Deep Time and Microtime

Anthropocene Temporalities and Silicon Valley's Longtermist Scope

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2353292
AutoresJ Kemper (0000-0002-3839-8275, University of Amsterdam, autor correspondente)
Ano2024
Volume41
Fascículo6
Páginas21-36
Data de publicação2024-11-01
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoTheory Culture & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0263-2764 • E-ISSN: 1460-3616
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/02632764241240662
OpenAlexW4395002766
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas29

Living in Anthropocene times entails living in relation to two seemingly separate temporalities - the microtime of digital operations and the deep time of geological upheaval. Though divergent, these temporalities are united by their unavailability to perception; microtime proceeds too fast to perceive directly, while deep time is too vast to apprehend. Taking these temporalities as a point of departure, this paper develops three arguments. First, it asserts that the temporalities of deep time and microtime increasingly impact contemporary existence, complicating familiar categorizations of temporal experience. Second, it argues that these ostensibly separate temporalities are ontologically connected through the operations of the tech industry, which is constructing a microtemporal system that extracts the planet's deep time resources to delimit the future both materially and cognitively. Third, it suggests that Silicon Valley legitimizes these processes by funding the philosophy of longtermism, which appeals to distant timescales to marginalize injustices in the present

Anthropocene · Deep time · Environmental ethics · Geography · Political science · Scope (computer science · Silicon valley · Temporalities · Computer Science · Cybernetics and Technology in Society · Digital Games and Media · History · Law · Philosophy · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Geology · Paleontology