[HN Gopher] The annihilation of space: A bad historical concept ...
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       The annihilation of space: A bad historical concept (2021)
        
       Author : lermontov
       Score  : 15 points
       Date   : 2022-12-26 23:10 UTC (23 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cambridge.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cambridge.org)
        
       | photochemsyn wrote:
       | If space is the issue, let's note that one human requires 1-2
       | hectares of agricultural land, in production every year, to meet
       | basic food and material requirements. Rail, air and ship
       | transport can correct imbalances in food production and demand on
       | a global scale, but only to a limited extent, as it costs energy
       | - fossil, solar, wind, nuclear, etc. - to transport goods from
       | point A to point B on the globe in a timely manner.
       | 
       | If often think, when reading articles like this, that the
       | philosophers, economists and other social scientists all need to
       | take remedial courses in basic thermodynamics, as applicable to
       | physics, chemistry, and biology.
       | 
       | In biological terms, it's also undeniable that widely accessible
       | long-distance air/ship travel has scrambled human population
       | genetics like nothing else in the history of the human species,
       | which is certainly a significant effect as well, with all kinds
       | of implications for the future.
        
         | quadhome wrote:
         | Scrambled in what way?
        
           | photochemsyn wrote:
           | > "Whereas in the ancestral past, humans lived in
           | geographically isolated communities where inbreeding was
           | rather common,[65] modern transportation technologies have
           | made it much easier for people to travel great distances and
           | facilitated further genetic mixing, giving rise to additional
           | variations in the human gene pool.[93] It also enables the
           | spread of diseases worldwide, which can have an effect on
           | human evolution.[65]"
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_human_evolution#Early_M.
           | ..
        
       | DiggyJohnson wrote:
       | Abstract:
       | 
       | > This article is a reminder that the concept of 'annihilation of
       | space' or 'spatial compression', often used as a shorthand for
       | referring to the cultural or economic consequences of industrial
       | mobility, has a long intellectual history. The concept thus comes
       | loaded with a specific outlook on the experience of modernity,
       | which is - I argue - unsuitable for any cultural or social
       | history of space. This article outlines the etymology of the
       | concept and shows: first, that the historical phenomena it
       | pretends to describe are too complex for such a simplistic
       | signpost; and, second, that the term is never a neutral
       | descriptor but always an engagement with a form of historical and
       | cultural mediation on the nature of modernity in relation to
       | space. In both cases this term obfuscates more than it reveals.
       | As a counter-example, I look at the effect of the railways on
       | popular representations of space and conclude that postmodern
       | geography is a relative dead end for historians interested in the
       | social and cultural history of space.
        
         | kkylin wrote:
         | Thanks for the summary. I clicked on this thinking it was going
         | to be about QFT, ether, and all that.
        
         | [deleted]
        
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