Speed and sociology: Technology, globalization and the inexperience of time

Time is so pervasive in our lives yet it often remains one of our most taken for granted assumptions. We often ask “what time is it” but resist pausing to question just what time is. Not only this, we also get the sense that time is accelerating and often attribute this to the widespread role of technology in Western Capitalist societies when we suggest that “technology makes our lives go faster.” This thesis analyses several contributions to the sociology of time in order to developed a critique of the idea that technology makes our lives go faster. I focus attention toward some of the social roots of our understandings, meanings and experiences of time and the relationships between time, technology, capitalism and modernity. This historical inquiry also evaluates the work of French cultural critic Paul Virilio whose main thesis is that speed is a fundamental feature of modernity. While first agreeing with this thesis, I then set out to discover how and where an analysis of speed is manifest in sociological theory and then finally to critique Virilio on the grounds of his own technological determinism. Finally, I suggest that Virilio's work on speed and acceleration needs to be augmented by a systematic engagement with theories based on the work of Karl Marx in order to more fully grasp the relationship between time, speed and capitalist modernity.