Who would have thought? Sandy Berger is cleared of the most serious accusations against him (stealing original documents), but nary a peep in the mainstream press ...
I claim no originality for the observation that the news cycle seems to be getting faster, and think that this phenomena of the all-clear not getting the publicity of the 'crime' probably part of the "faster politics" idea.
But the observation that events are occurring faster, that somehow history is speeding up, is a long-standing one that you find people making from the 19th century through the present day. I'd wager that the perception that history is speeding up is all part of the larger bundle of social phenomena we call "modernity".
Now, to the extent that transport and communication have definitely speeded up, the notion that the course of history has too, isn't so far-fetched.
But the people who observe that events are going faster rarely measure what they're talking about. Conversely, the people who have looked at how for example, it takes a few hours to physically get from London to New York now, when it used to take days, don't expand on the meaning of that. The only person who seems to have tried, that I've read, is Manuel Castells, in his door-stopping triology wasn't pretty!
Posted by robe0419 at August 3, 2004 4:16 PM