Tuesday, March 06, 2007

The Third Interval?

Like many previous works that we have read and examined in this course, The Third Interval once again deals with Technology and it's effects on the society in terms of connecting time and space. The sense of acceleration that the Technology provides, both in it's ability to mold space and time, but at same time, to alientate a body from this given space. Technology allows two bodies to communicate while sharing no common physical space and yet allows the two bodies to be "present" and "interacting" at the same time. This builds a sort of contininuity, a connection between objects that is impossible to break, but, at same time, placing a gap between these objects - to some extent a barrier.

As you immerse yourself in the "real-time", and become accustomed to the 1's and 0's that provide you with this virtual world that is is occuring in real-time, you no longer become a player of the universe, but another object that is being connecting within this web. This link cannot exist without it's objects, thus, as is, the human's intrigue and interest in using and exploiting this vast network feeds the web and adds to its engulfing and alienating powers. The essay argues that this "enslavement" leads to a transformation from so-called 'real' moment to a detachment from the time and space and eventual loss of yourself.

The acceleration that the technology provides as well as the vast realities that it offers breaks the need to obtain 'real' moments with other people and simply seek the better and faster 'real time' that the technology makes possible. This parallels the works such as Charlie Chaplin's The Modern Times, where this wonderful technologies serves as a medium that detaches Charlie Chaplin's character and provides this barrier between him and other workers as he simply becomes just another object that is enslaved within the Techonology.



This essay was indeed very dense and seemed very scientific in nature as it defined many terms as it gave its analysis. I was very intrigued how it used light as the cosmological constant that linked Time and Space, i.e. "Time and Space are inconceivabel without light". Light, or light-speed, is usually thought of as a physical traversal through space, and as we've discussed in The Time Machine, there is this link between time being traveled as another dimension, just as space is. I am wondering why the author decided to describe time as a "positive sign" and space as a "negative sign". It continues to say that this lays out the geography and history of the world, but I would think that would mean going back in time, or looking at time with a "negative sign". Perhaps we'll find out what he mean by all this=/

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1 Comments:

Blogger thoughtsthatcantwait said...

I agree, technology and society seems to be a popular theme in this course. What you brought up regarding people meeting online brings up an interesting idea that technology is creating new spaces. There is not only physical spaces, like conference rooms and parks, where people can meet, but cyber places. Even this blogger site is a cyber place. It connects people together yet, we don't ever really meet. And like physical spaces, each cyber place has it's own characteristics: it could be an online journal, a facebook, a chatroom, or a phone call.

4/30/2007 12:10 AM  

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