By Thomas Hylland Eriksen
The flip of the millennium is characterised by way of exponential progress in every little thing regarding verbal exchange – from the web and e mail to air site visitors. Tyranny of the instant offers with probably the most difficult paradoxes of this new details age. Who might have anticipated that it sounds as if time-saving know-how ends up in time being scarcer than ever? And has this probably unlimited entry to info ended in confusion instead of enlightenment? Eriksen argues that sluggish time – deepest sessions the place we will imagine and correspond with out interruption – is now the most helpful assets we've got. considering the fact that we're theoretically 'online' 24 hours an afternoon, we needs to struggle for the proper to be unavailable – the proper to dwell and imagine extra slowly. it isn't merely that operating hours became longer – Eriksen additionally indicates how the common sense of this new info know-how has permeated each zone of our lives. Exploring phenomena similar to the net, wap phones, multi- channel tv and e-mail, Eriksen examines this non-linear and fragmented approach of speaking to bare the way it impacts operating stipulations within the financial system, adjustments in family members existence and, finally, own id. Eriksen argues tradition missing a feeling of its previous, and for this reason of its destiny, is successfully static. even supposing strategies are advised, he demonstrates that there's no effortless manner out.
Read Online or Download Tyranny of the Moment: Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age PDF
Best democracy books
Term Limits and Legislative Representation
Legislative time period limits are an important electoral reform at the political schedule within the usa. time period Limits and Legislative illustration assessments the significant arguments made by way of either supporters and competitors of the reform via studying the adventure of Costa Rica, the single long term democracy to impose time period limits on legislators, and by means of delivering wide comparisons with legislatures in Venezuela and the us.
The Deadlock of Democracy in Brazil
Many nations have experimented with diverse electoral principles so as both to extend involvement within the political approach or show you how to shape sturdy governments. Barry Ames explores this crucial subject in a single of the world's so much populous and demanding democracies, Brazil. This booklet locates one of many resources of Brazil's "crisis of governance" within the nation's distinct electoral method, a method that produces a multiplicity of vulnerable events and individualistic, pork-oriented politicians with little responsibility to voters.
Marx, Tocqueville, and race in America : the "absolute democracy" or "defiled republic"
Whereas Alexis de Tocqueville defined the United States because the 'absolute democracy,' Karl Marx observed the country as a 'defiled republic' as long as it approved the enslavement of blacks. during this insightful political background, Nimtz argues that Marx and his companion, Frederick Engels, had a much more acute and insightful examining of yankee democracy than Tocqueville simply because they well-known that the overthrow of slavery and the cessation of racial oppression have been relevant to its cognizance.
The European Union and British Democracy: Towards Convergence
This ebook seems to be at evolving developments in democracy at ecu and united kingdom degrees, stating the first shortcomings of either. It examines the connection among democratic practices of the european and the united kingdom, explaining the anomaly of ways within which the ecu, regardless of the terrible caliber of its personal democracy, has enabled devolved choice making in a singular multi-layer polity.
Additional resources for Tyranny of the Moment: Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age
Example text
Before the telephone became common among the middle class at the beginning of the twentieth century, professional politicians tended to live in certain neighbourhoods. This was practical, since an important part of their job consisted in coordination and lobbying outside office hours. Then they each got their telephone; suddenly they could live wherever they wanted, and many moved out of the city centres. Another example is the typewriter. The first mechanical ‘writing machine’ was Malling’s Writing Ball, invented by the Danish priest Hans Rasmus Johann Malling Hansen in 1867.
During the following decades, the new technology spread to cover the central parts of Europe, and books became increasingly inexpensive. The first printing shop in England was founded by William Caxton in 1476. Caxton was printer, editor, book salesman and publisher (a common combination as late as the nineteenth century), and he contributed in no small degree to standardising English orthography and syntax. Printing entailed standardisation in other countries as well, and facilitated access to books written in native languages, at the expense of Latin.
If the computers let us down, we are helpless – we cannot simply return to the feather pen, pretending everything is as it used to be. ) Further, it heralds the coming of a new politics, where the relationships between local and global forces, roots and impulses, traditional culture and a multi-ethnic reality set an agenda where there are no ready-made solutions available. It also creates a new existential situation for many people, who may (or have to) redefine themselves from day to day, in a context which lacks stability and predictability, where people are both free to choose and unfree not to choose.
