustrates trends of simplification and shortening of media content (ibid: 61). He looks into manifestation of fragmentation in media content and compares TV series A Family at War running in years 1970-1972 and Dynasty screened throughout 1980s. The former, “a deadly serious narrative about an English family during Second World War,” was “typically slow and cumulative” and based on linear time and organic growth, while the latter was based “on the explosive moment.” (ibid: 104) Eriksen’s goal is to illustrate “a fundamental change in our culture; from the relatively slow and linear to the fast and momentary.” (ibid)

15 Eriksen illustrates this development on the scale of 24 hours, where eg. Gutenberg’s printing press came eight minutes and television 30 seconds before midnight.

20 Even though he reminds the historically invariable affinity to speed as typical for the journalism, there have to be some limits to it (ibid: 66). Tresspassing of such borders lead, in his view, to the competition “for the free spaces in our heads, leading to confusion and uncertain identities.” (ibid: 29) He refers to the book La Tyrannie de la communication by French journalist Ignacio Ramonet16, who “states that never before have people had access to more information, but this does not mean that they have also become better informed.” (ibid: 67) The growing scarcity of time spent by media consumption is in dialectic relation to the attention, which is subject to decline as the growing amount information has to be squeezed in a relatively unchanged quantum of time we dispose of (ibid: 69). And as the mobile technologies are allowing us to fill every hiatus of our everyday lives and information is cut into the smaller and smaller pieces to fit “the last vacant cubic centimeter in the brain of the reader.” (ibid: 100), “the gaps, the time that might have been used for free-floating slow thoughts, are eradicated.” (ibid: 69) In order to support the account of unintended consequences of new information and communication technologies he argues, that what is interpreted as a drawback at the first glance, might mean quite the contrary. In the comparison of traditionally mailed letters to the electronic mail, Eriksen suggests that the drawbacks of the former such as sufficient elaborateness of writing a letter and slowness of delivery actually “offered resistance” while filtering out many unnecessary letters and avoiding thus overflow so significant to the latter (ibid: 59). Moreover, “(…) e-mail can be located somewhere between the written and the oral, but if it more or less entirely replaces the old-fashioned letter, the culture as a whole will end with a deficit; it will have lost in quality whatever it has gained in quantity.” (ibid: 59) The final admonition goes to web, which, in Eriksen’s view, is not organized; with themes and pages are linked in partly random ways (ibid: 104). He criticizes the functioning of filters on the web, which lead to isolation and disruption of national public spheres (ibid: 106, cf. Eriksen 2007-b: 144). He consequently gives support to McLuhan saying that in our kind of society the waves of information are more similar to associating, poetical and metaphorical thinking of non-modern societies than to “ordering knowledge in tidy rows” typical for industrial society (Eriksen 2001: 109). He characterizes the information society by “cascades of decontextualised signs more or less randomly connected to each other.” (ibid: 109)

16 Paris : Galilée 1999.

21 To sum up his viewpoint, Eriksen warns about threat of information flows going mad, which, in accordance to Enligthenment conviction, stand in equation with freedom and democracy (ibid: 68). Last but not least he concludes, that crucial skill of these days is the capacity to avoid “the 99.99 per sent of the information offered that one does not want (…)” (ibid: 17)

22 4. ACCOUNT OF ACCELERATING PACE OF LIFE IN WRITINGS OF OTHER AUTHORS

Eriksen’s writing is, of course, neither the first nor the last one dealing with compression of time as a social problem. Looking for literature about time, we would come across a vast deal of books of genre regarded as “time management”, which is though not suitable to put alongside the writings such as the Eriksen’s because its goal is to offer its readers a set of advice how to get things done when confronted with a lack of time. The literature dealing with Eriksen’s subject should frame it as a cultural and historical phenomenon or a situation we found ourselves at the beginning of 21st century. We think the books of James Gleick and Heather Menzies, as the representatives of journalistic and academic writings, would satisfy our need for comparing Tyranny of the Moment with similar accounts and provide both affirmation and expansion of salient arguments, whence they are putting an effort to address the questions asked by everyone, who experiences a time pressure nowadays.

4.1 James Gleick: Faster. The Acceleration of Just About Everything

James Gleick is a journalist and essayist, whose first book Chaos: Making a New Science (1988) was a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist and a bestseller in USA (href 2). His writings are regarded as science and culture journalism In Faster. The Acceleration of Just About Everything (2000) he looks into “speed” as a culture phenomenon and an outstanding atribute of present-day. Analogous to Eriksen, Gleick is trying to map culture of acceleration, but while doing so, he preserves a journalistic candour through ambivalent stance against described phenomena sketching out merely their range with a start-point in everydayness. With no ambition to evaluate situation he only goes through a wide variety of manifestations of speed, musing about its meaning and origin. He is convinced that while everything is moving faster and faster while standing still and getting more anxious (Gleick 2000: 9). In order to draw up the history of acceleration he shows how the speed has become an intrinsic part of lifestyle on examples of pocket watch turning into wristwatches (ibid: 37), invention of “photographic gun” by Louis-François Cartier in 1904, which lead us to the revelation of phenomena unseen by the naked eye (ibid:

23 60) or an origin of “real time” first as a term describing an aspect of computer technology and later becoming a buzzword used widely in undifferentiated, but mostly commercially-wise, situations (ibid: 65-67). To address one of the most prominent questions of discussion on time acceleration, he is trying to find an answer why do we have less and less time while having access to evermore efficient and fast technologies. Emphasising the giant leap of efficiency experienced by whoever who switched from typewriter to a computer with a printer he remarks on a relativity of such advancing working the situation up by further switching to a faster printer and forgetting the experience of speed right after acquirement of the old one (ibid: 118). Gleick attacks the very notion of time saving as ill-formed pointing out “we just want to do more” (ibid: 231-232, emphasis in original) He further comes with an interesting observation of various speeds of technology development when comparing the evolution of computer technology to the technologies of travel through our universe, which “have barely changed” in a contrast to earlier expectations (ibid: 81). He however fails to uncurl the notion in a deeper fashion. Our alignment with speed is in a dialectic relation to commercial forces shaping the consumer culture. By showing how the marketers and technologists anticipate our needs by putting forward “fast ovens, quick playback, quick freezing, and fast credit” (ibid: 11) he finds a double momentum in our pursuit for efficiency. In his sole remark on the role of media, Gleick pinpoints a practice of television producers of “shaving” the “blacks” – the breaks between shows – in order to compress as much of content to a given time-span as possible (ibid: 12). He finds a raison d'être of what he calls “hurry-up market” especially in baby-boomers, who feel that they “do not have time to do everything that needs to be done” (ibid:117).” Only near to the end of his book, Gleick points to exponential growth (see figure 13) in heterogenous phenomena. To name at least some of them: population explosion, rise of commercial Internet hosts over four years, software patents, chest-pain emergency departments, potential sexual partners, mustards. In order to embrace the wholeness of this speeding phenomen, he argues this progression to be findable in “everything (…) that grows out of the interaction between human beings.” (ibid: 275) Finally, preserving his neutral stance of a journalist, he only notes on evaporation of gaps in time filled by accelerated communication and transport technology, whose one-time slowness allowed deeper thought and well-grounded decisions (ibid: 89).

24 To sum up Gleick’s arguments, there is no single point, which wouldn’t be included in Eriksen’s writing. They share a conviction, that we are accelerating without stepping forward and both highlight cultural obsession with speed by pointing to the exponential growth of various and heterogenous phenomena, whose main value is derived from the notion of instantaneity, briefness and fragmentation for the price of superficiality.

4.2 Heather Menzies: No Time. Stress and the Crisis of Modern Life

Heather Menzies is a writer and scholar, a long-time activist in the women’s movement, social justice and cultural politics (href 3). Her book No Time can be described as a speculative non-fiction concerned with how stress is driving contemporary society to the edge of “normalcy” having a deep impact both on individuals and society with its institutions. Menzies’ goal is to catch a glimpse of anemic state of society we are supposed to be approaching. The most painful consequences of our acceleration are suffering family, endangered health and ubiquitous impersonalization stressed with usage of electronic media. Throughout the book, we are confronted with author’s own experience with stress and her conversations with “victims” of stressful or speed-demanding society. Especially in latter parts turns initially academic writing into human interest stories as a supposed effort to sketch up a universality of problem. On the background of lack of time, Menzies sees “space of flows”, a concept borrowed from Spanish Sociologist Manuel Castells describing global business and communication, which, in her view, poses an imperative forcing both individuals and institutions to adapt. “Space of flows” stands also behind trade-offs of fragmented communication, which supplants face-to-face communication, with all its mixing and mashing, cutting and pasting as a new trend in production (Menzies 2005: 41). Speed is at the head of today, it is contagious and drives out the slow (ibid: 43-44). She draws on writings of historian Nigel Thrift in conclusion that our consciousness is changed by fast-moving machines since the 19th century, which involved people getting used to “symbolic interaction” as knowledge proper grew on importance afflicting them with a long-term impact no matter where – at home, at work, in the store etc. (ibid: 86-87) Menzies sees one of roots of contemporary vexed situation in standardization. The price we pay for adopting its methods is in spontaneity, predictability, superficiality and

25 tearing ourselves off sensitivity of face-to-face dialogue. The consequence of standardization of culture is multiplication, while the interconnectedness and linearity of its elements is weakened: “(…) Lego-like modular language had replaced the time and pace of storytelling, conversation and interviews.” (ibid: 37-38) This leads to a situation in which in-person communication lost its intimacy and social bonding (ibid: 38). And coupled with increase of mobility and speed, standardization replaced the world with its own miniature model (ibid: 44). The leitmotif of Menzies’ critique is impersonalization and a loss of bond with reality. She finds a lack of authenticity, for example, in writing with computer, whereas only writing by hand had its personal element an idiosyncracy (ibid: 37). In her view, it is easy to get excited by the possibilities of virtual connection (meaning electronic media) with all its “clicking” as a structural element of current “friction-free” consumer capitalism, but this hyperworld is “is all symbol and no real substance” (ibid: 42-43). Virtual identities, or “facsimile-persons” as Menzies coins them, are supposed to be removed from genuine presence, commitment and standing out of responsibility for their actions (ibid: 43). The fabric of our experience is going through profound changes: “The voice of direct experience has been progressively silenced.” (ibid: 46) Our authentic selves are being dislocated as we are breaking away from the “fuller sense of our humanity” (ibid: 74). One event, e-mail, fax or letter is followed by another, we are in such a constant hurry, that all we come acroos is only “half-experienced” (ibid: 91). Most of the time she is referring to virtual worlds as a space both we and the institutions are moving to and managing only with symbol simulations. This “anaesthetization” is becoming more collective and more cultural as we are supplanting reality with symbols with a threat of not being able to think critically on the horizon (ibid: 103-104). And as these fabricated realities are becoming a bigger and bigger part of the wired social environment, we are leaving behing what Walter Benjamin called “aura” and the authenticity of our individual selves is being diminished (ibid: 226). This is according to Menzies ending in health issues such as stress (ibid: 66, 68), workaholism and chronic fatigue (ibid: 76-98) and the “erosion of our senses” (ibid: 105). To empirically prove the anemic essence of blurred boundary between work and leisure, which she perceives as a “disappearance of leisure” (ibid: 52-57), she refers to “karoshi” – Japan phenomenon of more than 10,000 deaths a year (mostly heart attacks and strokes) inflicted by over-demanding work environments. Last but not least she puts an emphasis to Attention (Hyperactivity) Deficit Disorder afflicting mostly kids and youth (ibid: 167).

26 Health issues of individuals are then supposed to have corresponding consequences on the level of institutions. As they are going through pervasive decentralization, they are losing “a shared and sustained sense of reality” (ibid: 112). This even ought to be somehow connected to the deteriorating civic engagement we are witnessing in last decades (ibid: 213). Regarding media Menzies is referring solely to the web: “This hyperworld is a parallel universe that exists on-line, and only there. Yet it has taken on the aura, and the authority, of reality as it spins into its own orbit, increasingly cut off from real life in all its challenging complexity.” (ibid: 43) The cyberspace is pictured as the ultimate threat of splitting of mind from body and an experience of terminal identity, by which she means “related to the other only through distance, vision, through reading what is on the screen without (…) aesthetic sensibility” meaning consequently the end of our identity as human beings (ibid: 74-75). She is firmly convinced, being in touch through the screen simply doesn’t mean a real connection (ibid: 114). The simulation electronic media are providing can fundamentally shift our experience of reality, which can only have dire consequences on our sense of responsibility to the others and to the world proper (ibid: 102-103). Simulation mechanisms “can alter our consciousness and our fundamental sense of what’s real,” letting us neglect what is outside, in the living bodies, instituions and the society as a whole (ibid: 106-107). Finally, as we are more and more engaging the prefabricated reality of symbols, even our responses are becoming inauthentic and predetermined (ibid: 111).

Once again, Menzies is sharing with Eriksen the axiety about superficiality as a terminal point of current processes. It is noteworthy that concerning fragmentation with a lack of interconnectedness she uses the same metaphor of Lego as Eriksen. What she is adding is a critique on the level of institutions, stress on the health issues of acceleration and a notion of losing bond with reality and our humanity by surrounding ourselves with simulations. The source of the latter one is, in her view, a passion for virtual worlds.

27 5. TIME AND SOCIAL THEORY

We have gone through a set of arguments by a threesome of authors so far finding out, there is a set of propositions all of them share. But if we want to go further with their analysis, we have to look closely, how have been time and acceleration treated by social theorists up to date. For the purpose of constructing theoretical framework for the analysis of arguments proposed by Eriksen and the others, we will closely address them in 5th and 6th chapter and work them up in sections dealing with scarcity of time, roots of current situation in time-space distanciation as proposed by Anthony Giddens, its impact on how do we perceive our social spheres today and what have various theorists said about issues of complexity and fragmentation. We will thenceforth look especially into very notion of speed and acceleration as a social problem and its origins in cultural history. And last but not least in the 6th chapter we will look at the role of media in analysed subject and in particular at information and communication technologies, which are regarded as dominant actors in acceleration in Eriksen’s and Menzies’s writing. This will help us with grounding our arguments in order to either confirm or refuse the analysed viewpoints. We will be therefore continuously stressing arguments relevant to the analysed discussion throughout the following two chapters and sum them up in section 7.

5.1 All Time is Social Time

The history of time being taken into account of social science is as old as the social science itself predated only by philosophy, which has never ceased to serve as a starting point for such perplexing subject of inquiry as time is. Time has been conceptualized by theorists like Hägerstrand, Heidegger, Lévi-Strauss, Marx, Mead, and Schutz (Adam 1990: 5). But only in recent decades have social science paid increased attention to its meaning in effort to understand how the society is organized and reproduced (ibid: 42-45). This has been, ofcourse, anticipated by a set of misconceptions drawn mostly from rather simplified ideas of time. Barbara Adam, who in her comprehensive analysis of time in social theory identifies a dead end of various dualisms proposed so far (ibid: 16-20). She is highlighting that not just

28 the use of time in various sciences and its perspectives is taken for granted as a reference to the same thing, but “they seemed to be talking about phenomena, things, processes, qualities, or a dimension, a category, and a concept, using the word unproblematically as if it had only one meaning” (ibid: 5). On top of that, she shows why the positivist social science doesn’t approach time reasonably as it conceives it as an invariable structure (ibid: 11-13). Wilbert E. Moore notes that even in demography and human ecology have been time considered as a condition or as a variable to a far greater degree than in any other social science (Moore 1963: 5). The root of this understanding may lie both in long-term neglecting of time in social theory and in what Eviatar Zerubavel characterizes as a growing prevalence of the quantitative conception of temporality in the modern West (Zerubavel 1981: 31-69). However heterogenous and incompatible the treatises on time in social science has been, most of them establish time as a social fact. It is an ordering principle, a medium of synchronization, orientation and important structural aspect of social interactions. Drawing on the proposition that time is constituted by social activity, all of the social theorists dealing with time share a conviction that time is fundamentally a social construction (Adam 1990: 42). They all agree that time is a key element of social life and has to be equally central to social theory. In other words: “all time is social time” (ibid: 13, my emphasis).

5.2 What is time?

What is time17 is a question laid in a history of thinking since Ancient Greece, however the first thinker, who addressed the issue deeplier is considered to be St. Augustine (Sokol 2004), whose assertion “What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know.” (Augustin of Hippo 2002: 224) is oft-cited in most literature on history of time. There have been many other definitions later on (Adam 1990: 15), but St. Augustine has been the first to conclude that past and future don’t exist outside our mind. It is only mind, which regulates this process and performs functions of expectation, attention and memory (Augustin of Hippo, cited in Adam 1990: 33). Later on, at the end of nineteenth century, French philosopher Henri Bergson comes with his account of time as a mere product of reflexive consciousness (Bergson 2001: 99). In order to resolve the relation between time and space, he shows how do we represent time in space before vice versa as the

17 According to J. T. Fraser experience of time is processed in older parts of brain, which command knowledge felt contrary to the newer ones of knowledge understood. Time felt therefore precedes time understood (Fraser 1991).

29 pure duration (durée) is wholly qualitative and “cannot be measured unless symbolically represented in space.“ (ibid: 104) Only projected in space we can imagine such temporal concepts as succession, consequence and causality. Therefore the elementary distinction of time is that of internal or embedded and external or abstract. The symbolical representation of time and its spatial nature is derived from the comparison of real duration and real space, where the former Bergson defines as “the heterogenous moments of which permeate one another“ and the latter as the one “in which phenomena appear and disappear simultaneously with our states of consciousness.” (ibid: 110). But this happens in our very mind even when we are perceiving “motion”, which is but “a mental synthesis, a psychic and therefore unextended process”, because in every moment of time we can get only position of moving object. The composition of these successive positions takes place in our consciousness and presents “a unity resembling that of a phrase in a melody” (ibid: 111). We are truly only comparing the present and past to the extent our memory capacity allows us to do so. Outsides ourselves there is only a pure space (ibid: 116, cf. Adam 1990: 67). Even the past in our memory is not separated from the present; it changes constantly its meaning as it is recalled in emergent present (Adam 1990: 39). Elliot Jaques further discerns two crosscutting dimensions: the axis of succession and the axis of intent as an “experience of prediction and the continuously present field of past, present, and future, which coexist in the interaction of memory, perception, and anticipation” (Byrne 1983: 608). In existence of quantified time – that of mechanical clock – Bergson finds an intrinsic human desire to separate, substitute the symbol for reality, which eventually leads us to forgetting of the fundamental self (Bergson 2001: 128). As Barbara Adam puts it, this artefactual time is now so all-embracing, we take it as a time per se, as if there were no other times. We are forgetting that qualitative variation precedes the quantitative one (Adam 1995: 91). Sole following of symbolic time and ignoring of the lived time is, according to Hägerstrand (1985: 5), significant for almost all writings about time in history or time in nonwestern cultures. According to Adam, “this time is non-temporal. It is bi-directional, reversible, symmetrical, and invariant (…).” (Adam 1990: 54) It excludes irreversible phenomena as decay, ageing, asymmetry of interactions or cumulation of knowledge (ibid: 51) and its direction is, in Adam’s proposition, an artifact of the number system – a mathematical convention of sequence (ibid: 54). Moreover, as past and future are identical and symmetric, there is no means by which to tell the difference between earlier and later states (ibid: 66). But it would be misleading to associate the clocks only with Newtonian time, for it doesn’t only include time as a measure, but it also measures it (ibid: 53). However

30 obvious the relation of these two functions seems, it is as perplexing as a poststructuralist notion of signifier and signified. The dichotomy of lived and abstract time is not enough, if we want to grasp the experience of time in a full-fledged way, because there is more of the times we can distinguish: time of body, or biological time, time of nature, like the seasons, calendar as a social time and to be more specific, times of both people and objects either they are surrounding us directly or not. The point is, we live in all these dimensions simultaneously (ibid: 44). To describe this heterogeneity of time experience, Adam is using a notion of timescapes, where the ‘scape’ directly refers to the space suggesting that context matters (Adam 2004: 143). These timescapes are connecting, breaking and disconnecting in a constant interaction with the world, and we don’t have to be necessarily aware of it (Hassan and Purser 2007: 12). The temporal structure of everyday life is complex and requires ongoing correlations (Berger and Luckmann 1967: 27). Finally, as Adam argues, the subjective time (‘my’ time) and time of the environment and the social collectivity (‘our’ time) are constituted mutually and are inseparable from each other (Adam 1990: 19).

5.3 Time as a Medium of Social Interactions

In general, time serves as a referential framework for a large part of social interactions. It’s a key aspect in our decisions, interpretation of social action and attribution of relevancy in our interaction with world. We use time not merely as a mean of measure, but as a tool in order to regulate, control, co-ordinate and synchronize. According to Norbert Elias, time helps us to structure what is in continuous flow (Elias in Adam 1990: 18). Moreover, sharing of time with others is an important presupposition in a process of internalization, where a nexus of motivations is extended to the future in order to yield an ongoing mutual identification between us (Berger and Luckmann 1967: 130). Only over time we can relate to the patterns of interaction, for they form “patterns” solely “in” time (Giddens 1979: 202). Transcending the present in our minds in order to reestablish past, which is actually not a past proper at all, but only a past related to present, is a process of emergence and mutual adjustment between physical, living and conscious reality. It is exactly here, where G. H. Mead locates sociality (Adam 1990: 39-40).

31 Quantitative character of time as a social construction can be used as a measure or medium for social exchange, but it is enough to focus on the rhythms of our bodies as we are sleeping, eating and so on (ibid: 76), to get an idea how we are not just living in time but also being a time. As Adam lays it down: “The difference is one between being time and symbolising it.” (ibid: 75) And we are prone to forgetting this distinction and tying ourselves to the symbolic time, what can have politically objectionable consequences as we are losing control over recognized as a basic right (Schor 1991). All social life is timed; it is scheduled and organized in time, what can serve both as enhancement and confinement of freedom18. As long as we are part of the society structured in time, we have to adjust to its rhythms and an option of escape is limited (Adam 1990: 107). Reason behind this lies in fact, that certain activities require simultaneous actions by a number of persons, other activities require ordering, and there is a meaning of both immediacy and waiting (Moore 1963: 8). According to Zerubavel (1981: 103), the taking of turns, is one of man’s most sophisticated social institutions. Time is a profound mean of differentiating between sacred and profane (ibid: 101-137) as well as between private and public (ibid: 141) and last but not least time functions as a tool for excercising and reproducing power and declaring or gaining a social status (Zerubavel 1981: 152, cf. Moore 1963: 53).

5.3.1 Ordering and repetition

The essence of time is rhythm and repetition, according to A. N. Whitehead, but as Richard Schlegel argues, there has to be change involved in recurrence (cited in Moore 1963: 6). Barbara Adam characterizes all natural Zeitgeber (time givers/sources of time) as a repetition with variation (Adam 1990: 53). Zerubavel distinguishes four major parameters of social event:

“One fundamental parameter of situations and events is their sequential structure, which tells us in what order they take place. A second major parameter, their duration, tells us

18 This duality of time as a tool of society organization is eloquently depicted in movie “L’Emploi du temps” (2001) by Laurent Cantet, where the main character leaves his job to enjoy the freedom by driving car through country without destination. There is a scene, where he is driving alongside the train matching its speed and enjoying the freedom of his own movement while sharing a route with line of tracks, but after while the road and tracks cross, and he has to wait in car standing still in front of crossroads till the train moves away. In depicted situation we can see how a personal freedom is limited within time-based order of society.

32 how long they last. A third parameter, their temporal location, tells us when they take place, whereas a fourth parameter, their rate of recurrence, tells us how often they do.” (Zerubavel 1981: 1)

There is a wide range of natural cycles in human physiology ranging from the beat of heart, breathing to eating, sleeping and ontogenetic processes of maturation or ageing proper (Moore 1963: 6). Also birth and death play their role as they do not pose as a mere boundaries, but permeat constantly our being in what Heidegger called Sein zum Tode (“being unto death”) (Adam 1990: 30). Once again, Adam highlights a role of context in sequencing, duration, irreversible direction, passage and the rate at which events occur of the recurring events, for when abstracted their direction and irreversibility become irrelevant. She draws on Giddens’ understanding of repetition in day-to-day living, who deals with the replication of practices over time in a social reproduction, however this routinisation is, in his view, not only a source of social order, but even of time itself (ibid: 27). In addition, Adam points out with Elias, that “it is the symbol that represents as repeatable what is irreversible and unrepeatable” (ibid: 28-29). Ordering or sequential rigidity is according to Zerubavel more of a normative prescription than an empirical coincidence grounding his claim with such occasions as weddings, feastdays, religious rituals or important points in life careers (Zerubavel 1981: 3). Regarding repetition, he comes with a concept of pulsating week, which introduces regularity, rhythm19, and disruption into human interaction even though week is an artificial rhythm totally independent of any natural periodicity (Schmitt 1986: 612-613).

19 Wilbert E. Moore illustrates how adamant has norm of a week timespan has become on a Russian experiments with workweek: “The early Soviet attempt at a widely staggered workweek seems to have been aimed positively at a more constant use of capital and negatively at the church and family. The continuous workweek was introduced in 1929. All enterprises and offices stayed open daily without a general day of rest. Workers had every fifth day off, so that one fifth of the employees were nominally absent on any given day. Higher officials often could not take their regular days off, and the daily shift in absentees created considerable chaos in banks, schools, and administrative offices. Families rarely enjoyed the same rest day for all members. On grounds that the shifting five-day schedule encouraged irresponsibility with respect to jobs and equipment, Stalin in 1931 decreed a change to a six-day week with a common rest day and thus available for Christian religious observances, for these churches had not abandoned the old calendar. Even a revolutionary society requires some measure of temporal coordination out of working hours.” (Moore 1963: 122)

33 5.3.2 Time as a Scarce Resource

Time can be and in our everyday lives is approached as a scarce supply we have to allocate as best we can. What stands behind the process of time-allocation is a horizon of our social context, what do we need and what do we dream of. As Adam draws on Schutz’s account, this horizon yields to constant re-evaluation according to what have we experience so far, what are our goals and concerns, which can’t be separated from understanding of acting, communicating and relating to other persons (Adam 1990: 37). A charge of prioritization in this horizon stems directly from the hierarchy of our values, which is a Luhmann’s key argument in his essay Die Knapheit der Zeit und die Vordringlichkeit des Befristeten (the shortage of time and the priority of that which has a fixed time limit) (cited in Adam 1990: 36). Transcending the level of individual decision framework, we can identify larger contexts, such as that of culture, gender or religion. Paul Hiebert (2005) illustrates – for example – how can be a meaning of “being late” understood among different cultures. However wider anthropological view on time evaluation exceeds our subject. A scarcity of time however depends on the level of “demand” for its use. One can feel he has a plenty of it and the other can be experiencing a pressure of its lack. Moore is therefore imagining a “perceived scarcity-scale of time” (Moore 1963: 39-39). Depending on a position on this hypothetical scale various amounts of strain is implied. A time-pressure goes is then directly proportional to the “edges” we assign to discrete blocks of time we dispose of, because time boundaries tend to be vague and flexible, if the measurement is not precise (ibid: 19-20). Both ends of the scale have however their weak points: trying to be as precise as possible usually requires additional time for management and on the other hand too loosened temporal boundaries might lead to a point when the time at our hands starts to get a negative value – a value of boredom (ibid: 24-25). As have been mentioned, putting too much effort to use the time we have as effectively as possible requires predicting and planning. Such a set of techniques is used to be labeled as “time management”, and in my opinion, a need for this approach directly stems from what Adam calls “budgeting of time” (Adam 1990: 102). We have already described the difference between time as an experience and time as a measure, but not until the moment, when man faced the time as a source to be allocated has he dealt with it as with an object. Adam suggests we are witnessing a practice of time being reified: “The contemporary

34 approach to time clearly denotes a historical change away from working in time and towards a working with time.” (Adam 1995: 87) Reification of time20 refers both to what we call working time and leisure time, however their boundaries are being more and more blurred today. Adam shows how the process of shortening of working time (ibid: 102-103) lead the appearance of ever-increasing free time, but a meaning and range of the latter is derived from the former. She therefore suggests discerning between a work time and and not-work time, where the meaning of not- work time should stay relatively meaningless illustrating its ambivalence on a “free time” of a woman in household (ibid: 96). The things are getting complicated when there is a pressure on workers to be flexible. As have been already suggested, this can mean both freedom and oppression. Working time extended to the usually non-working time, part-time jobs or shift-work can on one hand mean that workers can achieve greater control over their own time. On the other hand, there might be a demand by their employers to be flexible to such extent they can’t be sure when they will be asked to available perplexing thus wider context, eg. their synchronizing with a family (ibid: 103-104). Demand of time flexibility is a modern phenomenon we can understand only by a closer look into characteristics of modernity, which will follow.

5.3.3 Modernity and Time-space Distanciation

We are experiencing our everyday lives on various levels of closeness and remoteness both spatially and temporally (Berger and Luckman 1967: 22). However the character of this experience has vastly changed as the society we live in went through changes, which involved proliferation of media, communication technologies in general, development of means of transport, introduction of unified time and institution of money (Giddens 1990). Establishment of unified time across Earth has been a lengthy process, but it is suggested that beginning of world time can be held to be 1913, when the Eiffel Tower transmitted the first time-signal across the globe. Standard time has become a fundamental for planning and organization of global business and communication. From this moment on,

20 “From a Marxist viewpoint, a situation in which a secretary leaves her desk promptly at 5:00 P.M., even if she is in the middle of doing some work, is a classic manifestation of the alienation of modern labor, for whom "doing" is distinctly dissociated from “being”.” (Zerubavel 1981: 166).

35 “global instantaneity and simultaneity became the norm and distance lost its barrier quality.” (Adam 1995: 114, emphasis in original) It is not that there were no means of time measurement before this historical moment, but in pre-modern cultures “when” used to be mostly linked with “where”. But the invention of mechanical clock and their general unification has played a key role in separation of time and space (Giddens 1990: 17). The mechanical clock itself didn’t accelerate time, but with its help has planning, coordination and control of acceleration become possible. As suggests Peter Borscheid, with their help man starts to perceive time as linear and dynamic and a notion of utility steps into foreground (Borscheid 2007: 30). Drawing on French historian Jacques Le Goff, Borscheid claims that merchants start to appreciate the price of time in the same moment they subjugated space (ibid: 38). The notion of shrinking space as a consequence of faster transport and communication has been invoked recursively since the beginning of modern period (see 5.4.1) but this can be taken the other way around. With faster means of transport and communication have town centers been enlarging their catchment areas, which lead necessarily to the rise of big cities, where the distance is no longer measured by length but by the amount of time required to its surmounting (ibid: 122). This expansion of time-space scope didn’t naturally get along with wider social and cultural consequences. Anthony Giddens describes the process of time-space separation as disembedding, or “lifting out” of social relations from local context and their reembeding across newly structured time-space configuration (Giddens 1990: 21). But means of this time- space distanciation haven’t been only mechanical clocks. Giddens here strongly relates to the money in its developed form, which serve as a time-bracketing mechanism disembedding the value of work represented by money from its original context and making it transferable across time and space (ibid: 24). Other disembedding mechanisms are expert systems, by which Giddens means “systems of technical accomplishment or professional expertise that organise large areas of the material and social environments in which we live today” (ibid: 27). Expert systems disembed by providing “guarantees” across distanciated time-space. Their validity is provided by an impersonal nature of knowledge tests and by public critique (ibid: 28). When we now come back to the initial assumption that in pre-modern cultures was time strongly tied to space, the process of deep time-space distanciation in modernity lead us to the place we perceive as phantasmagoric because it ceased to be constituted and organized locally. The local and global has become inextricably intertwined (ibid: 108). This

36 situation brought up necessarily specific changes in social ordering which have eventually ended up with what we now refer to as problems of complexity, fragmentation and insecurity. On the other hand, Jan van Dijk remarks that shrinking of time and space can be interpreted to the contrary – as its expansion, for it enables people to be more selective in choosing coordinates of space and time than ever before in history and enwiden their scope of physical presence and power (van Dijk 2006: 157).

5.3.4 Impact of Time-space Distanciation on Social Formations

In their article The Web of Group Affiliations Revisited: Social Life, Postmodernism, and Sociology Rubin and Pescosolido analyze how deeply have social formations changed throughout history up today. Starting with Western premodern societies they characterize life in them by a lack of freedom and rigid social order. A man born into this society shared his social space with his family within a closed community of town further bound with shared politics and religion. The structural substance of this societies can be depicted as concentric circles (see Figure 14) suggesting an individual was situated in a context of significant security and lack of ambiguity (Pescosolilod and Rubin 2000: 54-55). On the other hand, Moore suggests that the family and kinship structures “may take on many of the qualities of totalitarianism, with little activity time being exempt from the pervasive influence of an encompassing kinship organization,” which is also associated with a lack of clear distinction beween working and not working and task-oriented involvement (Moore 1963: 10). In modern society stands the individual at the point, where the groups he is member of, intersect (see Figure 15). They don’t have to necessarily overlap but they represent a choice that has been present in premodern societies. This formation involves for example separation of home from workplace or from place of leisure. The configuration of memberships their degree of overlap define the individual socially. Former social institutions such as religion move from their community-based dominance and loose their social power (Pescosolido and Rubin 2000: 56). Contemporary social formation extends spheres of membership in groups further apart to the shape of spoke structure (see Figure 16). Pescosolido and Rubin suggest that the individual stands outside of interconnected circles rather than being enmeshed within them. This is because he yields connections to many workplaces, families, interest groups and perhaps even more than one religion. The point is that social relations in this formation tend to

37 be ephemeral, short-term and rather contingent. Number of personal relations is extended by advanced communication technologies, media and transportation (ibid: 62-63). But the individual isn’t tied just to the increased number of spheres, but in many cases he sustains the relations with them simultaneously. He thus plays a central role as an integrator of social relationships, with a radically increased freedom of choice and opportunity to dispose of not just one but many statuses. Futhermore, if he impaires his identity in one social sphere, the transfer to another is not as impossible as before. In sum, the life of the individual is composed of great variety of situations and contexts he chooses and goes through, the roles he plays are no longer scripted in such a rigid way as they were in premodern societies; in general he is granted significantly greater autonomy (ibid: 63-64). The notion of increased choice is supported by Giddens who is looking into how an individual self-actualizes himself today suggesting that this implies the control of time by establishing of zones of personal time only remotely connected to external temporal orders (Giddens 1991: 77). The individual is confronted with a complex diversity of choices on a day-to-day basis and at the same time he is offered only little help as to which options should be selected (ibid: 80). At this point of argumentation he comes to one of main characteristics of modernity – risk: “The intrusion of abstract systems into day-to-day life, coupled with the dynamic nature of knowledge, means that awareness of risk seeps into the actions of almost everyone.” (ibid: 112) Once again we are backing up the notion of double- faced situation of modernity: what is perceived as freedom can be on the other hand perceived as oppression or alienation. Schor suggests thinking of this problem as of political, because it “involves a loss of control, which is a loss of freedom over what is increasingly recognized as a basic right (Schor 1991 in Hassan 2007: 45). Moreover, this milieu further confirms social and economical inequalities (Crang 2007).

5.3.5 Complexity and Fragmentation

The world of these days is often characterized by notions of complexity and fragmentation21. It means that former securities are threatened and the control of our future growing smaller as we are running out of footings, feelings of ambivalence are prevailing and “lifeworlds” are

21 In order to define „fragmentation“ Giddens refers to Berger and others promoting “the diversifying of contexts of interaction” (Giddens 1991: 190).

38 being pluralized (Berger et al. 1974). Anthony Giddens suggests an inspiring metaphor of “juggernaut” to describe current situation:

“The juggernaut - a runaway engine of enormous power which, collectively as human beings, we can drive to some extent but which also threatens to rush out of our control and which could rend itself asunder. The juggernaut crushes those who resist it, and while it sometimes seems to have a steady path, there are times when it veers away erratically in directions we cannot forsee. The ride is by no means wholly unpleasant or unrewarding; it can often be exhilarating and charged with hopeful anticipation. But, so long as the institutions of modernity endure, we shall never be able to control completely either the path or the pace of the journey. In turn, we shall never be able to feel entirely secure, because the terrain across which it runs is fraught with risks of high consequence. Feelings of ontological security and existential anxiety will coexist in ambivalence.” (Giddens 1990: 139, my emphasis)

Giddens reacts in his account of “high modernity” (Giddens 1990) to a notion recalled by many sociologists, that contrary to the premodern era, when life of an individual was full of mysteries, we are now living in age, when the mystery has retreated. This is true, in principle, but not for an individual. With the prevalence of expert systems and radical specialization today the modern world things can be characterized by a special opacity. Even though we might be aware of an immense sum of knowledge mankind dispose of today, the knowledge at the individual’s hand comprise of only a fragment leaving him to put a trust in experts (ibid: 145). The lack of control, which we may feel about some circumstances of our lives, is real. We are all laymen in respect of the vast complex of expert systems (ibid: 146). But institutional order, which is constantly being reproduced, represents “a shield against terror” (Berger and Luckmann 1967: 102). However, it is not that our day-to-day life is inherently more risky than it was in earlier eras, but assessing risk is more or less ever-present exercise (Giddens 1991: 123-124). As have been showed in (5.3.4) the individual was much more powerless in premodern era having a little or no option to escape from surrounding he had been born into. It seems there are more of writings dealing with fragmentation than with unification. As if the contemporary society were losing a will to preserve its mechanisms of ontological security. “Modernity fragments; it also unites,” claims succinctly Giddens and warns against neglecting of reproduction processes which haven’t diminish. It is a sole narrative of

39 one’s life that frame every effort to save coherence on the level of both the individual and the society. Confinement of local ties both social and symbolic in order to expand the distant ones doesn’t necessarily imply alienation but to the contrary can provide a much more familiar grounding and facilitate self-actualisation (ibid: 189, my emphasis).

5.4 Speed and Accelerating Pace of Change

By now, we should have a comprehensible idea of what role time plays in our lives and how complex do we relate to it both in day-to-day and macrosocial perspective. And even though we have dealt with time in both qualitative and quantitive understanding, we omitted the axis of its intensity or what can be referred to as speed and acceleration.

In order to separate premodern cultures from the modern, Gidenns is defining three “discontinuities”: 1) pace of change (rapid and pervades all spheres); 2) scope of change (social transformation crash across the whole of the earth's surface); 3) nature of modern institutions (eg. new social forms such as nation-state) (Giddens 1990: 6). He sees a disposition of the system to expand in an “investment–profit–investment cycle”, which makes modernity so restless and mobile (ibid: 11). Disembedding of social systems, time-space distanciation and the reflexive ordering and reordering of social relations by continual flow of knowledge stands as influential background of actions of individuals and groups (ibid: 16-17). Time plays one of the leading roles in the effort to grow, involving problems of synchronization and sequencing (Adam 1990: 130). Dealing with time as a scarce source in an attempt to speed the rate of change and sustain control over its direction enlarges rather than reduces a threat of its wasting (ibid: 131). The “quest for speed”, as Wilbert E. Moore names accelerated pace of change, may be interpreted either as “an attempt to crowd more and more events into overly tight schedules” or as “a subconscious introduction of risk into an otherwise routinized round of activities” (Moore 1967: 51). Advanced information and communication technologies are providing a major change in perceiving of space and time, but they do not “erase” them. On the other we are coming here to the paradox, when simultaneous action over the globe may be far from synchronized for the time context of actors might differ regarding different time zones they are situated in (ibid).

40 What we are witnessing today is a radical valorization of speed (Crang 2007: 66). Efficiency, profitability and competitivness are in Western world the carriers of positive value. It means that fast processes are preferred to those, which take a long time. However the speed is not a value in itself. In Muslim countries, for example, speed and haste are regarded as a lack of dignity. On the other hand, in the Western world a faster car means better than a slow one. So it is necessary to add up, that the valorization of speed is in most cases irrespective of question of quality (Adam 1995: 100). We can find sole regarding of quantity even in aforementioned “time management” and something what Adam calls “time economy”. Time economy works with an assumption that if the investment-profit cycle is shortened, the competetiveness increases. This leads Adam to the conclusion, that “one of the rationales for the Western approach to speed is thus to be sought in the quantification, decontextualiyation, rationaliyation and commodification of time, in the calculation of time in relation to money, efficiency, competition and profit.” (ibid: 101). Hartmut Rosa (2003) identifies three factors in acceleration: 1) economic; 2) cultural and 3) structural, which refers to the acceleration of rhythms of change as a consequence of the specific differentiation of modern society. So while the range of possibilities and actions grows and enwidens its horizon the temporal pressure in the end weakens its quality. To be precise, it means hightened tension between interior rhythms and social rhythms (Leccardi 2007: 27). Leccardi comes here with important notion: “the vision of the “acceleration society” as a social form emerges, (…) where the progression of the sensation of a lack of time surpasses the possible positive outcomes (of time savings) of acceleration.” (ibid: 27-28, my emphasis) Paul Virilio, the recognized French thinker, comes in his speculative account of speed with a more radical opinion. Refusing the notion of “industrial revolution” he is pushing ahead a notion of “dromocratic revolution” with ‘dromos’ from the Greek word ‘to race’ and claiming that “there is no democracy, only dromocracy; there is no strategy, only dromology” Virilio 2007: 69). Dromocratic intelligence means, in his view, a primary attack on human nature (ibid: 86), for we live in a world, where the general law says: “Stasis is death,” (ibid: 89). Speed is a source of power; it is what makes weapon a lethal tool and crippling the enemy of his speed, means to disarm him (ibid: 153). Strategy of speed will, in his view, eventually end in what he calls “miniaturization of action” as a phenomenon compatible to “automation” (ibid: 156). His warning about danger of speed can be summed up in his argument: “the more speed increases, the faster freedom decreases.” (ibid: 158)

41 5.4.1 Accelerating Pace of Life Is Nothing New

Eriksen stresses in his account, that our generation is not the first one experiencing a pressure of acceleration. But we have to add, that it is not a historical experience with roots in 19th century, as he suggests, but something people encountered even in earlier ages. However Marc Bloch characterized the life in Medieval Age as a nearly perfect reluctance toward time (Bloch 1962 as cited in Borcheid 2007: 17), but historical records speak, for example, about a representative of long-distance trade Francesco di Marco Datini (1335-1410), who complained in his dairy about having a lack of time, being awake for nearly 21 hours without food or drink (Borscheid 2007: 40). Hasty life has been for a long time held to be a sign of herecy. Not until Martin Luther criticized a contemplative way of life led by monks (vita contemplativa) and indolent idleness of the aristocracy. However his teaching didn’ lead to the acceleration of work, but to a prolonged workday. Diligence is gaining a dignity (ibid: 73). Blaise Pascal writes in 17th century that life is a permanent restlessness, a necessity to stay alerted (Prokop 2005: 100). Later on, speed and acceleration are making their way into wider culture, starting with ship competitions (ibid: 112) and ending with lifestyle itself. Concurrently to Industrial Revolution, acceleration of transport, production and life, the cultural values change. At the end of the 19th speed is gaining a status of positive value (ibid: 8). Since more or less 1880 contemporary observers start to notice that hurry and haste are beginning to permeat a daily life. The most often diagnosis says: a mankin has been possessed by restlessness. Physicians are talking about neural weakness as a new collective illness. The magazines of those times are blaming electricity from “growing into our souls” and publishers issuing medical publications on various neural illnesses. The laymen are talking about “American sickness” (ibid: 178). At the beginning of the 20th century economic handling with time is becoming a natural part of common lifestyle. Women are having their hair cut to mikado, so they don’t have to spend a lot of time in front of mirror (ibid: 320). On one hand, members of Futurist art movement are adoring speed and technology in their artworks and on the other hand, Friedrich Sieburg, a culture historian, is warning about “false worship of elevators” (ibid: 357-358). Shortly after the World War II psychologist and sociologist Willy Hellpach is publishing his comparation study of life in town and country, where he was coming to

42 conclusion that an average city denizen is can be distinguished by a greater agility than in the case of the country denizen (ibid: 388).

43 6. THE ROLE OF MEDIA IN CONSTRUCTION OF TIME

We live in a media-saturated society (McQuail 2000: 416), which means that media significantly participate in the construction of our reality. Among many functions and kinds of impact, they legitimate (ibid: 433), maintain the status quo (ibid: 246) and provide the subjects to interchange and share in communication with others (ibid: 272). More interestingly, media dispose of capacity to play a prominent role in our perception of time. Even the elementary muse would suggest that daily newspaper has something to do with recurrence, which has been pointed out in section 5.3.1 as time-constructive. In other words, we can approach media as Zeitgebers (see 5.3.1). Assuming that media co-create the undifferentiated fabric of our perception of time, we would like to argue that the best approach would require returning “to the things themselves” as proposed by the founder of phenomenological method Edmund Husserl (href 4). For this purpose we will be primarily drawing on Paddy Scannel’s Television & Modernity. A Phenomenological Approach. Scannel is building his account on Heidegger’s work Being and Time, where he inquires into experiential character of time and space, which are ‘showing up’ to us always in relation to our situated being-in-the-world (Scannel 1996: 89). Media such as radio or television then create singular events, that are marked up not only in the public ‘history’ but also on private calendars of our lives (ibid: 91). Heidegger is highlighting a notion of ‘care’ as the specific mark of all possible and actual ways of human being in the world. The care is here not understood as a burden in a sense of “caring for”, but as the mark of what matters and how allocating thus the boundaries of our concerns (ibid: 144). This care stands behind every effort of broadcasting whose main effect is to re- temporize time, to differentiate the absolute nowness from what past time-in-the-day and what is yet-to-come: “The time of day in broadcasting is always marked as the time that it is.” (ibid: 149). For example, morning programme thematizes morning activities such as cleaning of teeth, breakfasting and going to work, nigh programmes thematize calmness on the one hand or live awakeness for the “night owls” (ibid). Shows commonly bearing names like “Today”, “Right Now” or “Events” chime in with my ‘care’ represented by what is on my mind in a sense of being aware of what is ahead of me for the rest of the day, where am I “situated” in the space of the day. “Today is not empty. It is full of matter and concerns,” (ibid: 149-150)

44 The Zeitgebers provided by media produce the sense of meaningfulness of days, they create their narratives (ibid: 150). From the point of the media, they adjust their services to the day zones to underline them in a way and to be available in a best way. It means that they, for example, schedule the entertainment programme for the evening hours, when is the majority of audience at their homes released from work duty. On the other hand, from the viewpoint of audiences, their members adjust their day schedules according to the schedules of media in order to “be there”, for example, when the news of the day is broadcasted in the prime time. David Morley, for examples, shows how is family adjusted and synchronized to the media schedules (Morley 1986: 7-28). But the day is zoned in more subtile ways, for example, working with a convention, that children are supposed to be in bed after 9.00pm, when ‘adult time’ starts, which means programme of adult themes like sex and bad language (Scannel 1996: 151). It is important to note that from the viewpoint of media producers, the media are always already ahead themselves in order to secure the future broadcasting. The future is someway somehow in advance, it is always anticipated (cared for). It means that that-which- was and that-which-is-to-be are both intrinsic parts of now in broadcasting. “The care structures of dailiness cannot be understood if broadcasting's now is thought of as blocking out the past or future.” Broadcasting, whose medium is time (this includes even the newspaper, whose dailyness is bound to time), creates the sense of time. Scannel distinguishes three kinds of time: natural (eg. of day and night), abstract time (of clock) and experiential (or phenomenological). The last one he refers to as my-time, and it is exactly this kind of time, to which media direct their efforts (ibid: 152). Human time is lifetime and broadcasting both is and is not in lifetime. “It articulates its time-structures to human lifetime, but its time is outside human lifetime.” (ibid: 153) In the media-saturated environment individuals incorporate either consciously or unconsciously elements of mediated experience into their day-to-day conduct. This process is never random. To the contrary, every member of audience imposes his own order on the diversity of media contents he is surrounded by. This is both motivated by pre-established habits and by the principle of cognitive dissonance (Giddens 1991: 188). Moreover, our personal biographies very often incorporate elements of mediated experience. Giddens offers an example of a couple, who remember they married 'two weeks after President Kennedy was assassinated' (ibid: 85). Scannel then expands the idea by saying: “broadcasting gathered together a quite new kind of public life - a world of public persons, events and happenings - and gave this

45 world an ordered, orderly, familiar, knowable appearance by virtues of an unobtrusively unfolding temporal sequence of events that gave substance and structure to everyday life.” (Scannel 1996: 153, my emphasis) We will now look at the core part of the proposed theoretical framework, on what role play media in the phenomenon of acceleration.

6.1 The Media as Inhibitors or Accelerators

If we are about to determine, whether media function as the intensifiers of speed or as the breaks, for a start we should think of them as technologies in general. Regardless to what is expected of them in their pioneering period and what are they actually pushed ahead for they use to have both intendended and unintended consequences. In other words, they are not neutral (Slack and Wise 2002). Considering speed Peter Borscheid illustrates double-edged character of technology on the example of roads: even in 18th century inclined Prussian king Frederick II to the opinion that bad condition of roads would provide the best defense of country for they prevent the enemy from fast advance (Borscheid 2007: 21). Slack and Wise point to a study of Ruth Schwarty Cowan, in which she found out that so-called labour-saving household appliances actually increased the amount of time that women were required to do housework (Slack and Wise 2002: 492-493, cf. Moore 1963: 31). Truly the impact of technology in the sense of acceleration of deceleration is in no way presetted in technology, only preconditioned and actualized in various and even contradictory uses. Michael Crang points out, for example, that easier acces to financial information may lead to more active micromanaging of account, or, to take the opposite effect, grocery shopping done via larger orders might be done less frequently (Crang 2007: 75). Media are the similar case: we can emerge into their content and let ourselves drift away by the story and thus take in its time, or we can be confronted by the multitude of fragments, whose diversity creates the experience of fast flow. Firstly, Michel de Certeau notes how readers are becoming “travelers” moving across lands belonging to someone else, choosing their own way and pace. “Reading takes no measures against the erosion of time (one forgets oneself and also forgets), it does not keep what it acquires, or it does so poorly, and each of the places throgh which it passes is a repetition of the lost paradise.” (de Certeau

46 1988: 174) Emancipated from the places, the reading body dispose of bigger freedom (ibid: 176). Secondly, if we focus on the size of messages purveyed by media, we have to face their shortening. But is it really so? Haven’t been the size of articles in first newspapers even smaller than it is today? The history of media teaches us that they have (Prokop 2005: 219). Most of the newspapers of 19th century, before the Northcliff revolution in 1870’s, functioned as the carriers of advertisements while publishing articles just in order to attract readers – eyes for the ads. Regarding cinematography, Scott Lash is criticizing movies like Indiana Jones or Ghostbusters, for their using plot merely as “an excuse for a succession of spectacular events” Lash 1990: 188). But this is hardly a reasonable argument, that we are suddenly missing epic stories both in literature and cinema. First, we should accordingly point out that even the slapsticks from the earlier age of cinematography could be approached as a fragmented cinematic experience, and second, even if we take into account the proliferation of short video thanks to the Internet services like YouTube, epic movie production like The Fellowship of the Ring trilogy or even Titanic is hardly losing its standing. Recent boom in production of documentaries (and derived genres such as docudrama or documedy) – as well as amateur video - as a consequence of democratized means of production, might then indicate that the urge to address relevant subjects (not necessarily political ones) is still present. But this doesn’t mean the fragmentation and multiplication of media contents is not real. This has also a specific impact on perception of authorities, which can’t anymore serve as a guarantee, but can be trusted only ‘until further notice’. Not the fixed guidelines or recipes for action, but constant reevaluation of surrounding world is necessary as we are engulfed by ever-changing ‘landscape’ of contemporary world (Giddens 1991: 84). Media do offer acces to settings, which the individual may never come into contact in the past, but at the same time they overcome boundaries of formerly separated settings (ibid). Gamson et al. are convinced that the compression of time leads to a preoccupation with the immediacy of superficial meanings. Regardless how correct or misleading the information is only the immediacy of image retains. The coherency of organizing frame can thus be only hardly sustained in order to provide meaning over time. The result is then a fragmented sense of reality (Gamson et al. 1992 : 386). The view of the world provided by news media is fragmented and confusing, when there is a common practice of emphasizing individual actors over the political contexts in which they operate (ibid: 387). The connection of fragmentation to the speed has already been suggested in 5.4, but we shouldn’t avoid one of the main heralds of the threats inflicted by fragmentating media –

47 Jean Baudrillard. In his view, we are experiencing the ecstasy of communication, when all functions reduces to one dimension of communication and all events, all places and whole memory is reduced to one dimension of information (Baudrillard in Šebeš 2004: 78). Reflecting is impossible, the images split the perception into successions and impulses and the time to react is maximally reduced (ibid: 79). The perception of speed and acceleration of mediated experience is everything but a simple problem. Let’s take van Dijk’s remark (5.3.3) on the possibility to interpret the shrinking of time and space as its contrary – expansion. What we have at hand today is an unimaginable reservoir of knowledge and power to surmount the time and space, which posed as a barrier in early times. What is more important, objections regarding both fragmentation and acceleration are too often based on undisclosed prioritizing of quantitative aspects of phenomenon as if the qualitative dimension could be derived then in some obvious manner. But this is not the issue, because final judgments about enhanced or deteriorating options to grasp the world that surrounds us can come only out empirical research. And neither adoration nor critique of acceleration use to have such empirical grounding. We have seen, that time is a socially constructed phenomenon (5.1). But so is its acceleration. If we are to compare how our ancestors perceived their pace of life at the beginning of the 20th century we are limited to the quantitavive dimension. We do dispose of faster means of communication and wider range of media content, but we can hardly assume that we feel more engulfed than our ancestors. Last but not least we would like to suggest there is a crucial need to discern between possibility and necessity when discussing the usage of media technologies. Just as the virtual communities having the possibility to interconnect their members across the globe, in most cases just affirm the physical/local ones (Katz et al. 2004), the possibility to congest ourselves with multitude of information and to consume them in superficial manner, doesn’t mean that it will necessarily take place. The true nature of media consumption can therefore figured out only by empirical research, we can only suggest here.

6.2 Time and ICT

Both Eriksen and Menzies are accusing electronic media and Internet in particular of being the key actors in acceleration and fragmentation as they co-define what is refered to as

48 Informatino Age. We will address this subject in general regarding it as information and communication technologies (ICT) and in particular, we will look into inequalities as the intrinsic and unintended consequence of dense fragmentation and acceleration.

6.2.1 Flexibility and Attention

The latest data on penetration of Internet usage in Europe say there is nearly 50% of population having acces to the Internet (with 73.1 % for North America) (href 5). That would suggest, that we are now experiencing the beginning of phase specified by Lehman-Wilzig and Cohen-Avigdor as the phase of maturation, which is said to represent “maximal use and application of the medium’s capabilities” (Lehman-Wilzig and Cohen-Avigdor 2004: 712), so it is suitable to regard Internet not just as an alternative medium, but as a medium, that plays a significant part of our mediated experience. According to Mark Poster, Internet and other new media can be no longer located in time and space, with its “time-space coordinates undermined”, it is supposed to be “material/immaterial” (Poster 1990). But this is only partially true since there is an ongoing practice of IP geolocating and jurisdictory regulations of Internet according to the physical location of servers. In other words, national borders play their role even in cyberspace (Goldsmith and Wu 2006). What are we required to do in current situation is to encompass time, virtuality and networked processes, while “complexity rather than simplicity is the order of the day” and demands new ways of research (Adam 2007: x). And when there is instantaneity instead of duration and causality, simultaneity instead of sequence and chronoscopic temporality instead of spatially constituted clock time, there can be no interception, no intervening action (ibid: xi). But once again, we think the situation is a bit more complicated then Adam suggest. It is true that as we use networked PCs, PDAs, cell phones, faxes or instant messangers the temporality of clock has been compressed into a multitude of different time fractions within the ecology of the network (Hassan and Purser 2007: 11), but the times generated in the new economy of speed however they are fast and accelerated, this is not true on the plane of real time (Hassan 2007: 49). By the real time we mean here “simultaneity in the occurrence and the registering of and event, sometimes called synchronous processing” (Heim 1993: 157). So there is a difference between simultaneous and immediate, where the former connotes “a cancelling-out of temporal duration, delay or

49 latency between events (…) a noontime (…) or a “death” of time and the latter connotes a brief temporal lag (Hassan 2007: 49). The simultaneity is regarded in many writings on time in network society, such as in the book The Rise of Network Society, in which its author Manuel Castells argues that globalization and information age are heralding the domination of real time or, what he coins as “timeless time” or “the edge of forever” (Castells 1996: 460-499). However Castells earned a critique of this phrases regarding them as “catchy and hollow expressions” (van Dijk 1999). These concepts make no sense at all. “Ontologically it is an impossibility,” (Hassan : 50) because when we compare the Internet with its technical capacities with our own human capabilities we will come unavoidable to the conclusion that this is an “inherently asynchronous space” (ibid, emphasis in original). Moreover, hypothetical achievement of “no time” processes would require us to absolutely surrender to the digital technology, but this is unrealizable because “imperfect humans constantly get in the way of perfect systems” (ibid: 51). But probably the most interesting feature of ICT is that they empower us with options of flexibility. ICT enable time shifting of activities to formerly unavailable slots partly by breaking down spatial boundaries, eg. in the gaps between work and home (Crang 2007: 71). To a small degree this has been possible by media technologies that predate ICT. For instance, video taping provided the possibility to adjust watching of TV according to the viewer’s needs by so to say shifting the viewing forward in time (Morley 1986: 73-74). On a interpersonal level this can mean, we don’t have to plan too much in advance, rely on cell phones and get together more flexibly; to exercise approximeeting (Crang 2007: 75). This means liberation from absolute space and time and possibility to create relative time- space relevancies and shared coordinates (ibid: 76). We can regard this as a trend, whence there are networked systems and locative media currently being design to raise spatial awareness and enwiden the power of real-time information we know so far from, for example, warning of road maintenance or congestion provided by radio broadcast (ibid: 79). Furthermore, research suggests that ICT enable some people to turn previously “dead” time while waiting for bus or train into “useful” periods (Jain 2002). Intrinsic aspect of flexibility provided by ICT is, of course, accessibility. As Eviatar Zerubavel points out both privacy and publicity are only hypothetical and abstract polarities never experienced in their pure character. Every specific situation one finds himself in can be only located along private-public scale (Zerubavel 1981: 143). More importantly, the degree of privacy or publicity cannot be defined by the sole actions such as calling someone on the

50 phone, because even the sheer knowledge that one can be reached yields a violation of privacy in an indispensable way (ibid: 146). Here we are getting to the core of aforementioned blurring of boundaries between work and leisure. What have pre-ICT communication technologies started, ICT is working up in a radical fashion. Not just that the very nature of work is now tending toward “immaterial” forms such as ideas and services (Hassan and Purser 2007: 13), but as the network-driven “fragmented time” is emerging along the “industrial time”, we may be returning to the task- oriented work, which had been characteristic for pre-modern cultures (Klein 2004: 252-255). But once again, networked work may be flexible or intrusive or both (Crang 2007: 73). Our mediated experience intensifies and proliferates our days as we are more and more harnessing the mobile aspect of ICT. In the Western world the attention towards mediated communication both passive and active is more or less continuous. This state of affairs describes Linda Stone by a notion of continuous partial attention (CPA), which she describes followingly:

“Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. (…) [Continuous partial attention] is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.”

CPA is an inspiring concept of potentially high descriptive meaning in what is usually referred to as “telepresence” (Hassan 2007: 47-48). It is a truly novel situation when moving out of physical reach no longer means “saying goodbye to close friends and family” (Varnelis 2007). Being in touch with distant places and social contact creates something, what Ichiyo Habuchi calls telecocoon: “a virtual networked space created by young friends and lovers out of a constant, steady stream of conversation that keeps them in touch even when they are apart“ (cited in Varnelis and Friedberg 2006). Needless to say, we are only about to find out what telecocoon and CPA implies in social and cultural dimension and most importantly in our timescapes.

51 6.2.2 Fragmentation and Inequalities

Similarily to the blurred boundary between work and leisure, Internet is radicalizing the threat or promise of fragmentation, or in other words, of movement from linearity back to associativity (Stephens 1998). Jakob Nielsen describes the usage of Internet through hypertext and soundbite communication such as links, instant messaging, streamed video and audio as “scanning”, a new form of media consumption (Nielsen 1997-a, 1997-b). If we step back of this kind of media experience, we might see the “database logic”, a concept by Lev Manovich. He he uses the notion in order to describe the culture, in which the narrative loses its privilege (Manovich 2001: 218-221). The database isn’t principially different from narrative, to the contrary: “In the database / narrative pair, database is the unmarked term.” (ibid: 201). In other words, narrative becomes only one method among of perceiving information among others. Database logic corresponds with a trend of so called issue-oriented communication significantly strengthen up by a system of Internet filters such as discussion groups, social network sites and customized news channels. This “tactics” leads to a situation, which Jaromír Volek point to as “electronic isolationism” (Volek 2002: 30) posing thus a threat to collective action and shared values. It necessary to regard this as one of the most crucial unintended consequnces of ICT. The “secondary information inequality”, as Volek coins it, means a difference in using information in dependence on interest group. But ICT inflicts unequalities in various areas. Mike Crang points to, for example, that 60 per cent of email and phone traffic never leaves the building (regarding New York). It means that “proximity is deterritorialized” (Sassen 2000: 226). Distribution of interconnectedness and speed is uneven, which means that while many users are accesing services electronically on the basis that it is faster, those who do not dispose of such acces are in directly proportional way slowed down. In general, in the environment of various speed such as Internet is, some people may be accelerated while others might be slowed down (Crang 2007: 84). But let’s move on; Barbara Adam suggests that frenetic pace so significant to highly networked urban spaces might sharply contrast to the contemplative life of the countryside (Adam 1990: 117) and ‘First’ World to the ‘Third’ World (Adam 1995: 101-102). Another chasm, which is being enlarged, is generational one. Not just this inequality stems form physiological aspects (Adam 1990: 79) but even from cognitive abilities and adaptation dispositions. The issue of generational divide is profoundly addressed in writing of Kate

52 Hayles on hyperattention of contemporary youth. Drawing on studies that efficiency significantly declines with multitasking, she suggests that young people prefer it rather for its high levels of stimulation. Building on the assumption that “children growing up in media- rich environments literally have brains wired differently than humans who did not come to maturity in such conditions”, she comes to the conclusion that their hyperattention represents the

“brain’s cultural co-evolution in coordination with high-speed, information-intensive, and rapidly changing environments that make flexible alternation of tasks, quick processing of multiple information streams, and low thresholds for boredom more adaptive than a preference for concentrating on a single object to the exclusion of external stimuli” (Hayles 2008)

As we have seen, ICT creates the new conditions for mediated experience and “caring for” the world in general. Mike Crang points to a present state, characterized by recursive pattern of ICT enabling new uses of time-space and time-space shaping the use of ICT. And as more ICTs enable to do more, in more places, people are expected to move further yet still be “available” (Crang 2007: 83).

53 7. EVALUATION OF ERIKSEN’S NOTION OF TIME

Now having a comprehensible theoretical framework for analysis of acceleration and speed as social problem we will come up to Eriksen’s arguments and address them one after another with a general extension in the end. And because Eriksen himself summarizes his arguments in the last chapter of Tyranny of the Moment (Eriksen 2001: 149-150), we will use these main points for they correspond with our own analysis in chapter 3.

When there is a surplus, and no scarcity, of information, the degree of comprehension falls in proportion with the growth in amount of information.

Eriksen works throughout his writing with a notion of information without defining it. And even if the mere common sense suggests its meaning, Frank Webster warns in his analysis of Information Society, that regarding a study by Zhang Yuexiao there is some 400 conceptions of information presented by researchers in various fields and culture (Webster 2002: 28). We would like to suggest that pointing to a rising amount of information in general is too ambiguous to function as the reasonable evidence. Moreover, grounding a claim there is an Information Society on the fact that there is a growing amount of occupations related to information is not just, again, ambiguous without a specification of such kind of occupation, but could say with Webster, that “to argue that a plethora of personal computer or a preponderance of white-collar occupations means we have an information society is tautologous.” (ibid: 27) Eriksen claims that “we know more and more, and therefore we know less and less” (Eriksen 2001: 149). In chapter 5 we have argued with Anthony Giddens that people tend to impose their own order on the mediated experience. They are not passive victims of mediated diversity as Eriksen suggest, because they actively select, interpret and filter (Fiske 1990: 23- 32), they put a great effort into sustaing a coherent image of world, even though it is ever- harder. As Giddens has suggested (5.3.5), the risk and its calibration with trust toward expert system is a part of our day-to-day life. Both Eriksen and Gleick express an awe of exponential growth curves, which is however only pointing to the quantitative aspects of change. Neither Eriksen nor Gleick give a thought to qualitative aspects, which are incomparably more relevant than rising numbers. Not to mention this would require a comprehensible amount of qualitative research. Last but

54 not least both of them point to a set of phenomena of radical heterogeneity as if their quantitative change over time was sufficient enough to put them together. But even if we accepted this logic, we could show how untrivial is qualitative change along the quantitative dimension on, for example, the phenomenon of so called “uncanny valley”: the hitherto experience with visual culture approaching photographic reality teaches that close to the highest imaginable fidelity, there is a radical chasm – uncanny valley – representing “the point at which a person observing the creature or object in question sees something that is nearly human, but just enough off-kilter to seem eerie or disquieting“ (Bryant 2006). Therefore we can’t be sure that qualitative devolopments of phenomena point to by Eriksen and Gleick would copy a curve depicted by the graphs these authors use. So we think that grouping heterogenous phenonema such as sport, meal, bank services, technologies or financial trends based only on their quantitative change over time and supposing they share a corresponding qualitative change is a methodological fallacy. Finally we have to take into account a concept of reflexive society suggested by Giddens (1990), the ways how contemporary media function as a cultural memory, even though using database logic (6.2.2) and adding new methods of data acces to the narrative ones, and last but not least a profound and in history deeply rooted change of knowledge from a specific and memorized clusters of understandin to the ways how to find what we are looking for in the immense systems of information and how to grasp new abilities “on the run”.

The main scarce resource for suppliers of any commodity in the information society is the attention of others.

We second that. Contemporary developments in Internet enterpreneurship show that companies learned learned that the best way of harnessing Internet for profit is to sell the “attention” of users of their services. And as our mediated experience is becoming more and more dense, we have to constantly learn how to avoid unwanted information and reach the wanted one. Studies of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder on contemporary youth remain so ambiguous (Hayles 2008) that the cause of this disorder remains a subject of ongoing discussions. Furthermore drawing on 6.2.1 the intensification of a pressure on our selection routines seems to be about to rise in the future.

55 The main scarce resource for inhabitants of the information society is well-functioning filters.

As pointed out in 6.2.2 the issue is diametrically opposite. With the intensification of issue- oriented communication, which is based on a complex system of filters, there is a threat of further fragmentation and shrinking of public sphere. Eriksen is rather horrified22 by the view of nameless Internet company leader, whose answer to atmosphere of speed and lack of time for checking of sources in Internet journalism is transferring of burden to the reader (ibid: 67). This is a specific problem, when the professional, who are expected to filter out the faults in messages conveyed by them to public, fail to do their work properly. We would like to suggest that Internet journalism is going along a phenomenon with a rising prominence – a participatory journalism23, which might be an answer to lacking in filters and supposed decay of journalism conveyed by Internet. And as to the anxiety of engulfment by a multitude of information, there is an institutional order present not just on a general level of society but in the mediascapes too, which serves as a shield against the terror of chaos (Berger and Luckmann 1967: 102) whose active existence we can’t neglect. Even if we take into account just the Internet, that can be regarded as a metamedium (Lehman-Wilzig and Cohen-Avigdor 2004: 708), a one-off learning how to find relevant information is not enough, because Internet is a constantly changing mediascape, which requires continouous adaptation. Eriksen’s confession that he finds a a lack of coherency and connectedness in the growing amount of information would mean there is a lack of functioning search engines and that hyperlinks connect the webpages on a basis of accident, which is a nonsensical assumption.

Acceleration removes distance, space and time.

In the section on modernity and time-space distanciation (5.3.3) we have shown, how a perception of time and space changed in modernity and ceased to be an obstacle in communication. In 6.2.1 we have addressed that phrases like this one by Eriksen are

22 “When one comes across rubbish of this caliber, it is difficult to know whether to burst into tears or cynical laughter.” (Eriksen 2001: 67). 23 “Participatory journalism: The act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires.” (Bowman and Willis 2003: 9)

56 exaggerated, empty as statements and truly ontologically impossible. Such claims tend be uttered mostly by laymen, but when authored by an anthropologist they shed a bad light on its creator. In other words, acceleration of movement, intensification of communication and densification of mediated experience doesn’t mean that space or time diminish as long as we retain our physical bodies.

When fast and slow time meet, fast time wins.

It is always disputable to objectify something as abstract as time or speed. When we asked ourselves What is Time? in 5.2 we have found out how complex and diverse can notion of time be. Simplification of this kind can lead only to misrepresentation and other phallacies. But drawing on section 5.4 we can agree with this argument to the extent it points to the valorization of speed, which is truly present. Being fast or, more precisely faster then others, is required as a basic presupposition for competetiveness in journalism and postindustrial society in general. Time is a medium of status representation (5.3) and being faster means being better regarding both individuals and technologies. Speed, on the other hand, can pose a threat to democracy (5.4). But acceleration is not the only direction that is currently gaining a momentum in culture. There is a significant proliferation of movements praising slow lifestyle such as Slow cities, Slow Food Movement, Simplify-Your-Life movement, Long Now Foundation or Society of the Deceleration of Time (Parkins and Craig 2006).

Flexible work creates a loss of flexibility in the non-work areas of life.

As the available research data suggest, this is only partially true. With a blurred boundary between work and leisure (5.3, 5.3.2, 6.2.1) comes both bigger freedom and threat of accessibility as we are reachable for our employers even in time usually regarded as a leisure time. Work ethics is today in question and both assets and drawbacks have to be balanced carefully if we want to sustain lives in their fullness and quality.

57 When time is partitioned into sufficiently small pieces, it eventually ceases to exist as duration.

This is probably the most problematic argument of Eriksen’s account, which he has formulated in a claim that “time approaches zero”. It is true that fast sequence of ever- shorter messages provided by media creating a fragmented media environment can be perceived as time accelerating but only if we use the measures of earlier, slower, periods. Once again, the members of audience are not victims of fast-pace media dictate and choose according to their will what they want to “consume”. New kinds of media consumption emerge (6.2.2) and new measures of relevancy and quality are required. As has been already suggested, this kind of assessment stems from neglecting of qualitative aspects of change leaving only the quantitative ones. Futhermore as Thomas Mann writes in his book The Magic Mountain, we can look at the densification of our lived experience in a wholly conversed manner. If our days are densly filled with events, or, let us say singular Zeitgebers, either direct or mediated, we use refered to them by phrases such as “time flies by”. And on the other hand, in the days whitch lack such enfillings and are dull tend to pass slowly. But when we look back at the sum of dull days or weeks they bear an appeareance of short period as there is a lack of singular Zeitgebers. However the days, or if we step back further, the whole life, can be understood as long and full as it is full of events. In other words, we can take the densification as a new way of extending our lives; to reach further and to experience more.

Other…

Here we would like to address Tyranny of the Moment in general from the point of methodology and type of inference conducted by Eriksen. First of all, Eriksen is declaring the normative neutrality saying he leaves the final judgments of the situation to the others. But truth is, that troughout his account we too often come across his opinion on described phenomena on the behalf their beneficiality or harmfulness. This is done by unsufficient distinguishing of opinion and facts, which might perplex the laymen readers. Secondly, in inferences such as those, which accuse technological aspects of Information Society from creating the acceleration-prone environment we see technological

58 determinism, which neglects the social agency and cultural, political and economical moods in cultural change. This involves even assumption of technologies and overall ways of using them being substituted over time and omission of convergency dynamics, which has been criticized by Pierr Lévy (2001). Thirdly, there is a significant lack in considering the inequalities as we have sketched up in 6.2.2, as if the situation Eriksen describes refered to everybody in the same fashion. And finally, Eriksen leaves no space for the deficiency of further research of the subject, as if what is right here and now was completely graspable and unchangeable.

59 8. CONCLUSION

In this thesis we have analysed writings on cultural acceleration and value of speed in contemporary culture by Thomas Hylland Eriksen, James Gleick and Heather Menzies in order to evaluate their meaning and consistency. This has been carried out by pinpointing of their Eriksen’s main arguments, what are they based on and how coherent they are. Next we have compared them with the arguments of Menzies and Gleick and determined what all of them have in common and what they add up to the Eriksen’s account. We have found out that both Eriksen and Menzies see acceleration as a social problem we should be highly attentive to. Rising fragmentation and complexity of current society together with extended options of temporal and spatial accessibility provided by ICT lead, in their view, to the threat of coherent understanding of world that surrounds us and this is happening both on individual and institutional level. Eriksen is convinced that the more we are informed, the less we actually know provided that what we today really lack is a set of well-functioning filters. Even though Gleick sustains normative neutrality in the larger part of his writing, he is together with Eriksen convinced that exponential growth in various and heterogenous phenomena should serve as a warning. In Eriksen’s case, there is a conviction that densification of perceived time on the background of our mediated experience will lead to the fragmentation of time of such extent, that the time will cease to exist. However, the available research data and treatises on time in social theory suggest that anxiety expressed by Eriksen and Menzies is only partially based on solid ground. We have shown that fragmentation really functions as a source of acceleration, but on the other hand serves as a ground for topical and cultural diversity and supports plurality within globalized world. The hightened pressure on our attention is, too, a conviction shared by many contemporary theorists of time in network society. But the latest research suggests that new methods of media consumption emerge along changing media environment, by which is mostly meant the Internet and other ICT. Among other issues supposedly inflicted by acceleration we have affirmed that threat of superficiality in media is real. But we suggest to regard these trends more critically drawing on studies that show how small bits of information, otherwise regarded as too short or shallow, function as filling in formerly empty gaps in everyday lifes such as waiting for bus.

60 The analysed account strongly dwells in mechanistic understanding of time, which is traceable all along the modernity. But this time is more and more loosing its dominance, so it is understable this process is accompanied by reflections written in the light of nostalgia as those of Eriksen, Menzies and Gleick. And no matter how profaned has concept of paradigm shift concept by Thomas Kuhn become, we think that analysed issues are in a strong need of “new look at the old things”, which has Kuhn identified as important breakpoint in history of sciences. Never before have been mediascapes such as those we are surrounded by today so rapidly changing and requiring us to adapt not once in a while but constantly. Such situation entails new approach, which is, in our opinion, lacking in writing of Eriksen and those of Gleick and Menzies. Anthony Giddens suggest that in high modernity we need to re-evaluate potential threats continuously. We balance these risks by the trust deposited in expert systems that have permeated our culture throughout modernity. The clock have established absolute time, which is even today still perceived as time itself (5.2), but this is about to change. Mike Crang argues that time and space are ceasing to be absolute containers of action and are more and more becoming relative (Crang 2007: 85). Especially regarding ICT, the subject is open to further research. There are many questions to be answered: Do ICT function as inhibitors or accelerators? Do they empower us with greater freedom over temporal aspects of our lives or do they pose a threat to our privacy or both? In our analysis we have omitted a deeper account of network society theories, which is believed to impose a new kind of order on us and institutions. We are therefore convinced that incorporation of these theories is necessary to fully comprehend what we are going through now and how is our perception of time changing. We would like to end this thesis with Robert Hassan, who calls for creative reestablishment of social control over time and space (Hassan 2007: 58). We see in this approach greater hopes than in Eriksen’s advice to slow down.

61 9. NAME INDEX

Acord, 67 Kellner, 64 Adam, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, Lehman-Wilzig, 49, 56, 68 40, 41, 49, 52, 64 Lévy, 10, 59, 68 Augustine, 29, 64 Luckmann, 31, 39, 56, 64 Berger, 31, 35, 38, 39, 56, 64 Mann, 58, 68 Bergson, 29, 30, 64 Manovich, 52, 68 Borscheid, 36, 42, 46, 64 McQuail, 44, 68 Bowman, 56, 64 Menzies, 5, 10, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 48, 60, Bryant, 55, 64 61, 68, 71 Byrne, 30, 64 Moore, 9, 29, 32, 33, 34, 37, 40, 46, 68 Castells, 25, 50, 65 Morley, 45, 50, 68 Cohen-Avigdor, 49, 56, 68 Nielsen, 52, 68, 69 Craig, 57, 69 Parkins, 57, 69 Crang, 38, 41, 46, 50, 51, 52, 53, 61, 65 Pescosolido, 37, 69, 79, 80 Croteau, 66 Poster, 49, 69 Dasgupta, 67 Purser, 31, 49, 51, 65, 67, 68 David, 45, 66, 67, 68 Rice, 67 de Certeau, 46, 65 Rosa, 41, 69 Elias, 31, 33 Rubin, 37, 69, 79, 80 Eriksen, 1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, Samson, 66 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, Sassen, 52, 69 42, 48, 54, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 65, 70, 72, Scannel, 44, 45, 69 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78 Schmitt, 33, 69 Fiske, 54, 66 Schor, 32, 38, 69 Fraser, 29, 66 Slack, 46, 69 Gamson, 47, 66 Sokol, 29, 69 Giddens, 8, 10, 28, 31, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, speed, 7 40, 45, 47, 54, 55, 61, 66 Speed, 7 Gleick, 5, 9, 10, 23, 24, 25, 54, 60, 61, 66, Stephens, 52, 69 70, 79 Stone, 51, 70 Goldsmith, 49, 66 Šebeš, 48, 70 Hägerstrand, 28, 30, 67 van Dijk, 37, 48, 50, 65 Hassan, 31, 38, 49, 50, 51, 61, 65, 67, 68 Varnelis, 51, 70 Hayles, 53, 55, 67 Virilio, 19, 41, 70 Heim, 49, 67 Volek, 52, 70 Hiebert, 34, 67 Webster, 14, 54, 70 Hoynes, 66 Willis, 56, 64 Jain, 50, 67 Wu, 49, 66 Katz, 48, 67 Zerubavel, 29, 32, 33, 35, 50, 69, 70

62 10. SUBJECT INDEX

acceleration, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 15, 23, 24, 25, Internet, 14, 20, 24, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 55, 27, 28, 36, 40, 41, 42, 46, 48, 54, 57, 58, 56, 60 60 journalism, 18, 21, 23, 56, 57 adaptation, 17, 52, 56 laymen, 10, 39, 42, 57, 58 anthropology, 11, 12, 14 leisure, 17, 26, 35, 37, 51, 52, 57 anxiety, 7, 17, 39, 56, 60 media, 7, 8, 10, 11, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, automation, 41 27, 28, 35, 38, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, being, 12, 16, 17, 26, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34, 52, 53, 55, 58, 60 35, 37, 39, 42, 44, 48, 50, 52, 57, 59 modernity, 15, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 56, 61 cinema, 20, 47 multitasking, 17, 53 clock, 7, 16, 30, 36, 45, 49, 61 pace of life, 8, 9, 12, 48, 72 coherence, 19, 40 perception, 7, 15, 16, 20, 30, 44, 47, 48, coherency, 47, 56 56, 61, 67 communication, 16, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28, philosophy, 11, 18, 28 35, 36, 38, 40, 44, 48, 49, 51, 52, 56 politics, 9, 12, 15, 18, 25, 37 complexity, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 27, 28, radio, 19, 44, 50 37, 38, 49, 60 repetition, 32, 33, 46 Compression, 15 rhythm, 13, 20, 32, 33 computer, 14, 15, 24, 26, 54 scarcity, 9, 12, 19, 21, 28, 34, 54 cyberculture, 10 simplification, 13, 20 day-to-day, 9, 10, 33, 38, 39, 40, 45, 54 simultaneity, 36, 49, 50 democracy, 19, 22, 41, 56, 57 social problem, 10, 23, 28, 54, 60 duration, 15, 16, 30, 32, 33, 49, 58 social theory, 7, 10, 11, 28, 29, 60 economy, 14, 41, 49 Space of flows, 25 expert, 36, 39, 54, 61 speed, 7 Expert systems, 36 superficiality, 9, 13, 25, 27, 60 exponential growth, 14, 17 taylorisaton, 16 flexibility, 15, 17, 35, 50, 57 technologies, 7, 9, 16, 17, 19, 21, 24, 28, fragmentation, 8, 9, 15, 18, 20, 25, 27, 28, 35, 38, 40, 46, 48, 49, 50, 51, 55, 57, 59 37, 38, 39, 47, 48, 52, 56, 60 technology, 12, 14, 24, 42, 46, 50 freedom, 17, 22, 32, 35, 37, 38, 41, 47, 57, temporality, 12, 13, 29, 49 61 time, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, future, 7, 15, 19, 29, 30, 31, 38, 45, 55 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, growth, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 24, 25, 54, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 44, 60 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 55, 56, 57, history, 7, 8, 16, 19, 23, 28, 29, 30, 37, 44, 58, 59, 60, 61 47, 55, 61 time-space distanciation, 8, 16, 28, 36, 40, information, 7, 9, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 56, 72 22, 28, 40, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, Tyranny of the Moment, 7, 12, 16, 19, 23, 55, 56, 60 54, 58 information society, 13, 14, 19, 21, 54, 55, work, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 18, 25, 26, 28, 35, 56 36, 42, 44, 45, 50, 51, 52, 56, 57 Zeitgebers, 8, 44, 45, 58

63 11. LITERATURE

Adam, Barbara. 1990. Time & Social Theory. Cambridge : Polity Press.

Adam, Barbara. 1995. Timewatch: The Social Analysis of Time. Cambridge : Polity Press.

Adam, Barbara. 2004. Time. Cambridge : Polity.

Augustine of Hippo. 2002. The Confessions of St. Augustine. Mineola – New York : Dover Publications.

Berger, Peter L. – Luckmann, Thomas. 1967. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York – Toronto : Anchor.

Berger, Peter L. – Berger, Brigitte – Kellner, Hansfried. 1974. The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness. New York : Random House.

Bergson, Henri. 2001. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Mineola : Dover Publications.

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10.1 Other Internet Sources href 1: Eriksen, Thomas Hylland – Professor. 2005. http://www.sai.uio.no/forskning/presentasjon/competence/eriksen.html (19. 4. 2008) href 2: James Gleick. Writing on Science and Culture. Undated. http://www.around.com/ (14. 5. 2008)

70 href 3: Heather Menzies – Writer, Speaker, Teacher. Undated. http://www.heathermenzies.ca/biocontd.htm (18. 5. 2008) href 4: Phenomenology – Edmund Husserl. 2008. http://science.jrank.org/pages/10639/Phenomenology-Edmund-Husserl.html (23. 5. 2008) href 5: Internet World Stats: Usage and Populaton Statistics. Mar 2008. http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm (25. 5. 2008)

71 12. SUMMARY, KEYWORDS

12.1 Summary

Title: Concept of Time in the Work of Thomas Hylland Eriksen Supervisor: Mgr. Jakub Macek

The thesis aims to analyse concept of time in the work of Thomas Hylland Eriksen within a framework of writings on time in social theory. Eriksen states, that consequence of accelerated pace of life, overall fragmentation and complexity inflicted in large part by media, is a situation, in which time approaches zero, we are losing a coherent apprehension of world and culture is deteriorating. The available research data and theoretical treatises on time however suggest that the character of current situation stems from historical process of modernity with its dominance of absolute clock time, processes of time-space distanciation and valorization of speed. Time itself has been in theory treated so far as a complex matter that renders usual dichotomies of absolute and lived time as either too simplifying or overly misleading. As it is shown, we are now experiencing a change towards relativization of time as advanced information and communication technologies are put in use. This represents a double effect of liberation from time and space as absolute containers of social action on the one hand and threat to privacy and increased need for continual adaptation to these new conditions on the other hand. In the conclusion of analysis of Eriksen’s concept of time is argued that most of his points are substantive but lacking deeper reasoning and foundation in latest research, which suggests reestablishment of temporality in network society.

12.2 Keywords

Time, speed, media, acceleration, pace of life, fragmentation, time-space distanciation

72 13. APPENDIX

Figure 1 – Paper consumption in the world, 1975-2000 (Source: UNESCO, via Eriksen 2001: 91)

Figure 2 – Number of air passengers in Europe, 1993-2010 (Source: Air Transport Action Group (www.atag.org), via Eriksen 2001: 94)

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Figure 3 – Air passengers to and from the USA, 1993-2010 (Source: IATA, via Eriksen 2001: 95)

Figure 4 – Number of tourists in the world, 1950-2010 (Source: World Tourist Organization, via Eriksen 2001: 96)

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Figure 5 – Microsoft, 1975-98 (Source: www.microsoft.com, via Eriksen 2001: 98)

Figure 6 – Number of TV sets in the world, 1959-97 (Source: Held et al. 1999, p. 358, www.unesco.org, via Eriksen 2001: 27)

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Figure 7 – Book titles published in the UK, 1975-96 (Source: UNESCO, via Eriksen 2001: 90)

Figure 8 – Book titles published worldwide, 1970-90 (Source: UNESCO, via Eriksen 2001: 91)

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Figure 9 – Amazon.com. 1995-99 (Source: www.amazon.com, via Eriksen 2001: 92)

Figure 10 – Number of WWW hosts in the world, 1994-2000 (Source: Internet Software Consortium (www.isc.org), via Eriksen 2001: 99)

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Figure 11 – Surplus generated by the Internet, 1996-2002 (Source: www.nua.ie, 2000, via Eriksen 2001: 100)

Figure 12 – Number of Internet users, 1995-2000 (Source: www.nua.ie, via Eriksen 2001: 13)

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Figure 13 – Exponential growth (Source: Gleick 2000: 275)

Figure 14 – Social Network Formation in the Premodern Era: Concentric Circles (Source: Pescosolido and Rubin 2000: 54)

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Figure 15 – Social Network Formation in the Modern Era: Intersecting Circles (Source: Pescosolido and Rubin 2000: 55)

Figure 16 – Social Network Formation in the Contemporary Era: The Spoke Structure (Source: Pescosolido and Rubin 2000: 63)

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