THE NEED FOR SPEED AND CONSTANT ACCELERATION
The workings and interlinkings of these systems are further obscured due to constant acceleration. In automated environments, speed becomes a tool of control, where processes—from logistics to surveillance—happen at an increasingly rapid pace.
The landscapes of automated organization are designed for increased rationalization and efficiency. Paul Virilio’s concept of speed emphasizes the acceleration of logistical processes (though mainly from the point of the ubiquitous military apparatus) and the reduction of both time and distances,[10] which is central to the operation of automated systems. In his work Speed and Politics, Virilio argues that the modern world is defined by its obsession with speed, which permeates every aspect of life, from transportation and communication to the fabric of societal organization. According to him, democracy and strategy have been substituted with dromocracy and dromology, emphasizing the relation between speed and power.
The historically employed military strategy of giving up ground to gain time has lost its meaning, as time has become a matter of vectors, causing the territory to be triumphed over by the projectile.[11] The inertia resulting from the moving bodies in the ‘Transparency of the Clearing‘[12] [The plane of the movement, which has been created with an emphasis on speed and predictability, eliminates any other function or object that may intersect and reduce the speed of the moving bodies. A highway, a tunnel, or a runway.] has invaded every corner in the spaces of automated organisation. The automation provides virtually total control over an enveloped space, diminishing unforeseeable drawbacks to a minimum and allowing for ever-increasing speed, present in the categorization of the incoming objects. Stasis means death, and the upper hand is acquired by the fastest-sorting system. The difference in speeds or gear switching between the covered domains and the outer environments contributes to further discontinuity and discrepancies.
Automated systems can be seen as inheriting the militaristic drive for absolute oversight and rapid response. They are increasingly separated from the outer world because they are designed to predict, preempt and neutralize perceived disruptions with minimal latency. The faster an action can be executed, the more space becomes an abstract entity governed by the logic of instantaneous interaction, due to the compression of time, thus changing the nature of space.
‘In fact, the strategic value of the non-place of speed has definitively supplanted that of place, and the question of possession of Time has revived that of territorial appropriation.’ [13]
Until the development of complete self-sustaining automated environments, the secluded and cryptic nature of the landscapes of automated organisations continues to conceal human labor and involvement. The human presence is hidden behind layers of technology and algorithms that dictate the rhythm of production and distribution.
The outer networks and participants’ incapability to distribute the objects further without any retention time or time frame of storage could be considered a flaw in the current dromological system, which may be resolved in the future by utilizing faster operating technology. It might also be a contributor to presenting this part of the network as being closed off. The advances in logistical systems, computation and automation could lead to flows not being interrupted by organizational storage nodes, and the objects and goods would be in perpetual motion, being true to their open-system logic
