Week 8: New Technologies, New Velocities
David raises an attention-grabbing point about Stubbs' "Telegraph?s Corporeal Fictions" by pointing out that the telegraphic fictions cited by Stubbs resemble Shakespeare plays. David further suggests, nay, asserts: "Stubbs seems to believe that these telegraph stories have a lot to say about technologies old and new, but I?d say these types of stories probably would have been written in that time period anyway (in every time period)?so they don?t deserve as much attention as they?re given." I think Gr?bs is right and wrong.
Certainly, similar stories, i.e., the mistaken identity genre, had been written before the telegraph, and similar stories are surely being written now, and will be written in the future. However, I do not remember reading any Shakespeare plays that included the telegraph. For his mistaken identity plays/themes, Shakespeare used cross-dressing, disguises, missed encounters, and note passing to achieve his desired effects, not telegraphic messages. And how many telegraph fictions are being written now? This is to say, telegraphic fictions allow Stubbs to understand how the public/culture was assimilating this new technology. These authors used telegraphs to repurpose the genre and make it new while also exposing cultural values and issues. (Making a strawman of David?s point was not my attention, but I wanted, needed to disagree).
And while I am agreeing and disagreeing, I would like to enter the fray in the David-Jordan Debate 2008. Jordan claims that the US became a superpower because it dominated technological developments. But now, it seems other countries are taking the lead in mobile technologies, thus weakening the US?s superpower status. David, however, claims that the US is becoming less a superpower not because it is no longer the leader in technological developments, but because the world is becoming more lateral, more technologically unified and equal (the world is flat). I think truth exists in both David and Jordan?s claims. For a long time after WWII, the US was the leader in technological developments; it was the global production center of scientific and technological innovation (Castells refers to this a little in "The Space of Flows"). US industries outsourced to China and India, not their innovation, but rather their production and manufacturing processes. Now, however, India and China are reaching a tipping point in their ability to provide technological innovations; in other words, their economies may become less focused on production of goods, and more reliant on the production of ideas, a la the US. This shift in innovation centers creates a world that is flatter than ever. The US has lost or is losing its comparative advantage in the global market of ideas.
This week?s readings reminded me of Levy, in "The Nature of Virtualization," when he writes, "The invention of new velocities is the first degree of vitualization" (32). Virtualization, here, meaning something akin to potential. New systems of communication and transportation, changes in velocity and movement, modify "the system of practical proximities, that is the pertinent space for human communities" (31). We see this in Briggs and Burke as they exhaust with their examples. One point I would like to highlight is when they cite Benjamin Taylor?s The World on Wheels: "The locomotive is an accomplished educator. It teaches everybody that virtue?we call punctuality. It waits for nobody. It demonstrates what a useful creature a minute is in the economy of things" (122). The new velocity changed physical space and time: a minute become more valuable; movement through space had to be on time. Simmel, via Jensen, noted a similar phenomenon of punctuality occurring in cities, which also introduced new velocities.
Taylor?s observation ("the economy of things") also highlights on issue raised by Wood and Graham in "Permeable Boundaries" when they claim that "collective sociality is becoming institutional sociality created by technologies of code." That is, Taylor displays a sense that the train began to privilege the mobility of things rather than the mobility of persons. Persons become objects to be moved. Or, Schivelbusch notes that a popular metaphor of the time transformed the train traveler to a mere parcel (54). Similarly, Schivelbusch demonstrates how the railroad created a new landscape. Velocity changed human potentiality, virtualization by changing meaningful space. All of this will probably strike Dan and others as technological determinism, but so be it.
Speaking of Schivelbusch, David raises a good point (I swear) when he says that although we have lost the particulars of the geographical space in which we walk, we have re-gained a continuity, a continuity of machines. I think here is where an updated understanding of the flaneur may be helpful to understanding mobile technologies. The digital flaneur panoramizes physical and digital spaces simultaneously. I will stop that thought here...
I also enjoyed Schivelbusch?s discussion of the compartment, and I thought it was an interesting switcheroo of sorts of the kinetic elite. When we encountered the kinetic elite in past reading, they were to be envied for their super-mobility and privileged status. The kinetic elite of the compartment, however, envied those who traveled in and enjoyed the conviviality of third class. I wonder if today?s kinetic elite have a similar feeling of isolation, or are they too smug to notice their own loneliness? Is first class a locus of trauma?
Marvin?s discussion of dazzling light shows demonstrates, again, how new velocities change meaning space and pertinent proximities. Light displays allowed people to actualize clouds as canvases and to create new spaces of intimacy. I do not wish to add to Marvin?s word count at this time.