The Flattening of Time and Space
Why geography, place, and tangibles matter.
I mentioned in Wednesday’s post that I am a diplomatic historian by training, and how that influences my perspective on current events. I want to expand on that in this post, particularly regarding the importance of geography, place, and tangible factors.
Modern technology has flattened the world in both time and space. Our ability to communicate “face-to-face” with people from across the globe almost effortlessly, the ease with which we can travel to far-flung corners, and the availability of a wide range of products grown around the world or produced through global supply chains, all have had a transformative impact on how we experience the world.
These impacts also extend to our local environment, with the ease of navigating our local areas through tools like Google Maps reducing friction but also significantly transforming how we perceive the world around us.
In these circumstances, it can be easy to fall into the trap that the virtual is all that matters, or that, as Marc Andreessen once argued, “software is eating the world.”
Certainly, software and other intangibles matter. But as world events like the US-Israeli war on Iran demonstrate, tangibles and geography matter too.
I used to teach two undergraduate history courses on European diplomatic history. In our first sessions together, I would make a point of showing them two different maps.
The first was a map of Europe without any borders and only showing the topography:
The second was a map of modern European sea lanes and maritime traffic:
Together, these maps reveal much about European history.
They highlight some reasons why the UK became a leading sea power: its capacity to block sea lanes from northern Europe to the rest of the world — a capability strengthened by the UK’s conquests of Malta and Gibraltar, which allowed it to do the same in the Mediterranean.
They explain why Belgium and the Netherlands have been a hotbed of conflict since the 1500s: they are both the easiest routes for armies marching between Western Europe and Central Europe, as well as the closest points for an invasion into the British Isles.
They say a lot about why Russia has been so determined to build a buffer of client states from the Tsarist conquests of Poland, to the Warsaw Pact countries, to the invasion of Ukraine today: their complete lack of defensible natural borders has meant that they have been repeatedly invaded century after century, leading their rulers to push their borders as far away from the heartlands as possible.
Now, geography isn’t destiny by any means. Other systemic factors, such as industrial capacity and demographics, shifting tides of politics and ideology, and the decisions of individual leaders, are crucial in shaping what actually happens in the world.
But geography certainly does matter.
We’re of course seeing this very clearly with the impact of Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz - another crucial geographical bottleneck for shipping, much like the English Channel or the Strait of Gibraltar.
For all of the US’s and Israel’s technological superiority, it does not take much for Iran to be able to close off such a narrow expanse of water. The effects of that closure are felt the world over, all the way to your nearest gas pump.
This kind of impact highlights that, ultimately, the world isn’t flat. And this very real unevenness of time and space has consequences beyond just major geopolitical events.
It has impacts on the type of economic growth we prioritize and encourage, as well as on how we think about innovation. Western economies have embraced intangible assets and growth, both of which appear to be geographically unrestricted.
This sharply contrasts with China’s focus. As Dan Wang explains in Breakneck, China’s recent crackdowns on digital platforms and even domestic tech firms reflect a “vision of technology that is radically different from Silicon Valley’s: the pursuit of physical and industrial technologies rather than virtual ones.” Technology isn’t “shiny” new objects; instead, “it is embodied by communities of engineering practice like Shenzhen, where technology lives inside the heads and in the hands of its workforce.”
That is a fundamentally different conception of innovation and economic growth, and one that is deeply rooted in the specific realities of geography and place.
The flattening of the world also impacts how we approach politics.
How much time and mental energy do we devote to following Trump’s daily actions, for example, compared to what is happening in our local politics and communities?
What Trump does affects us, no doubt, but our ability to shape events on that scale is infinitesimally small. The never-ending flow of outrageous and inhumane actions also keeps us off balance, unable to catch our breath or take stock of what is happening.
All of this can be disempowering, especially as it masks how change ripples out from our actions in our communities and local places. You only need to observe how neighbourhood networks and group chats were mobilized in Minnesota to fight ICE for a clear example of this. There is a reason that one of Timothy Snyder’s lessons on Tyranny is to “Make eye contact and small talk” as a way to root you in your communities and shape your day-to-day psychological landscape.
Technologies have deeply transformed how we experience and comprehend our world. However, we must be careful not to overlook the real, the tangible, and the local. Change begins from the ground up, within the communities and places we inhabit, rather than from the top down.
Excellent advice "make eye contact and small talk"