MCIT Notes
WEEK 1 Distance (Proximity)
Questions:
1. What are modern communications media? And which infrastructures did they rely on?
2. How did technological infrastructures inform the modern experience of time and space?
3. How were modern communication media introduced differently (e.g. US vs Europe)?
Industrialization and Networks
Early Modern Period
ca 1500-1800 (starts either 1492, fall of Constantinople, or the Renaissance)
Important developments: mercantilism(economical), the reformation, colonialism,
experimental science
Modernity
ca 1800-1970 (starts either 1789 French Revolution, the Enlightenment, Industrial
Revolution)
Important developments: capitalism (economical), secularization ( the move away from the
church as a dominant social authority to seconder or worldly authorities) , industrialization,
urbanization, modern nation-states
Not to be confused with modernism
Networks existed before the early modern period.
Networks: connections between different places.
The Silk Road (150 BCE - 1450 CE) a trade route between China, Europa and North Africa.
Networks are valuable is allowed for trade thus economical relations and political relations. It
also facilitated cultural scholarly and religious exchange.
Romans roads (200 BC - 200 CE) where mainly use to transport military but also goods.
Therefore we can see that networks where validated way before the Early period.
Networks during the Early Modern period.
Postal routes for transporting messages and goods
Transatlantic slave trade (1600-1800) Europe enriches itself with goods through this trade.
,However in the Modern age new kinds of networks develop that are very different from earlier
networks. The main reason for this difference in Industrialization.
Industrialization
What marks the onset of the industrialization is the shift in energy sources:
wood, wind, water > iron, coal and steam power
Which increased productivity
Fast growth of population> urbanization
These new energy sources are behind many new technologies that were invented in the 19th and
20th centery.
The two waves of industrialization
First wave (1800-1860) introduces:
canals
postal networks (increasingly used
railroads
telegraph (optical and electric)
Second wave (1850-1900) introduces
gas and electricity supplies
urban transit systems (metro, train..)
telephone adoption of it as a domestic medium
later: wireless telegraphy/radio
Transport infrastructures: Modern Consciousness of Space and Time
Transport infrastructures: Trains
Around 1800: invention of the steam locomotive
1810s: steam-powered trains to transport coal
1825: first passenger trains in England
That in turn changes the way in which people experience the world
around them
The perceived space differently
,How did the invention of Trains transfer culture?
Before trains
Very few people traveled over long distances, only the rich. The traveler sees hears and smells the
surroundings you have time to engage with your surroundings. Travelers are smuggling with the
terrain and wether. All of that changes with the train.
The Modern consciousness of space
Railways tracks had to be cut into the landscape for them to be flat. They cut through and thus
somewhat ignore the landscape. They create straight and even lines between one point and
another. Higher travel speeds causes you to be ‘’shit through scape’’ It was 8x faster than the
horse carriage, people had never gone so fast.
literally cutting straight lines through the land scapes and ignoring or transforming the natural
landscape
, The modern concept of space
stands in contrast to a more natural ‘’landscape’'
relies on straight, flat lines between points
aims at mastery of expansive space (at the cost of a sense of the immediate environment,
we lose that) you don’t know how to get to point A to B if you do not go by metro for
instance.
Both an expansion (a lot more space becomes accessible through railroads) and a shrinking
(but thereby the world becomes smaller because it is so accessible) if our experience of
space
Speaking of ‘mastery’…
The transcontinental railroad was instrumental to the settlement of the Wild West and
the oppression and genocide of indigenous people. There for literally mastering and
domination its landscape and the people who inhabit them
Panoramic Travel:
One can not see ones immediate surroundings it gets blurred because of the speed so one stares
into the distance. It expands peoples experience of space, grasping the bigger picture the bigger
sense of space.
Panoramic view
Travel in a carriage > continuous sequence of impressions of the emirate
landscape and synesthetic experience of the environment (a full sensory
experience)
By contrast, speed of train travel disrupts that continuity and synesthesia. >
the immediate environment can not be grasped with an overstimulation of
vision but disconnected from other senses. (We don’t hear or smell)
Result: reorganisation of sensory experience.we looking into the distance to get
the bigger picture instead of focusing on our immediate surroundings. (Panoramic
view also was an important cultural role in the growing tourist industry, we want to
see these vistas (pleasing view).)
The Modern consciousness of time
A comparative time table shows the times in various cities in the US compared to Washington DC.
It is evidence of an earlier, ‘’pre-modern’’ approach to time persisting into the modern era.
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