Refreshingly, although Virilio is known as the “high priest of speed,” he argues that speeding up is not unique to the digital age.24 Rather, he suggests that we can read the history of modernity as a series of innovations in ever-increasing time compression. His analysis of speed encompasses nineteenth-century transport (trains, cars, and airplanes) that dramatically shortened travelling time, twentieth-century transmission (the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer and satellite communications) that have replaced succession and duration with simultaneity and instantaneity, and transplantation that compresses time by providing xenotransplantation and nanotechnology. Each of these technological innovations enhances the independence of the social relations of time from space and the body.
Although Virilio’s concern is to identify broad societal trends, he is highly attuned to contradictions and countervailing tendencies, unlike the theorists referred to above. For example, new modes of transport massively compress the time of travel but also lead to standing still in trafic jams in big cities.25 Endless queues in crowded lobbies are characteristic of travel by plane, delays and cancellations an integral part of commuting by train. Virilio’s dromological law, which states that increase in speed increases the potential for gridlock, seems more and more apt. He is also aware that political conflicts may ensue, because acceleration afects diferent individuals, groups, and classes in uneven ways. For instance, trafic jams and waiting times do not have the same impact on everyone, as the money-rich-but time-poor can use their wealth to purchase speed.26
Hig h-Speed Society
23