{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908","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":"bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908","id":"bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908","uuid":"bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908","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/bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908","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/bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908/search"},"page":{"printed_page":48,"pdf_page":60,"physical_index":60,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"602d010769fd29cdb65ed482a326ecc7cb9c632c9d39c4bb2cbf0d7e629a9f73"},"chapter":"Pressed for Time","content":"A common feature of the avant-gardists was their wholesale rejection of the past, of everything old, and an exuberance about “the new.” Accordingly, they were especially enthusiastic about new technologies, such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city. Steel, concrete, and sheet glass were preferred over brickwork, the legacy of which can be seen in every major city of the world. From the outset, modernist architects sought to rebuild the urban landscape through rational planning and engineering in order to deliver an enhanced, dynamic lifestyle. As Le Corbusier famously said, “A city made for speed is made for success,” and the car was therefore integral to its design.27\n\nItaly was the birthplace of futurism, and it was here that the first motorways were built. By the end of the 1920s they covered over four thousand kilometers and were touted by Benito Mussolini as one of his greatest achievements and proof of his commitment to progress and modernization. The pure hedonism of speeding on a motorway would later be captured in the electronic, repetitive rhythms of the German technoband Kraftwerk’s song “Autobahn,” named after the expressway system, which uniquely has few speed limits.\n\nIn extolling the virtues of rational, functional planning, what modernists like Le Corbusier overlooked was the fundamental ambiguity that the urban experience would induce. It was the German sociologist Georg Simmel who anticipated the nervous stimulation and sensory overload generated by the tempo of metropolitan life, as we shall see. But first, I want to pause for a moment to describe the two opposing facets of machine speed itself—that it represents both economic growth and violent destruction.\n\nThe futurists best captured the aesthetic excitement of those transformations in everyday life associated with the new celebratory culture of machine speed. In doing so, they identified three core elements of the modern twentieth century’s cultural imagination, as Tomlinson outlines:\n\nChapter two\n\n48","previous_page":47,"next_page":49}