River of Shadows - Christina Norbygaard

1. Solnit’s “River of Shadows” is a very detailed account of photography’s effect on time and space as well as the economy of the US at the time. In the first section of the reading, there is a great amount of discussion on the shrinking of space. In addition to talking about photography, she mentions how the railroad “shrunk” space for travellers and “transformed the experience” (53). This section focuses on the idea of relative time by describing how the human experience of time and space changed. Time became a measure of speed; how far you could go in a given time. Distances that people use to walk in days were now covered in hours, and with the advances in technology came the desire to move faster. Now that people were capable of higher speeds, more could be accomplished and time suddenly became more valuable. It is interesting to note how humans always strive for the fastest route; even today, when planning a flight across the US, the idea of having a lay over seems unnecessary. Why take the slow option when you are capable of something faster?
2. People also began to see the extent of time with the findings of geologists, which comes as a surprising side note in Solnit’s reading. Through dating of the Earth, geologists concluded that Earth was much older than the Bible depicted, although the exact dates were still unknown (53). So while the telegraph and railroads quickened the pace of human life, geology made the appearance of life even shorter. Now that they knew how long geological processes took, it made human existance seem so short and unimportant. The Bible on the other hand had made human life the center and importance of the Earth’s life, which is how people still think today. Rarely does anyone want to consider the slower processes, since we as humans simply cannot see it.
3. Another interesting idea that Solnit mentioned was the fact that the camera could now capture “what had always been present but never seen” (59). Cameras are capable of capturing a moment in time, but not an entire motion. This would seem like something new and “exotic” as Solnit describes it, allowing people to get a different view on the world. Muybridge’s sequence of photos also were able to capture a movement, not just a moment, making it seem like technology could out perform the human mind.
4. Overall, Solnit describes the advancements in science and film as progress, but her tone suggests that she is hesitant to let go of the human side to interpretating life at a different speed. Or perhaps, the things she states simply makes the reader realize what our minds have been subconsciously thinking. The way she describes how the railroad made the landscape become a blur had a dissappointed tone. With our new technology, are we forgetting to slow down and see the world for all that it is?

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.

The Present Reading Response by Cathy Hwang

1. In the beginning of The Present, Kern uses the example of the Titanic to introduce the “magical powers” of wireless technology. Even though it is ironic that the wreckage of the grandest invention built by man around the turn of the century glorified the advent of wireless age, Kern nonetheless succeeds in transitioning his discussion to wireless technology and its implications. He believes that this new tool can overcome the shortcomings of human senses: “what the eyes and ears of man could not perceive the wireless could receive over vast distance and through darkness and fog” (35). But more importantly, wireless transmissions bring people of remote distances together to share the tragic news of the Titanic. Kern seems to be fascinated with this aspect of expanded range of experience, or what he later calls the simultaneity of distant events, that is made possible by wireless technology. The awareness of the simultaneity is treated as universal by Kern when he said, “this rescue effort was particularly highlighted because so many were aware of the tragedy” (35). However, the perception of the present varies greatly among the people who are informed of the accident. Survivors watching the ship from life boats would surely have a different observation of the present than people who read about the incident from the newspaper. Even though both parties receive the simultaneity of the distant event, in this case the sinking of the boat, Kern’s treatment of these two perceptions as if they were equal is inadequate. Even among different sources of wireless means, the experience of the present would be distinct. A person who receives a telephone call regarding a death in the family would perceive the “present” very differently than radio listeners learning about the “present”. Differentiation among the perceptions of simultaneous distant events is an element that Kern fails to address throughout the passage.

2. In order to expand the concept of simultaneity, Kern presents many artistic expressions that utilize different techniques to achieve the simultaneous present. Films can further the sense of present by showing “several noncontiguous events” or “showing one event from a variety of perspectives.” Through the uses of double exposure, the montage balloon, and parallel editing, filmmakers are able to pioneer the expansion of the present: “cinema could appear to take the viewer from one place to another instantly and achieve the effect of his being ‘simultaneously here and there’” (37). Audiences are trained to adapt the continuity between lapsed sequences as simultaneously occurring events, in order to experience the tension and suspense of the climax that followed. Contrary to the direct attempts of representing simultaneity by film directors, poets are more subtle in this endeavor. Kern points out that, “past poets expressed the voices of a successive universe; the contemporary poet ought to express them all at once as they are perceived by senses and magnified by technology” (38). Verbal montages are ultimately used to achieve the same effect in film but to a lesser extent, as temporal and spatial simultaneity could be represented more readily through film than through words. Kern considers music as “the model for simultaneous art and poetry” (39). The sense of intensity and urgency can be achieved by having two or more voices “sing different words at the same time” (39). Kern elaborates on each artistic form: film, poetry, and music, in great detail to show that viewers, readers, and audiences can be trained to perceive simultaneity when events are only seemingly occurring concurrently. Even though Kern later on presents scientific argument to refute this representation of simultaneity, Kern seems to identify with the artistic interpretation of simultaneity through his extended analyses of these mediums.

3. In the last portion of the passage, Kern discusses the concept of simultaneity and thickened present. Although both terms have relevance to the perception of the present, Kern distinguishes the two by stating, “simultaneity was the more directly influenced by technology, because electronic communication made it possible for the first time to be in a sense in two places at once, while temporal thickening derived from a theory of experience that could have been articulated in any age’ (46). These two disparate views are then put into the same context through the discussion of cinema. Using different cinematic technique, simultaneity could be represented by “bringing together an unprecedented variety of visual images and arrange them coherently in a unified whole” (46); thickened present could be achieved by splicing during the editing process of the film. Kern concludes the paragraph without a clear implication of which concept is more relevant since the nascence of wireless transmissions; however, the last paragraph states, “the new technology changed the dimensions of experience so rapidly that the future seemed to rush toward the present” (46). The association of technology and simultaneity mentioned earlier in this context seems to imply human’s inquisitive nature of looking into the future, and looking at “present” elsewhere as the main motivator for technological advances. I wonder if Kern overlooked the human desire to seize the present that could also contribute to the science of time travel.

Walter Kern, The Present--Chloe Kloezeman

1. Walter Kern begins his argument by laying out the two school’s of thought on the ambiguous idea of the present by first writing about the heart-wrenching story of the Titanic, and then attempting to explain it with the experience of the present. Kern states, “the present is a sequence of single local events or multiple distant events, and whether the present is a slice of time between the past and future or of more extended duration” (36). It has been decided that the past is the past with little argument, but with left for interpretation is the idea of is there a real “future” or does the present continue to move with us along the spectrum of time. The future is something that is very illusive, but the present is constantly changing and moving forward on our shoulders, which is an uneasy declaration because the more simplistic view would be the idea of time on a continuum [past, present, future], a clear beginning, middle and end. We perceive the present as a series of local events because by the time one hears about the distant events, events that were present in that specific location, become past events in our mind because we were unable to experience them for ourselves. This concept is very difficult to grasp and one of the only questions that Kern raises that he does not give credit to another.

2. Kern quotes Henri-Martin Barzun’s poetry to further describe our present world as a “simultaneous reality” (38). Barzun’s quotation “aviation has transformed distant…multiplicity of modern life” is a complex synopsis of our world today. The ways in which we have defined the world in the past have changed as much as the world itself. No longer can song use its “monodic” character in an effort to encapsulate the true nature of our world’s tone. But rather, we must look at the world through a “polyphonic lends”. Things as drastic as airplanes and the Internet have brought our world together as one. This is a time where no one can stand-alone but yet everyone has been forced together to operate as a democratic society. Simply put, the innovations of the democracies in control have forced all the others to play its game their way.

3. Einstein argued that there could be “no such thing as a universe with moving parts” (80). Meaning that the present is a series of local events. That one can only define what is going on around them as the present, not events that are happening across the world. But the counterargument to this claim is that on the eve of the war, one historian was able to conclude that the present now had the capability of tying together events taking place around the globe, happening in simultaneous fashion. Previously, our society as a whole, was incapable of drawing these connections due to a lack of technology. As mentioned before, technology has created an “information highway” that no longer allows us to deal only with ourselves, but has forced us to consider what is happening “now” in the rest of the world. While Einstein’s idea made sense during a time when one could only encapsulate the events in its own arena, our world has made massive strides in connecting simultaneously.

Chloe Kloezeman