River of Shadows - Anthony Castanos

River of Shadows

1. In River of Shadows, Rebecca Solnit describes how “photography was faster than painting, but it could only portray the slow world or the still world . . . The bustling nineteenth century had to come to a halt for the camera, until Muybridge and his motion studies” (55). While Muybridge’s camera could catch an inconceivably small moment for its time, technology has and will continue to advance and cameras will continue to snap faster and faster. However, when time is broken down into Zeno’s theory of infinitesimal increments, it suggests that cameras will never stop advancing because they will never reach an infinitesimally small increment of time. Because reaching infinity is impossible, no camera could possibly epitomize Zeno’s divided stream of time. This is “the difference between the time that the camera sees and the eye sees,” in that the speed of the camera can always be improved to capture a smaller frame of time while the eye can see whatever increment of time it imagines (48). Eyes see what they want to see, while cameras see what they’re told to see. Cameras are restricted from capturing an infinitesimal moment in time because there is always something moving in the picture, no matter how small.
2. The progress of the industrial revolution led to the idea that “if distance was measured in time, then the world had suddenly begun to shrink” (51). Solnit describes the annihilation of time and space as capitalist intentions to advance and make profit, and while the saying “time is money” is a common theme in the reading, the idea that “space is money” seems to be just as common (62). Once goods could be shipped across the continent in a week, the removal of past space barriers spurred more trade and more profits. So if getting a job done quicker means time equals money, then shouldn’t getting a job done with less distance make space equal money? Whether it’s something literal like selling land space or something more abstract like capturing a landscape and selling it on a 3 by 5 postcard, the idea of controlling space, in turn, makes money.
3. The overall tone of Solnit’s “Time and Space” chapter, even while talking about the advancement of camera speed, still conveyed a dark, gloomy look at capitalism, technology, and the future. Her repetitive use of the term “annihilation” gave an almost apocalyptic view of the world as we know it. At first, the use of the term innocently described a figurative shrinking of the world to visually illustrate the industrial revolution, but then Solnit goes on to describe Marxist views of capitalism and the insatiable desire for better and better technology. But these technologies were literally a part of our being as a form of evolution, “the art of the hand had been replaced by the machinery of the camera; the travel of the foot, human or equine, had been replaced by the pistons of the locomotive; bodies themselves were becoming insulated from nature by machinery” (56). Suddenly people are becoming robots by literally becoming their own technological advancements. So then what’s left in evolution? Darth Vader? Sulnit closes the chapter with the thought that “the age of the computer is an increasing abstraction” (58). Acting as if a warning to the future, Sulnit describes the past of the industrial revolution to convey a foreshadowing of the future. Much like the development of trains and cameras annihilated time and space, computers continue this mechanical evolution until the next technological advancement.