Humans become antiquated because meaning-processing cannot keep pace with change
Evidence
The way time resources become scarce, as Luhmann already observed, is a consequence of the fact that there seems to be no time scarcity for changes in the environment, whereas the resources of each respective individual for processing these changes are inevitably limited: the time horizon (of each respective individual) and the (“objective”) structure of expectations increasingly come apart, or, in Blumenberg’s categories, the time of life and the time of the world become more and more incongruent. … It is the meaning-processing property of the human being that makes it “antiquated,” as Günther Anders already conjectured. He also expressed the structural ineliminability of the scarcity of time resources when he observed that in the modern world everything that requires a long time lasts too long, and everything that asks for time asks for too much time. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 432
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Contextless screen experiences erase memory traces, unlike identity-linked ones. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 403; Word meanings shift slowly or fast based on social change — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2399; People stretch old frameworks to fit new phenomena rather than abandon them (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Linguistic form lags behind radical historical change
#corroborates(0.85) - Word meanings shift slowly or fast based on social change
#expands(0.82) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2399 - People stretch old frameworks to fit new phenomena rather than abandon them
#complicates(0.75) - Metaphors destabilize when the practices they describe change
#corroborates(0.75)