‘Ours is an age of onrushing turbo-capitalism, wherein the present feels
more abbreviated than it used to—at least for the world’s privileged classes
who live surrounded by technological time-savers that often compound
the sensation of not having enough time. Consequently, one of the most
pressing challenges of our age is how to adjust our rapidly eroding attention
spans to the slow erosions of environmental justice. If, under neoliberalism,
the gulf between enclaved rich and outcast poor has become ever more pronounced,
ours is also an era of enclaved time wherein for many speed has
become a self-justifying, propulsive ethic that renders “uneventful” violence
(to those who live remote from its attritional lethality) a weak claimant on
our time. The attosecond pace of our age, with its restless technologies of
infinite promise and infinite disappointment, prompts us to keep flicking
and clicking distractedly in an insatiable—and often insensate—quest for
quicker sensation.’
extract from The Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor by Rob Nixon