Time and Space in the Internet Age

<p>This book analyzes how new technologies transformed life and thought between two periods 1880-1920 and 1980-2020 with a focus on temporal experiences of past present future and the spatial experiences of form distance and direction.</p><p>The signature contrast is between experiences of time and space transformed by the telephone in the earlier period and the Internet in the later period along with other sharp contrasts: the sinking of the <em>Lusitania</em> in 1915 and the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 World War I and the Gulf Wars gravity bombs and smart bombs the pandemics of 1918 and 2020 assembly lines and flexible production Farmer’s Almanacs and computer-based weather predictions cash transactions and one-click ordering decolonization and globalization internationalism and planetarity. The book also makes three interpretive arguments: the <i>Epistemological Argument</i> covers how greater knowledge introduced uncertainties; the <i>Ethical Argument</i> tracks how new technologies prompted ethical judgments about their value; and the <i>Re-hierarchizing Argument</i> tracks the erosion of spatial hierarchies most notably in religion society and politics with the increasing progress of secularization social mobility and democratization.</p><p><i>Time and Space in the Internet Age </i>is a thought-provoking study for academics and general readers interested in the history of technology and science.</p>