Technical innovations and their industrial implementation drive waves of acceleration

Evidence

This leads me to conjecture that waves of acceleration, as the core of the modernization process, are produced in particular by technical innovations and their industrial implementation. The introduction of the steam engine into factories and, soon after, the construction of railroads; the mass diffusion of bicycles and then automobiles and later planes; the acceleration of communication through telegraphs and then through telephones and finally through the Internet; the social entrenchment of transistor radios and “moving pictures”: all these forms of the technological acceleration of transport, communication, and production altered the lifeworld and everyday culture in occasionally shocking and traumatic ways and led to a shifting sense (Empfindung) of being-in-time and being-in-the-world. Since the industrial revolution, as Stefan Breuer remarks drawing on Virilio, this world appears to befall subjects “unceasingly, with the violence of an accident,” so that medical concepts of shock and trauma appear to be completely appropriate categories to use. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 169

Categorization

• XREF: Rosa touts technical acceleration as the core driver here, linking forward to his fuller threefold account (technical, social, pace-of-life) developed later in the book. — connects to: Technology develops a self-sustaining momentum beyond its original drivers — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 393; Technical acceleration spans material processing plus transport and communication speed — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 252; Technological innovation is pushed from behind, not pulled toward a goal — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 394 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Technical acceleration spans material processing plus transport and communication speed #expands (0.90) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 252
• Technology develops a self-sustaining momentum beyond its original drivers #expands (0.85) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 393
• Technological innovation is pushed from behind, not pulled toward a goal #corroborates (0.80) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 394
• Competition among capitals and commodified labor drive rapid technological development #qualifies (0.80) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 163