Modernity as History of Time

Our understanding of space and time has developed according to the means we have used to control or traverse them: from muscle power via heavy vehicles to the computer. Where once a day's journey was an undertaking, software has now shrunk distance to nothing. Information travels with the speed of light. This has had its effect on the relationships between the controllers and the controlled. From the relationship of serf to seigneur, this relationship devolved into the 'marriage for life' of capital and labor, enshrined in the miles-long factories with high walls of the industrial age. Now this has gone, to be replaced by the seductive lightness of being, by the disembodiment of labour by the new entrepreneur, his capital always inflight, seeking new deals with the speed of an electronic signal.