Thus, Schivelbusch describes two contradictory sides of the same process: Additionally, as the railroad network expanded and its reach lengthened, ever more distant places became newly and widely accessible. The diminished time it took to cross the distance between two spatial locations (such as two cities) by railway meant that these locations no longer seemed so distant, even though the distance between them remained unaltered. Schivelbusch notes that the “annihilation of space and time” was the early nineteenth-century characterization of the effect of railroad travel, due to the speed the new means of transportation was able to achieve. Per the publisher, "Schivelbusch discusses the ways in which our perceptions of distance, time, autonomy, speed, and risk were altered by railway travel." In other words, Schivelbusch describes how the railroad not only transformed the natural landscape but also our very perceptual experience of nature itself. Jahrhundert, was published in English as The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century in 1986 and updated with a new preface in 2014. Schivelbusch's 1977 book, Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise: Zur Industrialisierung von Raum und Zeit im 19. He has cited Norbert Elias as one of his main influences and inspirations. In 2003, he was awarded the Heinrich Mann prize of the Academy of Arts in Berlin. He studied the history of mentalities, perception and cultural history more broadly. Schivelbusch was an independent scholar, not affiliated with any academic institution. He lived in New York from 1973 to 2014, before relocating to Berlin. He studied literature, sociology, and philosophy. Wolfgang Schivelbusch was born on 26 November 1941 in Berlin. Wolfgang Schivelbusch (26 November 1941 – 26 March 2023) was a German scholar of cultural studies, historian, and author. Stimulus Shield: or, the Industrialized Consciousness Railroad Accident/ "Railway Spine' and Traumatic Neurosis World Machines: The Steam Engine, the Railway, and the ComputerĮxcursus. Now updated with a new preface, The Railway Journey is an invaluable resource for readers interested in nineteenth-century culture and technology and the prehistory of modern media and digitalization. As a history of the surprising ways in which technology and culture interact, this book covers a wide range of topics, including the changing perception of landscapes, the death of conversation while traveling, the problematic nature of the railway compartment, the space of glass architecture, the pathology of the railway journey, industrial fatigue and the history of shock, and the railroad and the city.īelonging to a distinguished European tradition of critical sociology best exemplified by the work of Georg Simmel and Walter Benjamin, The Railway Journey is anchored in rich empirical data and full of striking insights about railway travel, the industrial revolution, and technological change. In a highly original and engaging fashion, Schivelbusch discusses the ways in which our perceptions of distance, time, autonomy, speed, and risk were altered by railway travel. In The Railway Journey, Schivelbusch examines the origins of this industrialized consciousness by exploring the reaction in the nineteenth century to the first dramatic avatar of technological change, the railroad. But this was not always the case as Wolfgang Schivelbusch points out in this fascinating study, our adaptation to technological change-the development of our modern, industrialized consciousness-was very much a learned behavior. The impact of constant technological change upon our perception of the world is so pervasive as to have become a commonplace of modern society.
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