#temporocentral

[pneumaticpresence]

[R]easons for the shunning of place as a crucial concept […] include the cataclysmic events of world wars, which have acted to undermine any secure sense of abiding place (in fact, to destroy it altogether in the case of a radical anti-place such as Auschwitz); the forced migrations of entire peoples, along with continual drifting on the part of many individuals, suggesting that the world is nothing but a scene of endless displacement; the massive spread of electronic technology, which makes irrelevant where you are so long as you can link up with other users of the same technology. Each of these phenomena is truly "cosmic," that is, literally worldwide, and each exhibits a dromo-centrism that amounts to temporocentrism writ large: not just time but speeded-up time (dromos connotes "running," "race," "racecourse") is of the essence of the era. It is as if the acceleration discovered by Galileo to be inherent in falling bodies has come to pervade the earth (conceived as a single scene of communication), rendering the planet a "global village" not in a positive sense but as a placeless place indeed.

—Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History (1997)

[mundanemeditation-blog]

There is a pervasive temporocentrism that ignores or rejects past societies out of hand, thinking them to be morally inferior. Little thought is given to the possibility that if our forebears could see our society today, they might judge it to be wicked or foolish in many respects. Even less is it considered that they might be right. 

This would be my primary interest in time travel: to talk to people of the past and future, to get an outside view of our time and to see what they think are our virtues and vices, our genius and our insanity.