To survive our high-speed society, cultivate 'temporal bandwidth' | Alan Jacobs
by Alan Jacobs from Science | The Guardian on (#3SDBA)
Our era of relentless social media and soundbites has caused us to lose sight of the past, and future
It is hard to imagine a time more completely presentist than our own, more tethered to the immediate; and is hard to imagine a person more exemplary of our presentism than the current president of the United States.
Donald Trump is a creature of the instant, responsive only and wholly to immediate stimulus - which is why Twitter is his exclusive medium of written communication, and why when he speaks he cannot stick to a script. In this respect he differs little from anyone who spends a lot of time on social media; the social media ecosystem is designed to generate constant, instantaneous responses to the provocations of Now.