How we lost the living Now

In 1840, England’s Great Western Railway started running the trains on “railway time” - a single standard, set by Greenwich, instead of the local // solar time each town had kept, independently for centuries.Before the railway, noon in Bristol happened roughly ten minutes after noon in London, and nobody much gave a damn - they had no reason to. Time was...time. After the railway, people had to care - because a train leaving Paddington at 12 couldn’t mean one thing in London and another thing in Reading, or the passengers would miss it, or the signalmen would have no ability to coordinate, and the whole apparatus would fall apart.That moment is, I believe, when we started losing our hold on the present.Before the railway, time belonged to the place where you stood. Your noon was the noon of the sun over your head; a farmer in Wiltshire and a clerk in Liverpool would share a year, and a season, but they didn’t share a minute. The minute was solely the possession of your immediate…