post time based arts: real-time economy

[anna balint]

from Doors of Perception

Who invented the 'real-time economy'?
Date: 06 June 2002
Two months ago we asked you who invented this suddenly fashionable (in California) new concept 
- and we quoted Ivan Illich using the words at Doors 5 on Speed in 1996. Bill Gillies now writes to 
remind us that Don Tapscott, who is indeed a wise person, discussed the real-time enterprise in his 
1992 book Paradigm Shift, and further developed the idea of a real-time economy in The Digital 
Economy. A technically-inclined reader reminded us that computer scientists have been 
researching the subject, not just talking about it, for ages. Tony Graham, Director of the Unicorn 
Theatre in London, then told us that John Cage and the Fluxus artists talked of little else but 
real-time during the 1960s. We checked, and then found several references to real-time in the 
polemics of the Italian futurist Marinetti - and that was in 1910. Any advance 
(or retreat) on 1910?  Send you answer to our editor.
editor at doorsofperception.com

Quatations:
We are moving out of the age in which speed seems a naturally given certainty.We might already have moved into the 
the age of 'real time'. 

Speed is one of those terms by which contemporaries imprison themselves in a world -- 'huis clos' -- out of which there 
is no exit.

We might be already beyond the age of speed by having moved into the age of 'real time'.

Speed thrills, speed kills, speed invites to be controlled.

Speed, understood  as a social expression of velocity, represents a reduction of that which speed meant, namely, 
vitality. People seek Presence, being Here, being 
Now, being - and this is the English word - Quick. 

Most great cultures which I know do not require any compulsionate obligatory education. They do not know the idea of 
'homo educantos'. They did not move into the 
direction of believing that human beings are born with a lack, which sucking from institutional nipples called schools or 
educational devices or the Internet has to 
offset. (Doors of Perception 4, 1996)
Ivan Illich

 
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