Event Host: Center for Historical Research
Short Description: This talk traces dialectically the impact of new accelerating technologies from 1880 to the present and shows how they also stimulated new thinking about and experiences of slower paces.
Commentator | Christopher Otter, Professor, Department of History
Speaker | Stephen Kern, Humanities Distinguished Professor, Department of History
Commentators judge that new speedy communication, transportation and production technologies over the past 40 years have created many unforeseen problems including unemployment, mental illness, alienation, addiction and environmental degradation, problems that some interpret as crises. This talk traces dialectically the impact of these new accelerating technologies from 1880 to the present and shows how they also stimulated new thinking about and experiences of slower paces. It argues that a fuller understanding of an acceleration of experience should interpret how contrasting paces as faster or slower arise out of each other. The new technologies also increased choices for whatever pace was appropriate for many human needs, presto or adagio, that those increasing choices had positive existential value.
Register for the event. Free and open to the public.