![]() This evolution has ranged from telegraphs in the past to modern-day instant messaging. ❍ Methods and technologies used to communicate with other people have significantly evolved over the past few decades. It is best described by the theorist Paul Virilio as follows: “Today we are entering a space which is speed-space… This new other time is that of electronic transmission, of high-tech machines, and therefore, man is present in this sort of time, not via his physical presence, but via programming”. ![]() They include technologies employed in communication, travel, and economics. The time-space compression refers to technologies that have, in recent times, accelerated spatial and temporal distance. Such a drastic compression in various aspects of people’s lives has led to the formulation of globalization.Īnthony Giddens, a British sociologist, describes globalization as “the intensification of worldwide social relations, which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa”. Despite the fact that the actual distance remains the same, the advent of technology has given rise to traveling alternatives that create the illusion of a smaller distance. Traveling times that used to be described in terms of weeks or even months are now described in terms of minutes and hours, thereby bringing the world seemingly closer. In contrast, nowadays the documentation is all computerized and hence does not take more than a few days, and the journey itself has been reduced exponentially. In the past, traveling from one country to another required a laborious and tedious documentation process, which was immediately followed by an equally wearisome and long journey to the destination. This can be understood by making comparisons between the modern era and the post-modern era. David Harvey, the geographer who first introduced this term, refers to it as “processes that so revolutionize the objective qualities of space and time”, and also state that “as spatial barriers diminish so we become much more sensitized to what the world’s spaces contain”. Thus, resulting in a “compression” that has done away with traditional spatial barriers. ![]() With the help of these technologies, the distance between people has greatly been reduced, as their use allows people to visit places or communicate with people in other places with great ease and within a short amount of time. This concept owes its existence to the development of advanced technologies concerned with transport and communication. It describes an accelerated frame of how people experience time and space. This concept is called the time-space compression or time-space distanciation. Hence, if the time taken to conduct a specific space-related function is reduced, the corresponding space is perceived to have reduced as well. The notion and perception of space is time-dependent, and all distances are understood in terms of the time taken to traverse it. The concept of time-space compression was first articulated in 1989, by geographer David Harvey in his book, “The Condition of Postmodernity”.
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