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06771_Field_TCUM T336.txt
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relations release other kinds of power. Less and less, in the
electric age, can we find any good reason for imposing the
same set of relations on every kind of object or group of
objects. Yet in the ancient world the only means of achieving
power was getting a thousand slaves to act as one man.
During the Middle Ages the communal clock extended by the
bell permitted high coordination of the energies of small
communities. In the Renaissance the clock combined with the
uniform respectability of the new typography to extend the
power of social organization almost to a national scale. By the
nineteenth century it had provided a technology of cohesion
that was inseparable from industry and transport, enabling an
entire metropolis to act almost as an automaton. Now in the
electric age of decentralized power and information we begin to
chafe under the uniformity of clock-time. In this age of space-
time we seek multiplicity, rather than repeatability, of rhythms.