Experience of space shrinks as traversal time drops, annihilating space by time

Evidence

Increases in the speed of transportation lie at the root of the pervasive modern experience of a “shrinkage” or “compression” of space. The experience of space is to a great extent a function of the length of time it takes to traverse it. (“How far is it from Berlin to Paris?”—“10 hours by car or one hour by plane.”) While in the eighteenth century it took several weeks to get from Europe to America, today the journey only requires around six hours by plane. As a consequence the world seems to have shrunk to something like a sixtieth of its original size. Accelerating innovations in transportation are therefore mostly responsible for what can be described, following David Harvey and others, as “the annihilation of space by time.” — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 250

Categorization

• XREF: Distances in everyday speech are given in travel time, which connects to the reader’s past interest in infrastructure and how technology reshapes perception of space and place. — connects to: Time-space compression from flexible accumulation generates a crisis of representation in cultural forms — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 2035

Broader Connections

• Time-space compression from flexible accumulation generates a crisis of representation in cultural forms #corroborates (0.82) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 2035