The rise of the modern system of time

The Global History of Time, by Vanessa Ogle, Zhejiang University Press, June 2021, 68.00 yuan.

□ Lin Yi

The Global History of Time is a historical work on the practice of determining the system of time and the concept of reforming the system of time. The work explores one of the most important social, political, and cultural transformations of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the rise of the modern time system, which underwent a difficult and long-lasting process that was eventually used around the world.

In most societies, the most basic unit of measurement of time is the cycle of the Earth's rotation, with day and night forming a natural day. Sunrise and sunrise are the way of life of most people in the world. Before the advent of large-scale machine industry, forms of labor had irregular and rather arbitrary character. In the 14th and 17th centuries, with the invention and promotion of mechanical clocks, the history of science and technology and even all human skills and cultural history ushered in an extremely important turning point.

Time measurement is one of several tools that are absolutely indispensable to modern science, the clock inspires new talents and a variety of new insights and ideas, and the clock maker is the pioneer of the maker of scientific instruments. In addition to the great significance of the history of science, the new time culture has also led to profound changes in society. Clocks and watches are an important social frame of reference that makes time measurable, allowing people to pre-arrange and complete all schedules in a specified time, and internalized time discipline becomes possible.

E.P. Thompson's Time, Work Norms, and Industrial Capitalism is the most influential paper on material clock time, time consciousness, and capitalism. Thompson argues that the spread of clocks since the 14th century was largely a symbol of a new Puritan discipline and the precision of the city bourgeoisie. It obliterates abstract time from the natural character, time begins to become money that can be transformed, and precise, typical time budgets make capitalists who want to earn more money at all times more acutely aware of the problem of time saving. What Thompson points to is not whether one way of life is superior to another, but rather emphasizes that a culture of time is not a simple record of neutral and technological change, but also a process of exploitation and resistance to exploitation, with values gaining some and losing some at the same time.

As Karl Marx asserted to this day, all economies eventually became the economies of time. Thompson led to further research. Scholars have pointed out that the capitalist economy is largely based on the use of time leadership, that the employed sell their time and skills to capital, that in connection with the working time and efficiency of the machines there is an increase in productivity, that an increase in productivity creates a competitive advantage, that people can acquire new products on the market faster and cheaper, and that this cycle gradually produces an economic, intense desire for acceleration in the mode of production and the exchange of products.

The author of this book quotes some of Thompson's views. This is because the application, promotion and final implementation of global standardized time from the late 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century are still the continuation and deepening of time culture since the modern industrialization revolution.

Due to the different geographical locations, the time when the sun rises in each place is different. Although clocks and watches have become widely used, the different methods of measuring time in each place are bound to cause confusion. The invention of the railway has narrowed the geographical distance and shortened the time people spend on the road. If you are a Eurasian traveler, your first choice will of course be the train, but in the chaotic situation of each set of places, how do you plan your own train schedule? Therefore, at that time, the railway companies were most enthusiastic about the idea of universal time, which was a manifestation of the inherent needs of capital. Similarly, the debate about daylight saving time and about the social significance of time actually reveals broadly the European imagination and vision of the social rhythm of time, the fascination with conservation and acceleration and the constantly expanding waves they cause.

Germany, France, and britain engaged in intense political activities around the theme of time. England was the first to achieve the Industrial Revolution, and the astronomical achievements and time culture were very mature. In October 1884, the International Meridian Conference in Washington decided to take the meridian passing through the meridian of the Greenwich Observatory as the prime meridian, with Greenwich Mean Time becoming the global standard of reference, and all other times expressed according to time zones as the number of hours before or after. This decision was not immediately accepted by countries, but was carried out with difficulty in the process of repeated tug-of-war, ridicule and attempts to come up with a more favorable solution for the country. For example, the French showed their stubbornness, which did not finally turn around until 1911, which seemed to be an attempt to save face, and was fundamentally an insistence on the interests of international competition.

The promotion of universal time was accompanied by a wave of nationalism and colonial movements. In India, in the Ottoman Empire, in the Arab region, in Damascus, in Africa... Time wars are constantly taking place. The authors argue that the story of temporal system reforms thus raises perhaps the most challenging and analyzable problem in global history in the 19th and early 20th centuries: the growing integration and connection between the various countries and regions of the world on the one hand, and the simultaneous growth of nationalism and powerful state apparatus on the other. More importantly, with the help of a global, international perspective, by examining how european countries communicate and recognize with the rest of the world, and how they are shaped by the understanding of an increasingly globalized world, a rewriting of The history of Europe "from the outside in" is completed.

The social unity of common clock time, in the final analysis, is a requirement of "interconnection" in the context of globalization. In the concluding paragraph, the author highlights the limitations of this "interconnected" narrative. The book's review and description of history bears witness to the rise of the core of industrialization at the expense of marginal interests, imperial and colonial expansions that deepen economic and political divisions, as well as the unequal distribution of wealth and power. In the author's view, today's call for the Internet and the Internet, the vision of a global village united in time, is consistent with the nature of the time debate of the 19th century, which is not neutral and just, and cannot be seen entirely as a means of bringing order to a globalizing world, which is by no means "flat" but astonishingly hierarchical.

The Global History of Time reveals the rise of the modern system of time, or rather, the complex consequences of modernity. Today, when we discuss various work ecologies such as the intensive operation of assembly line workers, and when we find that personal time has become more and more scarce and more and more involuntary after being integrated into the social system, we should be vigilant against the concept of time as purely rational and the universal order of change. "The concept of change does not make sense in terms of individual moments ... Because for the moment, all that matters is existence. String theorist Brian Green's physical interpretation of time may also serve as a social understanding of time.