The first question to be asked regarding scale in transience is whether the world is getting bigger or smaller. This question is complicated, because the answer would probably be ‘both’, as these two processes can be seen as parallel, sequential or even circular. The second question would be who (or what) is moving, and if this “unit” by itself is getting bigger or smaller. But transience in relation to scale not only raises the question of what is moving, but also how far and how fast; and how all of these factors influence or affected by the dynamic relationship of time and space.
Take 1
Zygmunt Bauman in his essay Time and space reunited suggests a fascinating perspective on the relationship between time and space that has changed dramatically from what he calls “heavy modernity” to “light modernity”. According to him “the appearance of vehicles quicker than human or animal legs could ever be and the fact that vehicles, unlike humans or animals, could be made quicker and quicker” [1], changed our whole perspective and use of time and space. “Time became something humans could invent, build, appropriate, use and control – time became a question independent of inert and immutable dimensions of land masses or seas. Time was different from space because, unlike space, it could be changed and manipulated – and most importantly, made shorter, less costly, and so more productive.”[2]
In that era, which he defines as the age of hardware or heavy modernity, territorial conquest was an obsession. “Adventure and happiness, wealth and might were geographical concepts or ‘landed properties’ – tied to the place and immovable”[3]. They grew with the territorial size and the ability to protect and control its boundaries. Territory was to achieve by faster machines, or in other words, “accelerating time was the only means of enlarging space”[4]. Space was the value, time was the tool, and so the modern civilization has “focused on filling the space with objects more densely and expanding the space that could be so filled in a given time”[5]. The ability to protect and manage the territory was to achieve first through “the image of the map, closely guarded and tightly controlled”[6], but as Bauman puts it, “Space was truly possessed when controlled – and control meant, first and foremost, time coordination”[7].
While referring to General Motors’ ‘Willow Run’ plant in Michigan , Bauman says that “the logic of power and the logic of control were combined with the logic of the boundary separating the ‘inside’ from the ‘outside’; once blended in one; they were embodied in the logic of size, organized around one precept: bigger is more efficient. In heavy modernity, progress meant big size and spatial expansion”[8], though, enlargement and the accumulation of space was their strength as much as it was their weakness, “their hotbed, their fortress and their prison”[9].
“After 68 years of arming the nation and putting America on wheels, the Willow Run manufacturing plant in southeast Michigan closed on Thursday. The 5-million-square-foot powertrain plant, owned by Motors Liquidation Corp. (Autoweek, Lauren Abdel-Razzaq on 12/24/2010)
That part of history, as Bauman claims, is now coming to its end with the advent of software capitalism and light modernity, as oppose to hardware and heavy modernity. In the software universe space can be traversed, literally, in ‘no time’ while the meaning of distance is cancelled. Furthermore, “there is no time-distance separating the end from the beginning; the two notions used to plot the passing have lost their meaning. There are only ‘moments’: points without dimensions… If all parts of space can be reached at any moment, there is no reason to reach any of them at any particular moment and no reason to worry about securing the right of access to any”[10]. Therefore, space counts little, or does not count at all. In the software era “bulkiness and size are no longer an advantage… buoyancy is the most profitable and the most cherished asset… The managerial equivalent of liposuction has become the leading stratagem of managerial art: slimming, downsizing, phasing out, closing down or selling off…”[11]
What’s important to emphasize in this perspective is that both trends of upscaling and downscaling are not at all sequential as it might have been understood so far - the software era does not neutralizes bigness, it offers a new form of it: “The downsizing obsession is, as it happens, an un-detachable complement of the merger mania… Merger and downsizing are not at cross-purposes; on the contrary, they condition each other, support and reinforce… It is the blend of merger and downsizing strategies that offers capital and financial power space to move and move quickly, making it ever more global – while at the same time depriving labor of its bargaining power, immobilizing it and tying its hands ever more firmly”.[12]
World map of mega-cities: the components are getting larger while the variety is actually shrinking. From http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/?p=1590
Take 2
The development of flying machines allowed humanity to view the earth from above. While this ability has been significantly influential on the human perception of the world and its great scale, looking at a segment of the globe from above still just “mimics the traditional angle of vision of the human eye – the view remains connected to the viewing subject… stayed tied to the earth”[13] as a reference surface. The great shift in the human perception occurred with the ability of gazing at the entire globe from outer space, looking back on it from a distance rather than looking down. While the height of the former viewpoint is measurable regarding to the base surface together with gravity and a “clear sense of above and below”[14], “the loss of this grounded dimension in gravity-free outer space means that height morphs into mere distance between objects”[15].
My take on the Whole Earth Catalog concept of mapping the entire planet for the sake of humanity, ecology and sustainability – but also as means of control: redefining the boundaries just on a larger scale.
This symbolic image of the earth encountered humans with a new sense of scale - on one hand, through the difficulty of locating oneself in the bigness of the entire planet and the universe it is floating in; while on the other hand, the earth was shown in its fragility and smallness, which gave man the sense of power, of the ability to influence, manage and control – suddenly, man himself became larger, relatively to earth.
The ability to see not just parts of the globe but the globe as a whole and the rising sense of ‘we are all in the same boat’, have undermined the corporeal segmentation of the planet and suggested its deterritorialization.
Nevertheless, at the same time, the earth became a territory of its own, with boundaries clearer than ever before, that had to be controlled and managed ‘properly’ for the sake of ‘ecology and sustainability’. Discovering outer space can be seen as the beginning of a new era, although I would claim it to be the peak of an old era, the era of territorial obsession - when power was to achieve through a territory shaped out in the image of the map, closely guarded and tightly controlled.
This expansion of human experience was followed by varied attempts to grasp the new universe by scaling it down – examples are ranging from geodesic domes to “all included” dwelling units to playful globe-balloons and more.
One of the interesting attempts was the establishment of Drop City, an artists' community that formed in southern Colorado in 1965 that became known as the first rural "hippie commune", and as the offspring of the global sustainability movement.
As much as they advocated nomadism and challenged zoning regulations and political boundaries, their most important publications, edited in the Whole Earth Catalog [16] (1968-1972), demonstrates both the dominance of the symbolic form of earth, and the desire to map, define, divide and classify every inch of the planet. While the hippies of Drop City were actually looking for a territory open to intrusion and to the redrawing of boundaries and the maps, they presented a project that advanced the opposite, just on a larger scale.
A page from the Whole Earth Catalog
Take 3
Europe’s shifting basic “units” throughout the history also demonstrate the tension or dependence between the different scales: from the Greek polis (as an example to start with) accumulated to the form of state, to the expansion of the great empires and the global colonization; then back to the form of state, and recently (with the formation of the European Union) the somewhat return to the form of the ‘polis’, just in its larger version – the mega-polis. Moreover, the explosion of scale comes with the counter reaction of implosion: While its physical, cultural and social boundaries currently blurs and it becomes governed by one political and economic system – Europe is flooded with wondering individuals, numerous and varied communities of immigrants, roaming languages and dialects… it’s going through parallel processes of explosion and implosion. Europe is a tangible example but these processes occur also on a global scale - the globalization on one hand, and the rising dominance of the individual as the basic “atom”, on the other.
What I find important to conclude in this discussion is not the awareness of the existence of these new scales but the distance between them. Referring back to the loss of the grounded dimension in outer space that means that “height morphs into mere distance between objects”[17] (take 2), and that “there is no time-distance separating the end from the beginning; the two notions… have lost their meaning”, as Bauman argues, to a point that “there are now only ‘moments’: points without dimensions”[18] (take 1) – I wonder about the nature of the relationship evolving between ‘the individual’ and ‘the whole world’. Who is moving? Who has the freedom to move? How far and how fast? And above all – what are the boundaries? Has nomadism lost its classic form? Does transience conclude to Google Earth?
To be continued…
[1] Zygmunt Bauman, Time and space reunited, Time and Society, 9/2-3, 2000
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[13] Volker M. Welter, From Disc to Sphere, in: Cabinet Quarterly Magazine of Art and Culture, 2011: 40, pp. 19-25
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[16] Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog, 1968- 1972.
[17] Volker M. Welter, From Disc to Sphere, in: Cabinet Quarterly Magazine of Art and Culture, 2011: 40, pp. 19-25
[18] Zygmunt Bauman, Time and space reunited, Time and Society, 9/2-3, 2000
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