Compressing Time, Annihilating Space

1. Compressing Time, Annihilating Space Communication Revolution and Forging a Meat-eating Nation

2. The Meat-eating Crown http://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/2015/09/24/who-eats-most-meat-worlds-most-carnivorous-countries.html

3. Communications Revolution?

4. Communication Revolution?

5. Communications Revolutions Discontinuity in the technology of infrastructure for the conveyance of meanings, materials, and people… …resulting in the widespread diffusion of new patterns of economic life, politics, and culture.

6. Communications RevolutionsThree Primary Elements • Technology • Institutions • Human Agents

7. Questions How can we put technology, institutions and human actors into a story about communication revolutions? How can the impacts of a previous communication revolution provide insights about our own time?

8. Technology2 Basic Approaches

9. Technology2 Basic Approaches 1) Technological Determinism Technological Artifacts as Change Agents 2) Social Constructionism Technology shaped by users and context

10. Technological Determinism? Can a technology – an object such as a printing press -- be an agent of change?

11. Robert Albion “The Communication Revolution” About a century ago, the term industrial revolution was applied to the impacts from the application of steam power to the manufacture of goods. Since then, other movements have been christened revolutions at least one of which deserves this status – the remarkable acceleration of transport and communication which started in 1760 with England’s development of canals and roads and continues today with radio and television. For want of a better title, we may call it the “Communication Revolution.” Robert Albion, “The Communication Revolution, 1760-1933” http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/tns.1933.002?journalCode=yhet19

12. Social Constructionism As much as people adapt their lives to the changed circumstances created by a new technology, they also adapt that technology to their lives…The telephone did not radically alter American ways of life; rather, Americans used it to more vigorously pursue their characteristic ways of life. Claude Fischer, America Calling (p. 5)

13. Communications RevolutionsA Technological Phenomenon? Machines – technologies -- help explain communications revolutions but they are not the only causes…The Age of Reason set the stage for the electromechanical and electronic processing of information in the 19th and 20th centuries by promoting demand for greater access to information. In this way, the cultural revolution preceded its material and technological revolution. Daniel Headrick, When Information Came of Age (pp. 8-9)

14. Karl Marx / Structure and Agency “Human beings make their own history -- but they do not make it exactly as they please. They make it from conditions [institutional structures] that are given and transmitted from the past.” Karl Marx The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte(1851)

15. Institutions How can we put institutions into a story about revolutions in the conveyance of goods, information, and people? • The State • The Business Firm • The Market

16. Communication RevolutionThe Cartography of Time / Space Compression

17. StructureCommunication Infra(structure) and Society (1850-1900) 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Telegraph Mileage (000s) 12 56 134 291 848 1307 Railroad Mileage (000s) 9 30 53 93 167 207 Urban Population (%)11.3 19.7 24.8 28.1 35.1 39.6 Number of Cities62 93 168 223 363 440 With Population> 10,000 Meat Packing Output -- 62 304 565 790 ($ millions)

18. Actor GroupsIn Communication Revolutions • Infrastructure Builders • Infrastructure Users / Consumers • Governmental Lawmakers

19. Institutional Actors and Infrastructure • Telegraph Wires 1850: 300 Companies / 3 Technologies 1859: 1 Company / 1 Technology • Railroad Track Gauges 1860: 600 Companies / 7 Gauges 1890: 7 Companies / 1 Gauge • Time Zones 1870: 200 Local Time Zones 1883: 4 Time zones

20. The Great Migration NorthIn 1879 African Americans begin moving North in what was called the “Great Exodus.” By the 1890s, the number of African Americans moving to the Northeast and the Midwest was double that of the previous decade.

21. Meat A Time and Distance Problem Once an animal had completed its work of converting corn and grass to meat, its owners sought to protect its value by keeping it from losing weight on its journey to market. If time was money, so was distance and livestock owners could economize on both by increasing the speed at which living creatures moved across the landscape. In this way, the railroads preserved the energy in living flesh. Once the animals were aboard the cattle car, their only remaining journey was to the slaughterhouse. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis (p. 224)

22. The Town Butcher

23. Human Agency‘What if?’ “I was determined to eradicate the waste of producing and selling fresh beef which had passed through the hands of too many middle men against which too many charges had accumulated. I asked myself: ‘What if I could slaughter cattle in Chicago and transport only the edible portion of the animal [50%] to distant locales. I could undersell local butchers and create a long-distance market of fresh beef slaughtered in Chicago and sold all over the country.’” Gustavus Swift (1890)

24. Swift and the Chicago Stockyards

25. Swift’sRefrigerated Rail Car

26. 1878 – 2 Branch Houses

27. 1880 – 12 Branch Houses

28. 1903 – 193 Branch Houses

29. Diffusion of Telegraph / Rail Innovation Branch House Expansion of Swift / Major Firms Firms / # of Branch Houses Swift Armour Morris S&S Cudahy All firms ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Year 1878 2 -- -- -- -- 2 1880 12 -- -- -- -- 12 1884 43 2 -- -- -- 45 1888 67 10 9 2 1 89 1895 138 125 61 31 28 383 1899 189 152 87 42 47 517 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

30. National Market

31. Impacts onMarkets • 1850: Local, Fragmented • 1900: National, Unified, Long Distance

32. The Town Butcher – SLAUGHTERED!

33. The Business Firm 1850: Small Scale, Local 1900: Vertically Integrated, National

35. The Work Process • Scale:Small Scale to Mass Scale • Skill: From Skilled to Less Skilled • Race: Integration of African-Americans • Location: Concentration in Cities

37. Legal / Institutional Change • Erosion of State’s Rights on economic issues • Legal Strengthening of a National Market • Regulation to Protect Public Interest • Corporate Property

38. Cultures Of Consumption • New Consumer Choices (Meat) • Product Origins Spatially Dispersed • National Consumer “Taste” • A Nation of Meat Eaters

39. Swift: The Power of Branding

41. ‘The Story of Meat’ by Swift

43. Cultural ShiftMeasured by $ Value of Output (1870-1900) 18701900 Rank Industry Output Rank Industry Output ($ millions) ($ millions) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 Flour Milling $ 445.0 1 Iron & Steel $803.9 2 Textiles 380.9 2 Meat Packing 790.3 3 Lumber 252.3 3 Foundry/Machine Shop 644.2 4 Iron & Steel 199.5 4 Textiles 640.4 5 Clothing (Apparel) 161.5 5 Clothing (Apparel) 622.9 6 Leather Goods 157.2 6 Lumber 566.6 7 Machinery 138.5 7 Flour Milling 560.7 8 Sugar Refining 119.6 8 Industrial Machinery 385.0 9 Tobacco Products 71.8 9 Boots & Shoes 359.9 10 Furniture 69.1 10 Printing / Publishing 347.1 15 Meat Packing 52.1 11 Tobacco Products 264.0

44. Samuel Morse