Speed up or slow down? Social theory in the information age

Abstract

Extreme processes of social and cultural acceleration lie at the heart of the information age but social theory, for the most part, continues to be a slow and patient affair. In view of this, this paper asks how such theory is to respond to the speed-up of social life and culture. Should it attempt to keep pace with a world that is changing faster than ever? Or is the strength of theory that it is a slow, detached and reflective form that lies outside the accelerated logic of contemporary capitalist culture? In an attempt to address such questions, this paper considers two main alternatives: first, that theory should follow the speed-up of the world by technologizing itself (as argued by Scott Lash and Peter Lunenfeld), and second, and seemingly contrary to this, that in times of cultural speed-up theory should either call for social and cultural slow-down (Marshall McLuhan, Paul Virilio), slow down itself (Jean Baudrillard), or perhaps both. In considering these alternatives, media theory (associated with the above figures) is used as a resource for questioning the focus and form of social theory today.

Keywords:

• acceleration
• events
• speed
• new media
• technology
• theory

Notes

1. Interestingly, Harmut Rosa suggests that changes in the pace of life might be measured in concrete ways. Subjectively, he says that ‘an acceleration of the speed of life…is likely to have effects on individuals’ experience of time: it will cause people to consider time as scarce, to feel hurried and under time pressure and stress’ (2003, p. 9). The acceleration of life can also be measured objectively, he claims, first, by examining the ‘contraction of the time spent on definable episodes or “units” of action like eating, sleeping, going for a walk…since “acceleration” implies that we do more things in less time’, and second, by ‘measuring the tendency to “compress” actions and experiences, i.e. to do and experience more within a given period of time by reducing the pauses and intervals and/or by doing more things simultaneously’ (2003, pp. 9–10). One of the key challenges for social theory today, however, which Rosa does not pursue at length, is to analyse the role played by new communications technologies in driving such processes of acceleration, and with this to look at the connection of such technologies to emergent forms of ‘fast’ capitalist society and culture (Agger 1989; 2004). On the latter connection, see Gane (2003).

2. More conventional readings of critical theory, meanwhile, attempt to reclaim the distance between critique and its object. Ben Agger, for example, asserts that ‘distance (as opposed to immersion) affords clarity of vision’ (2004, p. 1). For this reason, he remains cautious of media technologies that threaten to erode distance, along with the space in which critique itself may play out. For Lash, meanwhile, there appears to be no turning back from these technologies: either we use them as part of a reconfigured (technologised) critical theory or we fall behind in our analysis.

3. Ben Agger takes a similar position in his outline of ‘slowmodernity’ in Speeding Up Fast Capitalism (2004). He recommends that we ‘periodically shut down the electronic prostheses dictating our worlds and lives…Shut off the cell phone; ignore email; disable the answering machine and caller ID’ (Agger 2004, p. 157). Unlike McLuhan, however, Agger ties this to a Marxist project of political resistance (albeit a rather unusual one): ‘Eating more fish and less meat, working out regularly, finding jobs that don't require dishonesty and alienation, and decelerating the pace of children's lives and schooling can be become not only personal adjustments – alternative lifestyles – but genuine modes of counterhegemony’ (Agger 2004, p. 142).

4. An early recognition of the problem of inertia by acceleration is to be found in the work of Daniel Bell: ‘During any manned space flight, there is a data transmission of the rate of 52 kilobits per second, the equivalent of an Encyclopedia Britannica every minute. Between 1961 and February 1974, there were 318 days of manned space flights. How many encyclopedias does that make?’ (Bell 1980, p. 57).

5. Baudrillard's idea of symbolic exchange (a form of exchange based upon reciprocity and reversibility rather than the straightforward accumulation of economic value) is one variant of this argument. For an outline of the potential conflict between symbolic exchange and so-called ‘rational’ systems of value see Gane (2002, pp. 131–50).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicholas Gane

Nicholas Gane is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Communications at Brunel University, UK. His publications include Max Weber and Postmodern Theory (Palgrave, 2002) and The Future of Social Theory (Continuum, 2004).