Why don't we take this deadly OVER-EXPOSURE of private life that �s now spreading as far as the eye can see j ust a li ttle bit further? Imagine that, following on from the fixed cameras set up at major in tersections to ensure road trafic safety or at the entrances to buildings to ensure security, couch surfi ng is already taking us to the next, the ul timate, level of revelation . lhis is where the Google Home inspector turns up on your doorstep, covered in portable cameras designed to reveal to all and sundry the level of comfort o f the bathrooms on ofer to low-budget tourists benefitting from the hospitality of the Internet's social networks!
'The acceleration of History is disturbing. We're forced to call ourselves into question much more ro utinely than i n the past. [ <sub>. . .</sub> ] lhe shifting present causes great anxiety. O ur sense of the everyday is swept away by a feeling of inevitability. lhat feeling amounts to a kind of collective depression.' So said Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, France's then Secretary of State for Strategic Planning, in the summer of 2009 . But talking of 'depression' isn't saying much . Wherever acceleration of the reality of the moment prevails over acceleration of the history of the famous 'shiftip.g presen t', what is called into question, at every instant, is the real presence o f people and things that, only yesterday, seemed to lastingly surround us. As an elderly friend, whose young wife never stopped travelling, sadly confessed to me once: 'She doesn 't travel to forget she's j ust used to not seemg me anymore.
THE GREAT ACCELERATOR
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