Becoming strangers on a train Technology and the mode of travel HUM 201 Winter 2005 Day 12
Dec 20, 2015
Itinerary today
• Demonstrate how an analysis of the technologies of travel help us understand some of the experiences of travel.
• Remove ourselves from arriving at a specific place and begin contemplating the journey itself.
• In what ways do trains help make us feel “strange”
Add technology to the mix
• Changes how the world “presents itself.”
• Technologies as extensions of the self.– The wheel as an extension of the foot
• Technologies as objects in themselves.– Wheels bring new qualities to bear
• Speed of a train
• Forces us to concentrate on the mode of travel.
Train as a mode of travel• First land-based industrial transportation
– No longer under body power
• Changes the relationship of bodies to landscapes– Tunnels, trestles, and trainbeds– Speed– Panoramic perception
• Symbolic meaning– Progress– Development of Empire
• Changes how we relate to each other– Reading– mixing
Panoramic vision
• “All view”– Survey of sights or events– A late nineteenth century entertainment
• On the train– Grasp the whole– Lose track of the details– The inverse of “in passing”– Sense of remove from what is viewed
• “Panoramic perception, in contrast to traditional perception, no longer belonged to the same space [place] as the perceived objects: the traveler saw the objects, landscapes, etc. through the apparatus which moved him through the world. That machine and the motion it created became integrated into his visual perception.” [64]
• How would you paint a view from the train?
• Time-based medium
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The space of travel
• Mixing of classes• New leisure entertainments, such
as reading novels• Relationship to commodities
– Being packaged and shipped