{"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":46,"pdf_page":58,"physical_index":58,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"1fad646c6c8e9459ac528074f0d11f7d3a3cf0261211da3c9d6d8066095710c4"},"chapter":"Pressed for Time","content":"However, Giddens is unclear about the precise forces that produce these shifts. His discussion moves between ofering a metatheory of space and time and a focus on how modern societies actually organize these dimensions. Either way, he does not pay much attention to the role of communication systems in shaping the modern experience.23 This is at least in part because he treats technology as an autonomous force rather than as a sociomaterial ensemble of humans, machines, infrastructures, institutions, and everyday practices. The modern experience of time was actively reconstituted together with the technologies that fostered it. And the commodification of time that underpinned industrial capitalism relied on a whole range of interconnected technological innovations.\n\nIt is salutary, then, to recall the less familiar tale of the telegraph’s role in the development of commodity markets. According to Carey, the telegraph was the critical instrument in making time the new frontier for commerce. Before the telegraph, markets were relatively independent of one another and the principal method of trading was arbitrage: buying cheap and selling dear by physically moving goods around. When the prices of commodities were equalized in space as a result of the telegraph, however, commodity trading moved from trading between places to trading between times, shifting speculation from space to time, from arbitrage to futures.\n\nIn eliminating space as an arena of arbitrage, therefore, the growth of communications gave rise to the futures market. In order to develop, futures markets required three conditions: that information moved faster than products, that prices were uniform in space and decontextualized, and that commodities be separated from the receipts that represent them and be reduced to uniform grades. The shift of market activity from certain space to uncertain time was, Carey remarks, “the first practical attempt to make time a new frontier, a newly defined zone of uncertainty, and to penetrate it with the price system.”24 In a sense, the telegraph invented the future.\n\nChapter two\n\n46","previous_page":45,"next_page":47}