Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World

In this study of the utility of waiting, media studies scholar Farman explores the modes, ideas, and technologies that enable “time to be visible.” At first, the book’s theme feels forced, a way to connect the author’s unconnected findings and visits—to Civil War battlegrounds, a California library’s collection of correspondence from American soldiers in various wars, and the British National Archive’s collection of wax seals, among other places. Eventually, as these investigations accumulate, they do begin to cohere. In the ancient world, a wax seal identified the sender and enabled the received to know whether the message had been opened; now technology enables the sender of a text message to know if it has been opened. Pneumatic tubes once served as the mechanism for instant messaging in New York City, a system replicated (rather than repurposed) for fiber-optic cables some half a century later. Wartime, Farman notes, delays or destroys a lifetime of plans; the long delays that were part of the Civil War postal system reflected that reality. These insights come along slowly, with their own kind of delay, in a book that often seems to take its time, but those who are patient with the author’s meanderings will be rewarded with paradoxical and thought-provoking ideas. (Nov.)