Diablogue #3, Part 3: Hurry up and stop

Welcome to Part 3 of our [slow] musings on the nature of Speed.  Here, The Owl’s Post takes up where we left off in Part 2, to question whether speed and slowness are necessarily polar extremes, or whether in fact they interact and co-mingle as counterparts to progress.  The following is a precis of the full article.  Over to you, Ms. Damatac…

 

Speed Limits, a 2009 exhibition by Stanford University professor Jeffrey Schnapp, “explores the concept of speed and its cultural evolution in all aspects of life, including construction and production, household functions, traffic and transit, and workplace rhythms, into its role in contemporary life”.  The exhibit also seeks to “enhance conceptions of the contrasts between fast and slow and also questions our reliance on speed and its effects”.  A series of talks led by Schnapp and spawned by his Speed Limits exhibit further ponders this mercurial entity’s seeming plethora of roles and incarnations, most interestingly by juxtaposing speed, industrialism, and modernity with slowness, naturalism, and tradition.  Here, we pay close attention to two speakers in Schnapp’s exhibition who focus on the role of speed in modernity, technology, architecture, and, ultimately, in society and life.

Speed as consequence of slowness

In one of Speed Limits’ talks, Guy Nordensen, a professor of architecture and structural engineering at Princeton University and the founder of engineering giant Arup’s New York City arm, linked speed with its slower kin:  resoluteness, deliberation, tenacity, and premeditation.  Emphasizing the importance of thoroughness and thoughtfulness in the development and experiencing of new methodologies, Nordensen draws parallels between the advancement of technology with the unlikeliest of subjects:  poetry and samurai sword making.

>> Read on at The Owl’s Post.

Slowness as consequence of speed

Professor Jeff Meikle of University of Texas – Austin analyzes speed from a different perspective in Speeding Towards Statis, another Speed Limits talk.  Centered on what he calls the “central paradox of modernity”, Meikle focuses on the beginnings of streamlined architecture in the United States during the 1930s, which pulled away from ostentatiousness and ornamentation in its architectures and industrial structures (it was the Great Depression, after all) and began to more increasingly focus on simplicity, austerity, and speed.

>> More, at The Owl’s Post.

Meikle makes an excellent point:  what is all of this speed for if it gets us nowhere and seems to hold nothing dear or sacred?  Therein lies what he calls the “central paradox of modernity”:

No matter how impressive is technology in our daily life or in social relationships, no matter how tenacious our attempts to enjoy the results of  our modernization…everything we rely on will be swept away in accelerating process of continuous transformation.  Speed, sometimes a literal multiplier of the process, sometimes a metaphor through which to represent it, is of the essence.”

In other words, Meikle asks:  should the means also be the end?  Upon continuing his talk, we discover not only the answer (no, speed is not an end), but also his elegant solution to this paradox of modernity, which he summarized, most appropriately, in four simple words:  “hurry up and stop”.  The increasingly faster machines, modes of transportation, and technologies are not only meant to get us from Point A to B in minimal time, but are also meant to allow us to take more time in enjoying the results, the destination.  Meikle also adds that the increasingly streamlined stylings of transportation, mass products, and commercial environments not only celebrate modernity, but also interestingly reflect and even mimic the more organic, unornamented forms found in nature…the very thing that lamentors of modernity initially feared losing.

Hurry up and stop, then, shall we?  Life awaits.

Tags: Culture, Diablogue, Society