Acceleration and politics

Attended/presented at an academic conference this weekend, and one of things discussed was time and its implication for democratic politics. An interesting problem, and yet it would be a mistake to think that the acceleration of life is an entirely technological phenomenon. From a political standpoint, the current state of exception defined by ideas like the "unitary executive," and by practices like presidential signing statements, preemptive war, the ongoing GWOT, the practice of defining prisoners of that war as "detainees" without Geneva conventions protections, etc. etc. is animated and reinforced by a sense of urgency. Urgency implies speed. The idea is that we have to "act before they strike first." That we have the technological means to allow this spirit of urgency to be concretized in acts is merely contingent: it's not the technology that drives the policy but the other way round.

Also, consider the role that technology and the speed of communication have played in undermining the sense of exceptionality and urgency. The photos at Abu Ghraib for example.