Acceleration is certainly a central aspect of our political and
economic life, and one of the reasons I've written
Nervous States is
that I wanted to understand what this does to our liberal
institutions. First of all, it means that spaces of deliberation and
critique, which have always been integral to liberalism, come to
appear slow and 'out of touch.' Modern science, which has been the
hallmark of modern progress for four centuries, moves at a pace that
is increasingly left behind by the rolling news cycle of digital media
and the hunger for instant reaction and decision. Populists seize the
opportunity to promise immediate action while liberalism only ever
offers mediated action via law, political representatives, editorial
peer review and so on. All of this comes to be experienced as
intolerably slow and self-interested in the age of the platform. I
think, secondly, that our sense of what counts as authentic or honest
action has shifted from the domain of reason, with all of the problems
and exclusions that went with that, towards that of neurology and
automatic response. In the age of Twitter, we no longer judge
politicians in terms of their arguments, speeches or policies, but in
terms of their facial expressions or instant reactions to some
unexpected live event. Like any cultural content, politics is
increasingly evaluated in real time, in terms of clicks, eyeballs,
likes and so on. All of this means that public figures, be they in the
media, politics or arts, end up as live performers -- a bit like
sports stars or stand-up comedians -- who achieve credibility through
a kind of carefully honed spontaneity. Traditional forms of liberal
authority were never designed to achieve such immediate effects on an
audience.