{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","title":"Pressed for Time The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780226196473","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","id":"0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","uuid":"0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","title":"Pressed for Time The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism","normalized_title":"pressedfortimetheaccelerationoflifeindigitalcapitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780226196473","isbns":["9780226196473","9780226196503"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":228,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Pressed%20for%20Time%20The%20Acceleration%20of%20Life%20in%20Digital%20Capitalism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50/search"},"page":{"printed_page":17,"pdf_page":29,"physical_index":29,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"d1d5ee93acf29021d433f305e654d1f9dc1bb964dc37aa90f0370b9e31a85da3"},"chapter":"Pressed for Time","content":"Such discussions of acceleration typically invoke Karl Marx’s analysis of capitalism and the constant need to speed up the circulation of capital. The faster that money can be turned into the production of goods and services, the greater the power of capital to expand or valorize itself. With capitalism, time is literally money, and “when time is money, then faster means better” and speed becomes an unquestioned and unquestionable good.6 Technological innovations play a key role in that improvements in the conveyance of communication, commodities, and bodies reduce the cost and time of capital circulation across the globe (what Marx called the “annihilation of space by time”). The extent to which such time-space compression would be fulfilled, however, was unforeseen by Marx.\n\nDevelopments in the speed of transport and communications have shrunk the globe, from the horse-drawn coach and sailing ship to jet aircraft today. Yet it was only with the invention of the telegraph in the 1830s that the carriage of bodies by wheel, sail, and steam was challenged by the transport of messages at speeds dramatically diferent from those that had previously existed. The telegraph meant that a message could be delivered at a tiny fraction of the time aforded by physical transport.\n\nElectronic communication has increased this speed in exponential ways. The velocity of automated financial trading, which is now moving from milliseconds to microseconds (millionths of a second), has become emblematic. This is far faster than human reaction times, which typically range from around 140 milliseconds for auditory stimuli to 200 milliseconds for visual stimuli. In this context, even a 5-second pause can seem like a very long time.7 Indeed, the exponential growth in Internet transmission speeds over the last 100 years is accelerating to the point where data can be transferred at a sustained rate of 186 gigabits per second, a rate equivalent of moving 2 million gigabytes in a single day.8\n\nHig h-Speed Society\n\n17","previous_page":16,"next_page":18}