version

Well-known member
I think it's taken for granted that everything's speeding up, but is it? I'd say some things can move faster than ever, but that doesn't mean they actually do. I'm thinking of stuff like ISPs throttling customers' internet, ballooning administration clogging things up in various sectors, Google allegedly hampering their own search results to keep people on the site longer.
 

Roobric

Well-known member
lots of examples, including ISPs, where speed is a service you pay a premium for rather than is foisted on you
 

Roobric

Well-known member
Commercial flights is an interesting one. You can pay to board earlier, sit closer to the exit, and get through security faster but you can't, of course, make the plane go any faster (even the fast security line can't really save you that much time). I don't know anything about planes, but I don't think they're getting any faster (?) and the Concorde was discontinued decades ago
 

version

Well-known member
Commercial flights is an interesting one. You can pay to board earlier, sit closer to the exit, and get through security faster but you can't, of course, make the plane go any faster (even the fast security line can't really save you that much time). I don't know anything about planes, but I don't think they're getting any faster (?) and the Concorde was discontinued decades ago


"Reading John Kerrigan’s description (LRB, 16 October) of Open Sky, Paul Virilio’s critique of the acceleration of history, aboard an interminable flight from London is enough to make one go ballistic: Virilio simply ignores the impact of energy economics and environmental rhetoric on the declining speed of jet travel. The inauguration in 1958 of a direct commercial service by Boeing 707s from Los Angeles to New York saw flight times of barely four hours. Today this flight takes six. On a recent 747 flight from Britain to Pakistan my portable satellite navigation receiver (GPS) noted an average speed of well under 400 knots – even as Virilio was writing Vitesse et politique in 1977, propeller-driven commercial aircraft were flying this route faster. Popular misperceptions of the effects of supersonic flights on stratospheric chemistry continue to retard the development of aircraft larger, faster and more fuel-efficient than the ageing Concorde."
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
Flying home from the US every now and again you’d get a freakish east coast gulf-stream gusting. Whispers would circulate of making Heathrow in under 6 hours as you boarded a near empty plane, which always refused upgrading anyone to 1st class (Branson you cunt)

Xanax and bourbon’s all you need!
 

version

Well-known member
Reading Speed and Politics atm and, despite what we were saying in the other thread about theorists and sweeping statements, one of the things I like about Virilio is him having his own great organising principle: it's not class, or wealth or anything like that, it's speed!
 
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