We live in apocalyptic times. But then, in a sense, all times are apocalyptic, for all times have births and deaths, and at many scales.

As I read it, Hyperobjects uses global warming as the paradigm case of a hyperobject. It is massively distributed in time and space and, when we finally found it, we found that we’d been living inside it for decades and centuries. It is at once here and now and a long way into the future.

How big is here and how big is now?

Those questions ask for one sort of answer if you conceive of time and space as empty containers, the classical view that Morton rejects. They’re whole different kettle of fish if you think of time and space as emanating from objects. And if the objects turn out to be hyperobjects – which is where Morton ends up – then they emanate time and space on all the scales at which the objects exist.

Many times and spaces enmeshed with one another.

Published in: New Savannah
Story Date: 2014-08-05T05:00:00+00:00