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2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

1. The Time of Computers: From Babbage and the 1830s to the Present

Author : Geoffrey C. Bowker

Published in: Historical Studies in Computing, Information, and Society

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter argues first that Babbage and Lyell developed a similar, machinic view of human and natural time, with the difference engine for Babbage being at the center of this conceptualization. This view involved the smoothing of time socially and naturally to create a form of stasis. Second, it maintains that the ever-faster time of the computer, prefigured by Babbage, has led to the historical creation of a new ontological level at which events occur well below the threshold of human perception – and that this new level is associated with a drive to stasis.

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next chapter Expanding the Usable Past

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This temporal collapse is perhaps pointed to by Kittler’s use of “a screaming comes across the sky” (16) – the opening and closing lines of Gravity’s Rainbow, encapsulating the extensive time of the novel into the moment of the dropping of a rocket.

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Shanahan (2015): 152–3.

Ibid.: 157.

Ibid.: 35.

Ibid.: 157 – citing Hans Moravic.

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Beverungen and Lange (2018): 80.

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http://www.engineersgallery.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/things.jpg accessed 4 April, 2019.

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Title: The Time of Computers: From Babbage and the 1830s to the Present
Author: Geoffrey C. Bowker
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Historical Studies in Computing, Information, and Society
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-18954-9

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-18955-6

Copyright Year: 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18955-6_1

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