Napoleon and Internet. A historical and anthropological view on the culture of punctuality and instantaneity

Abstract

The first Internet or telecommunication network in history was created in post-revolutionary France at the end of the eighteenth century. Napoleon founded his power on this first network. To understand Internet today, this paper goes back to its roots: the line-of-sight telegraph or optical telegraph of the brothers Chappe. Apart from this historical reconstruction of Internet, the paper also deals with the implications of the French Chappe-telegraph for the organisation of space and time within human perception. The digitalization of space and time, the annihilation of space and the compression of time, was already at stake in the French debates about the Chappe-telegraph two centuries ago. Whereas the French parliamentaries concentrated on the new organisation of space (“punctuality”), as most important side-effect of the optical telegraph; the present discussion about Internet mainly deals with the temporarily impact on perception (“instantaneity”). This part of the Internet-discussion about the compression of time, caused by the digital media, goes back to the electric telegraph of Morse in the thirties of the nineteenth century. Finally, the question is raised whether the digitalization of time and space inaugurates a new kind of civilisation. Contrary to the classical civilisation of literacy with its sensibility for distance and boundaries, the modern, digital civilisation immerges man in a swift series of never-ending punctual, instantaneous experiences. Do we currently witness the revival of a pre-literate, tactile–oral instantculture? ©