Speed = distance/time : chronotopographies of action.

Abstract

In this essay I want to begin with some of the grand claims and narratives of changing temporality heralded via information technology. However, I also want to write into these the way changes in time are bound up with changes in space, and that spatialities and temporalities are mutually constitutive. I begin with stories of compression and dispersal - that is activities intensifying in time and allegedly dispersing in space. In this tale I foreground discussions of acceleration and speed in a real-time society. From this, I suggest how flexibility of location and timing of activities can be seen through information and communication technologies (ICTs). Finally, I highlight several specific aspects of flexibility in both time and space, but also start to figure how the two dimensions act together.