10 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2018


      See: Adam 1990 and 2004 See: Giddens' structuration theory

    1. This means also that the predominantly linear time is comp-lemented by greater awareness of cyclical times and temporal routines which are overlapping each other.

      Evokes Adam's timescape concepts of other shapes/dimensions beyond linear/clock time experiences.

      This passage also seems to touch on Reddy et al's focus on temporal rhythms as an activity strategy

  2. Jul 2018


    1. However, as Mark Poster points out, 'the new level of interconnectivity heightens the fragility of the social net­works. '·50 The source of control now undermines its execu­tion. For clock time to exist and thus to be measurable and controllable there has to be duration, an interval between two points in time. Without duration there is no before and after, no cause and effect, no stretch of time to be measured. The principles of instantaneity and simultaneity of action across space, as I have shown in chapter 3, are encountered in quantum physics; they have no place in the Newtonian world of causality and bodies in motion, the world chat we as embodied beings inhabit. The control of time that has reached the limit of compression has been shifted into a time world where notions of control are meaningless. More like the realm of myths and mysticism, the electronic world of interchangeable no-where and now-here requires knowledge and modes of being that are alien to the industrial way of life. Other modes of temporal existence, therefore, may hold some viral keys, their 'primitive' understanding of time point­ing not ro control but to more appropriate ways of being in the realm of insrantaneity.

      Adam argues that control of time is futile in an interconnected network where hyper-compression has effectively rendered duration/intervals of time as unmeasurable.

      If temporality cannot be "measured, fixed, regulated or controlled" (see timescapes image), then time cannot be controlled.

      Subsequently, we need other approaches to be "in the realm of instantaneity."

    2. I propose that we think a bout temporal relations with reference to a cluster of tem­poral features, each implicated in all the others but not nec­essarily of equal importance in each instance. We might call this cluster a timescape. The notion of 'scape' is important here as it indicates, first, that time is inseparable from space and matter, and second, that context matters.

      Definition of timescape -- "a cluster of temporal features, each implicated in all the others but not nec­essarily of equal importance in each instance."

    3. From the above we can see that Virilio understands human history in terms of a race with time, of ever-increasing speeds that transcend humans' biological capacity. To theorize culture without the dromosphere, that is, the sphere of beings in motion, he therefore sugges,ts, misses the key point of cul­tural activity and the uniqueness of the industrial way of life. Without an explicit conceptualization of the contemporary dromosphere -or in my terms timescape -it is thus difficult to fully understand the human-technology-science-economy­equity-environmenr constellation. Moreover, it becomes impossible to appreciate that people are che weakest link when the time frames of action are compressed to zero and effects expand to eternity, when transmission and transplan­tation are instantaneous but their outcomes extend into an open future, when instantaneity and eternity are combined in a discordant fusion of all times.

      Adam's critique of Virilio's incomplete theory on time compression as it related to cultural transformation. Claims it lacks adequate theoretical description/understanding of how people in the high-tempo dromosphere in his writings, (timescape in her work) interact with time.

      Adam further notes how important it is to understand how people factor into discordant time compressions through everyday sociocultural interactions -- which she refers to as "the human-technology-science-economy-equity-environment constellation."

      This is pretty dense theoretical work. Would help to find an example or two in the SBTF time study to make this idea a little more accessible.

    4. The Quest for Time Control

      Additional notes here that contrast Reddy and Adam for SBTF time study paper:


    1. hey create what Adam [1] calls the ‘expanded present’, by creating a relevant past and future that serves to enrich the moment.

      Adam's timescape concept