In the development of societies, the territorial rule which was exercised by means of the spatial concept of order'is followed by that which has devoted itself to the dynamized concept of motion, progress', progress through acceleration. Acceleration uses time as motion for strategic goals. Deadly in battle, quickness, i.e. being quicker than the others, has been preserved in competition and is being cultivated in increasingly sophisticated form. Economic competition, now spread throughout the world and functioning as a driving force of world economic events, remains ultimately rooted in that development which uses the acceleration of the machine to increase productivity. Laboratory time, which is inherent in the new communication technologies, is employed to economic advantage to transfer information to other areas of production and of services, to create additional infrastructures, and for the purpose of continued accelerated scientific and technological innovation. Acceleration facilitates mobility, and mobility promises further mobilization. Even sport, the institutionalized competition of bodies in aggressive conflicts, prepared in a way suited to the media, between nations and regions, towns and districts, ultimately appears as an appendage to the extra-somatically accelerated body-machine. In the struggle for, and the cult surrounding, the proverbial tenths of a second, scientifically based training methods are used which are able to take into account the bodily functions of athletes dependent on their biorhythms, as well as the smallest advantages which technological equipment has to offer. A gigantic machinery of innovation has been set in motion here, which leads to a powerfully growing branch of industry ranging from the solitary sport of body-building to the frenzied stages of experimentation by industry in motor racing. In view of this collective cult of speed, from which no nation is exempt, the strategies of slowing down look really pathetic and defensive: cycleways are set up in the towns, speed limits introduced on the motorways, and for his novel The Discovery of Slowness the author Sten Nadolny needed a historical figure who, in his strange habits of thought and perception, seemed eerie even to his contemporaries. The braking experiments will undoubtedly be continued and in part even institutionalized - but is not a well-functioning braking device part of every decently constructed machine? Must not everyone who operates a machine know in what circumstances it is to be accelerated and in what circumstances it is to be slowed down? Thus slowness is ultimately cancelled out in the continued acceleration; the latter relativizes itself through the former. Social development does not proceed totally in conformity with machines, of course, but the interdependences are irreversibly aimed at acceleration. The Stone Age reflex of quickness in flight and in battle has developed throughout social evolution into a scientific and technological civilization which is continuing to accelerate. This is the time of the background which it is of central importance for every other temporal strategy to recognize.
The Longing for the Moment
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