I asked you before whether we can block this stuff out, and whether you need to

surface. And it's really boring, because you actually don't know anybody.

J: I asked you before whether we can block this stuff out, and whether you need to

A: I don't think you can actually, you know, it's there all the time.. (Amanda, sessions 3 & 5, emphasis added)

From a position of some empowerment Amanda now comes closest to those feelings of radical disorientation described by Harvey (1989a). Though the image she deploys, of burn out on the Stock Exchange, is perhaps an obvious one, her feelings are

none-the-less profound. In the first place the impact of these technologies is a generalised and highly disturbing sense of temporal speed-up. But, where they have also undermined a traditional relationship between spatial and temporal distance, time and space are tied together in ways that promote a deeper rupture in the structures of identity itself (cf Giddens, 1991; Lash & Friedman, 1992; Kem, 1983).

For Amanda identity is constructed at a local level. Where these technologies have led to the emergence of a global uniformity their impact is to destroy the particularities of place, and of place identities. Under the fax we are all the same. Without a sense of distance there can be no sense of the differences between one place and another. At the same time, a global information network has led to an increase in population movement. The instantaneity of the new communication technologies has encouraged the continual movement of people around the globe, to the point at which people no longer stay in one place long enough to build a sense of who they are.

In some ways, then, Amanda would seem anxious at the loss of those traditional markers of cultural distinction that inscribe a sense of order upon the world. And certainly the structures of local identity are described in ways similar to a humanist understanding of place, and the 'time thickened' nature of an 'authentic' place experience (see chapter 2.1b). If so, even as she is describing a loss of control, this would position Amanda with the other respondents. Though they accessed these technologies in ways that re-inscribed a traditional set of spatial oppositions, and for Amanda it is these oppositions that are under threat, both would seem anxious to assert the importance of those binary systems that have characterised a modern epistemology.

In fact, however, Amanda's feelings are more complex. Earlier she identified with the possibility of a new relationship of difference, rather than exclusion, and it is the threat to this relationship that Amanda finds so disturbing. For her, the problem with the new technologies is not that they destroy a sense of place, or at least not that 'bounded' sense of place identified by the humanists, but rather the impact they are having on social interaction. Amanda's 'sense of place' is a product of social relations. It is important only in as much as it allows people the time to move beyond the superficial world, towards a better understanding of different subject positions. It is these relations that are under threat. As the new technologies encourage people constantly to move on they produce a world in which social relations are inevitably reduced to that distanced and superficial perspective she found so disturbing in the television programme. What is at issue is the possibility of 'authentic' interaction, where notions of authenticity describe an openness

to différence, rather than some sort of positional closure (Haraway, 1990). It is also an

is the (unnatural) simultaneity of the new technologies that encourages people to move (with lo n g distance you might as well be there') and thus undermines the possibility of authentic interaction (cf Young, 1990).

In the end, then, Amanda expresses considerable unease with those technologies that articulate the experiences of time-space compression. And though this unease is in part a reflection of her more radical position (in the sense that she recognizes the objectifying nature of these technologies) it is also profoundly personal and deeply felt. In a position of some class and ethnic empowerment, and initially expressing a certain control over these experiences, Amanda's sense of unease is matched only by Paul's. These more personal feelings disrupt any simple sociology that w ould map the experiences of time-space compression only in relation to the assumed positions of class, gender and ethnicity, and reveals the need to look more carefully at the ambiguities of individual experience.

To clarify this argument I want, finally, to turn to the experiences of the last respondent. By virtue of both her class and gender w e might, of all the respondents, expect Pat to articulate the most profound sense of disorientation in the face of recent change, and especially those changes bought about with developments in communication technology. With Paul we found this sense of unease to be structured by a lack of experience with those new ICTs found within the work place, and that unease to be carried to his understandings of domestic technology. In light of his experiences, since Pat has never even used a computer or a fax machine, we might expect these fears to emerge even more powerfully here. But in fact for Pat such radical unease is not only conspicuous by its absence, but faintly ridiculous. Just as these technologies produce different feelings in different people, we need to be careful before producing an analysis that exaggerates any sort of impact. Pat's account therefore offers a useful antidote to the grandiose assumptions of high theory. In many ways it is also the most interesting because, though rooted in commonsense, her understandings reveal the most sophisticated negotiation of the current re-organisations of presence and absence.

4.5 Upholding commonsense: Pat

Though she was the oldest respondent, it was Pat who expressed least surprise at the pace of recent change. Indeed, far from disorientated by developments in technology she has barely noticed them. As she says: "I haven't really thought about it, I mean when you grow up with it you don't, do you" (session 3). Moreover, though having little experience with those new ICTs to be found within the workplace, it was Pat who owned

by far the most in the way of 'domestic' technologies. In contrast to the planned austerity of the homes of the new cultural class respondents, Pat's house is filled with every conceivable gadget. She owns not just one but several hoovers, for example, and a number of cookers, freezers and microwaves. She has satellite television and a sophisticated video recorder, and in the kitchen can re-seal old carrier bags with her handy electronic bag re-sealer. But, though her obsession with technology might seem to undermine a number of assumptions about the role of class in determining access to technology per se, or at least domestic technology, this access is structured by a traditional set of gender relations: