S urely we can't fail to see the enormous time diference that exists, today, between our at once untimely and i nteractive practi ces - p ractices involved in supersonic transpo rt and instantaneous transmissi o n - and our daily l i fe, now so exhausted , so deprived of the intervals of time needed fo r reflection and responsible actio n . This is to say nothing o f the 'casino economy' , that infernal mach i ne that is i mpossible to stop before a SYSTEM IC CRAS H , the shipwreck of the o rigi nal Ark, o ccurs, l eadi ng, th i s time, to a chaos we can well imagine . . . A Ch ro nic UTO PIA, or a topical UC H RON IA, as some people might call the fut u re b i rth of a great M i ni stry of the Times or, m o re precisely, of the weather, le temps qu 'il fait, and the time needed , le temps qu 'il faut, here below, in the depths of a fo reclosed wo rld. A world that would, in the end, deserve th is AERO PO LITICS of the periodicity o f what is vital for chronophage societies, keen to crash, tomorrow, into the C I RCULAR time barrier at the end of the tunnel of LIN EAR historici ty. C ERN ' s 'G reat H adron Collider' in G eneva has become the perfect symbol of a postmodern ret u rn o f i ll u m i n is m , the i l l u m i n i sm of the cult of light speed for a history operating in a diferent time zone fro m all co mmon reality.
THE GREAT ACCELERATOR
1 Gilles Lapouge, La Ugmde de Ia geonzpl1ie. Paris: Albin Michel, 2009.
29