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Devine Lu Linvega

You can’t separate the history of timekeeping, and even time zones, from both colonialism—which involves also putting people to work right—and industrialism. We don’t have more and more minute measurements of productivity for no reason. It’s like there was always a reason to be doing it, and the reason was always to get more work out of people faster.
emergencemagazine.org/intervie

5 comments
orthros

@neauoire

Someone once argued to me that Double Entry Bookkeeping was the origin of modern capitalism, and while I don’t strictly disagree, I would rather argue that precise, ubiquitous timekeeping was the true origin.

River Rat

@neauoire a very stimulating interview. I confess I avoided picking up her first book precisely because at first glance it struck me as a "self-help" book, a type of book I have a peculiar distaste for, but after reading this interview I may have to look at it again more seriously.

The interview made me run down a lot of threads, but as to the quote you shared I think something could be said about the role of measuring time in controlling space, particularly referring to navigation. I'm sure your life as a sailor has made you aware of this, but the history of timekeeping, literal physical timekeeping technology, is closely linked to navigation, maybe moreso than to dividing up people's labor hours. The chronometer being a necessary development to being able to solve the navigational triangle and use celestial navigation to find one's longitude. And this line of advancement only continued with the development of radio navigation, including the now ubiquitous GPS, which relies on precise timekeeping. I would be curious to learn about this history and its relationship to culture and "industrial time" more broadly if someone has written about it.

@neauoire a very stimulating interview. I confess I avoided picking up her first book precisely because at first glance it struck me as a "self-help" book, a type of book I have a peculiar distaste for, but after reading this interview I may have to look at it again more seriously.

The interview made me run down a lot of threads, but as to the quote you shared I think something could be said about the role of measuring time in controlling space, particularly referring to navigation. I'm sure your...

⛧ esoterik ⛧

@neauoire yeah i think i agree. measuring time (sunrise and sunset, phases of the moon, position of the stars, understanding the universe) has always been interesting to humans. but i think that impulse gets subverted and used to control, coerce, and (at best) coordinate humans.

bitzero

@neauoire Odell rules. “How to do nothing” is a great book. At least, for those of us who think - I strongly do - that (re)taking your time is a revolutionary act in our society.

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