5 Movement-space
The changing domain of thinking
resulting from the development
of new kinds of spatial awareness
Civilization advances by extending the number of operations which we can perform
without thinking about them.
(A.N. Whitehead 1911, cited in Myers 2002: 1 7 )Introduction
What is an idea? In this chapter, I want to argue that, whatever an idea’s exact
content might be, it is also important to be able to understand the way in which
an idea is framed because that framing has consequences. Yet, it is remarkable how
few papers on knowledge actually consider the mundane frameworks in which
ideas come wrapped and from which they must spring. This chapter is a first
attempt to suggest another way of looking at the world of ‘pre’-ideas, one that is
meant to be both destabilizing and, at the same time, productive. It arises out of
a theoretical shift that does now seem to be gathering momentum, one that allows
new things to be seen and handled by concentrating on the utterly mundane
frameworks that move ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’ about.
The chapter therefore follows on from some of my other recent work which has
attempted to understand the new kinds of electronic background time-spaces that
are making their way into the world, and their capacity for changing what we might
be (see Thrift 2003a, 2003b, 200 4 d, 200 4 g; Thrift and French 2002). In
particular, I have looked at how, as a result of the intervention of software and
new forms of address, these background time-spaces are changing their character,
producing novel kinds of behaviours that would not have been possible before
and new types of object which presage more active environments. In this chapter,
I want to extend these thoughts in various directions, hoping to capture the
outlines of a world just coming into existence,^1 one which is based on continuous
calculation at each and every point along each and every line of movement.
In conventional accounts of the modern world, this ‘figured materiality’ (Verran
2001) would be regarded as cause for concern. It would be taken as yet another
sign of a more rationalized, calculative world, one increasingly bereft of humanity
(see, for example, Ritzer 2003); a sign taken for a portent of doom rather than
wonders. I am sceptical of such accounts and want to suggest something rather
different; a move towards a world in which new qualities are being constructed,