Lian Shui Xing et al. | Media Technology and the Crisis of Time as a Problem of "Modernity": Based on the Different Perspectives of Rosa and Han Byung-chul

Lian Shuixing is a professor at the School of Communication, Fujian Normal University.

Lu Zhengjiao is a master's student in the School of Communication, Fujian Normal University.

Deng Dan is a master's student at the School of Communication, Fujian Normal University.

This paper is the phased result of the major project of Fujian Philosophy and Social Science Research Base, "Research on the New Development of Marxism and Communication Theory in the Digital Age" (FJ2020MJDZ026).

One

introduction

Born in 1965, Hartmut ·Rosa, a Germany man, studied under ·Axel Honneth, the head of the Frankfurt School (director of the Institute for Social Research), and has a deep knowledge of political philosophy, critical theory, and sociological theory. Born in Seoul, Korea 1959, Byung-Chul Han studied in Germany in the 80s of the 20th century, where he received his doctorate from Martin ·Heidegger for his research, and then taught at Germany university. The Korean-German scholar, who is committed to the study of the humanistic and critical traditions of philosophy, has been hailed as "a rising star in Germany's philosophical community" for his great influence in the academic and cultural circles. However, these two scholars probably did not expect that one day in the 21st century, their works would be translated into China in large numbers in a short period of time, and almost at the same time they would become popular in Chinese academic circles, which would have some kind of impact on communication studies in China. Here, we try to illustrate the different thinking of these two scholars on the issue of "media technology and the crisis of time" by interpreting and comparing several of their works on the issue of time, including Rosa's Acceleration: The Changing Structure of Time in Modern Society, The Birth of a New Alienation: An Outline of Critical Theory of Social Acceleration, and Resonance: The Sociology of World Relations, and Han Byung-chul's The Taste of Time and In the Group: Mass Psychology in the Age of Digital Media. On this basis, the new trends in the development of critical theory of communication are discussed.

Two

The Crisis of Time as a Matter of Modernity:

Let's start with Han Byung-chul's "response" to Rosa

Rosa's book Acceleration: Changing the Structure of Time in Modern Society was written in 2003 and published in 2005. The book has been hailed as "the first book in the field of sociology to provide a complete theoretical analysis of the ever-accelerating pace of life in modern society" (Rosa, 2013/2018:2). With this work, Rosa also became one of the most important social theorists of our time. In 2013, Rosa published another work, The Birth of a New Alienation: An Outline of a Critical Theory of Social Acceleration, which further refined the theory of "temporal acceleration". In these works, Rosa explores the temporal crisis as a problem of modernity.

In his two books, Acceleration: The Changing Structure of Time in Modern Society and The Birth of New Alienation: An Outline of a Critical Theory of Social Acceleration, Rosa argues that there are four different types of studies on modernity, namely Émile Durkheim's theory of differentiation·· Max Weber's theory of rationalization, Georg · Georg Simmel's theory of individuation, and Karl · Marx Marx) (Rosa, 013/2018:8). However, Rosa argues that the above discussion of modernity has always ignored the issue of "time", and in his view, social acceleration is modernity, and behind the acceleration essentially points to the problem of time, so Rosa believes that the dimension of time should be further added to the analysis of "modernity". Rosa dissects the current temporal structure from the perspective of temporal sociology and systematically explores social acceleration (Zheng Zuoyu, 2018:165). He declares that acceleration is one of the main features of the modernization process, as well as the social pathology of late modernity, which manifests new forms of alienation and provokes the temporal crisis of modern man.

Four years after the publication of Rosa's Acceleration: Changing the Structure of Time in Modern Society, the German edition of Han Byung-chul's The Taste of Time was published in 2009. In a sense, the successive publication of these two works constitutes a kind of dialogue about the "time crisis". In The Taste of Time, Han Byung-chul intriguingly points out in the first sentence of his book: "The current time crisis is not accelerating, the era of acceleration has passed" (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017:1). Although he did not name him here, we can see that this is some kind of "response" to Rosa. In fact, throughout the book "The Taste of Time", we can also see that Han Byung-chul quotes more from Rosa's book "Acceleration: The Changing Structure of Time in Modern Society", and has launched a targeted debate around the issue of "time". Obviously, Han Byung-chul does not agree with Rosa's proposition about the acceleration of time, and he starts from his own knowledge structure and theoretical perspective, and starts from the perspective of his own knowledge structure and theory, and starts to reflect on the concept of "time". In The Taste of Time, Han Byung-chul delves into the postmodern concept of time, arguing that time is in a state of "dissonance" and attributing it to the atomization of time and the consequent disintegration of narratives. If Rosa's definition of "acceleration" is "the increase in the number of events per unit of time" (Rosa, 2005/2015: 256), then Han Byung-chul's concept of "acceleration" is a directional understanding, that is, a flow trajectory towards a goal. Thus, "in postmodernity, the dissipation of time is the consequence of a paradigm shift that cannot be reduced solely to the accelerated intensification of the processes of life and production" (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017: 70). In other words, postmodern acceleration is a false acceleration, which is actually due to the de-narration of time, which causes people to feel that the pace of life is accelerating, but in fact it is just a feeling of exhaustion, a meaningless action of transitioning from one event to another, from one information to another. Han Byung-chul argues that it is a mistake to continue to use the logic of acceleration to understand postmodern society, as Rosa did, and that the reason for today's acceleration is "that there is a general inability to end and not to end." Time strikes forward because it does not end and end anywhere, because it is not held by the gravity of any time" (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017:8).

If we say that Rosa's research on the "acceleration of time" in modern society has become an important part of the new development of the Frankfurt School's social critical theory, and has gradually been extended to the system of communication critical theory (Lian Shuixing and Deng Dan, 2020); Then, Han Byung-chul's response to Rosa's theory of "time acceleration" also establishes a connection with the theory of the Frankfurt School on a certain level. This provides us with a frame of reference and the possibility of re-examining the latest developments in the Frankfurt School's critical theory of communication.

Three

Rosa and Han Byung-chul's concept of time:

Different sources of ideas and their influence

Although both Rosa and Han Byung-chul were educated and trained in the academic atmosphere of contemporary Germany, their intellectual structures and spiritual worlds are still very different. As a descendant of Hornett, the third-generation head of the Frankfurt School, Rosa was almost naturally marked with the academic imprint of the Frankfurt School. As a "foreigner" from Korea, Han Byung-chul received his doctorate in Germany for studying Heidegger, and was baptized by both Eastern and Western cultures. This makes Han Byung-chul have a deep insight into contemporary society and a sharp analysis, but his inner spiritual appeal is a quiet and contemplative and aesthetically significant life existence. Therefore, it is of great significance to deeply explore the different ways in which Rosa and Han Byung-chul present the "concept of time" and the origin of their ideas.

Rossa's theory of "time acceleration" and the context in which it was generated can be seen from the extensive quotation of the views of the early Frankfurt School theorists in the book Acceleration: The Changing Structure of Time in Modern Society. For example, in Chapter 13 of the book, "Acceleration and Stagnation: An Attempt to Redefine Modernity," Rosa himself admits that "in my in-depth study of the independent accelerating dynamics of modernity, there is a great deal of opposition to this uncritical affirmation of super-acceleration" (Rossa, 2005/2015: 348-349). The aim of his research is to "make clear the contours of existing critical social theories through it" (Rosa, 2005/2015: 364).

The critique of technology was the unswerving tenet of the Frankfurt School, as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno ·· in their famous Dialectics of Enlightenment indictated about scientific and technological progress: "The peculiarity of the mythological process consists in the legitimization of facts, which is a deception!" (Horkheimer, Adorno, 1944/2006:21) This view almost set the tone for the critical theory research of the Frankfurt School in the past hundred years, and naturally had a non-negligible influence on the study of Rosa. The technological development brought about by the Enlightenment of Reason is undoubtedly the fundamental driving force for the accelerated development of society since the Enlightenment, but this itself constitutes a new "myth" from which it is difficult for mankind to extricate itself. Her·bert Marcuse, another theorist of the Frankfurt School, also found that the development of technology has long placed people under the powerful control of the political system, and that the material power of machines exceeds the physical strength of individuals and any particular group, which makes machines the most effective political tools in any society with machine production procedures as the basic structure (Marcuse, 1984/2008: 5). Through his investigation of the theoretical history of the Frankfurt School, Rosa found that the first generation of critical theories led by Horkheimer and Adorno focused on the production situation; The second generation of Jürgen Habermas focused on mutual understanding of situations · situations; The third-generation Hornett emphasizes the recognition of the situation. On this basis, Rosa's social critical theory adds the dimension of time, arguing that the accelerated change of today's society stems from the change of social temporal structure (Zheng Zuoyu, 2018:170). However, Rosa argues that his theory, "rather than aiming at the critique of relations of production (which is the focus of older critical theory), relations of change (Habermas), or relations of recognition (Hornett), whose normative standards and empirical positioning seem increasingly problematic, but begins to critically diagnose temporal structures or temporal relations" (Rosa, 2005/2015: 364). In this way, Zheng Zuoyu argues, this shows Rosa's ambition to try to turn critical theory into a fourth-generation model. In this sense, Rosa presents the "crisis of time" as a problem of modernity as a new dimension in the development of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School.

In contrast, Han Byung-chul obviously does not have a strong academic background like Rosa's "famous and upright", and does not seem to have the "ambition" to construct a huge theoretical system. In the context of the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures, Han Bingzhe's academic roots are more complex, but the most direct influence is Heidegger's existential philosophy. In Being and Time, Heidegger discarded the traditional definition of the nature of time and advocated a return to the origin of time. Following this, Heidegger distinguishes between real time and non-real time, arguing that the former is ontological existential time, while the latter is the concept of time formed by people in a state of obscuration (Zhang Lei, 2020). Heidegger refers to the true time as the "temporality of origin", which "is experienced in the existence of the true totality in this being, in the preceding determination" (Heidegger, 2001/2014: 346-347). And time as it is commonly understood, such as natural time or physical time, can only effectively solve various physical phenomena, but cannot explain the nature of time. In addition, Heidegger's critique of "modernity" also deals with the question of "temporality". According to Heidegger, this modernity is precisely the product of "vulgar time". According to the concept of "popular time", the division of time existed before us, such as the division between modern and ancient, medieval and modern, etc., and we only need to study them as objects (Zhang Hong, 2009). Of course, when examining the question of time, the answers of different theorists are always related to their different historical contexts. Han Byung-chul commented in The Taste of Time: "Heidegger's philosophy of time is linked to his time. This is true of some of his critical remarks about the ongoing temporal dilemma, for example, about the temporal dilemma of his time. (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017: 133) In Han's view, Heidegger's temporal and self-identity strategies are "a response to the narrative crisis of his time" (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017: 133). In the same way, we can say that Han Byung-chul's philosophy of time is also a response to the "time crisis" of today's digital age.

As an expert on Heidegger, Han Byung-chul was undoubtedly influenced by Heidegger in his philosophical interpretation of the nature of time. Han Byung-chul continues Heidegger's philosophical reflections on time in modern society, and he sorts out three kinds of time in The Taste of Time: theological time, historical time, and modern time. The first is theological time, also known as cyclic time, and this idea of infinitely cyclical time originated in ancient Greece. Han Byung-chul believes that in this world of eternal reincarnation, acceleration has no meaning, and what is meaningful is only its own eternal repetition. The second is historical time, the so-called linear time, which is the Christian definition of time, as opposed to cyclical time, in which time is continuous, linear rather than cyclical. The third is modern time, which is the concept of time in which the media are fully involved in modern society, and modern time is fragmented, disordered, and atomized time, that is, a point time phenomenon. As narrative tension disappears, time "collapses into a series of directionless and hectic points" (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017: 29-38).

Compared with Rosa, Han Byung-chul's thinking on the concept of time is more inclined to a metaphysical value dimension, and his core view is that the development of technology and the acceleration of society have made life busy and disorderly, so that time has lost its original narrative function. If Rosa's presentation of the "time crisis" is entirely based on the perspective of modernity, then Han Byung-chul's presentation has a strong postmodernist color.

Four

Media technology and the changes in the temporal structure of modern society:

Two paths of critical research

There is no doubt that time is one of the fundamental categories of human social existence. Since ancient Greece, the investigation of time has been a key proposition for philosophers. In modern times, as clocks have gradually become the main timekeeping tools in people's production and life, a new sense of time has been shaped. Especially in today's highly mediated world, the task of shaping the concept of time has further fallen to the media, forming the so-called "media time" (Bian Donglei and Zhang Xiying, 2006). Thus, media and time together constitute two important aspects of understanding modernity (Wang Run, 2015). In the world of Rosa and Han Byung-chul's theories about the "time crisis", media technology has always played a very important role, and this is something we need to explore in depth.

In Acceleration: The Changing Structure of Time in Modern Society, Rosa attempts to illustrate how the structure of time in modern society is altered with a macro theoretical framework, an academic "ambition" that is quite similar to the grand narrative of Habermas's book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. He divides social acceleration into three dimensions, namely: the acceleration of technology, the acceleration of social changes, and the acceleration of the pace of life. Of these, "the most obvious and influential forms are those that are targeted, technical, and especially technologically (i.e., mechanical) accelerated processes." (Rosa, 2005/2015:86) In describing the change in the temporal structure of society, Rosa cites a large number of materials to try to describe the relationship between the development of media technology and the change in temporal structure at a historical level: from the "marathon runner" passing through the messengers on horseback, smoke signals and carrier pigeons, to the telegraph and telephone, and finally to the Internet that is almost completely utopian and non-existent, where data has lost its place and is able to travel at the speed of light. At the same time, not only has the speed of transmitting information accelerated, but also the number of messages transmitted per unit of time (in a particular medium) has increased (Rosa, 2005/2015: 87). In Chapter 7 of Acceleration: The Changing Structure of Time in Modern Society, Rosa argues that these three accelerations "exhibit very unpleasant and paradoxical results, which lead to the acceleration of modernity into Sisyphean drudgery and the inevitable bankruptcy of the 'promise of happiness' implied by acceleration" (Rosa, 2005/2015: 218). From the perspective of communication studies, Rosa's discourse, both in terms of academic interest and research perspective, is in line with the Frankfurt School's tradition of communication critical research.

If Rosa tries to systematically discuss the historical evolution of media technology and temporal structure changes in the theory of social construction, then Han Byung-chul obviously does not have such a grand narrative goal, and his critique of media technology has more perceptual intuition. Although Han Byung-chul believes that the contemporary time crisis is not the "acceleration" of Rosa as he said, but the "dissipation" of time, Han Byung-chul does not systematically trace and construct a theoretical system about the "dissipation" of time, nor does he systematically refute Rosa's theory. Han Byung-chul's so-called "dissipation" of time is more of a description of the form of time in the digital age, and this method of description has a great similarity with the "ethereal" tone of media theor·ist Marshall McLuhan. Han Byung-chul once quoted McLuhan's assertion: "Electronic technology is all around us, and in its collision with Gutenberg's technology, we become numb, deaf, blind and dumb." (Han Byung-chul, 2013/2019b:1) Inspired by McLuhan, Han Byung-chul made a statement very similar to that of the Frankfurt School:

The same is true for digital media today. We have been reprogrammed by this new medium without fully understanding this radical paradigm shift. We're fascinated by digital media; But outside of our subjective judgments, it dramatically changes our behavior, our perceptions, our emotions, our thinking, and our common lives. Today, we are obsessed with digital media, but we can't make a comprehensive judgment about the outcome of our obsession. This blindness, and the numbness that goes with it, constitutes the crisis of the moment.

In Han's view, media technology in the digital age has further shaped the temporal structure of modern society, making people's attention to the present even more intense. Today, a wide variety of media technologies are being used to "fragment time and break down temporal structures by increasing efficiency and productivity" (Han Byung-chul, 2018/2019a:5). In the online virtual space, when we can realize the transformation of time, space and scene in an instant, what we increase may only be the experience of things, and cannot form a continuous experience. For the subject, the time that has passed is often simply consumed. Therefore, Han Byung-chul argues, "Network time is a discontinuous, dotted moment-time time. People move from one link to another, from one moment to another. There is little continuity at the moment" (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017: 85). This form of time in the digital age is defined by Han Byung-chul as "bad time". In The Taste of Time, Han Byung-chul repeatedly emphasizes that the "dotted time" in the digital age lacks a narrative tension and deep tension, and that there is no longer the weight of meaning between the dots, nor is there any contemplative lingering (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017:40-41). Clearly, digital technology has disrupted and replaced clock time, transforming the linear time of the past into dotted time in the digital age. In Han's view, this transformation is actually a kind of end of narrative, and the end of narrative makes the aggregation of time lost, so that "events are no longer connected into a history", which destroys any gravitational force of time that links the past, present, and future, and time itself collapses into a simple dotted current sequential replacement (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017:109). Han Byung-chul's reflection and rejection of "temporal structure" from the perspective of traditional theory leads the discussion of media technology and time crisis to a postmodernist perspective, which is in stark contrast to Rosa's research on media technology and the change of temporal structure in modern society. Or rather, it is a paradigm shift from "modern" to "postmodern". It is worth noting that although Han Byung-cheol's obviously prose works involve many fields in the humanities, domestic communication scholars are keenly aware of the analysis and criticism of the human mental condition in the digital information age, and establish a theoretical connection with the traditional communication critical theory research in Germany, as well as the recent research on "mediatization" and "materialization". For example, Liu Hailong et al. mentioned Han Bingzhe when commenting on "Communication Studies in China in 2019", arguing that Han Bingzhe's works such as "Transparent Society" and "Spiritual Politics" all involve hot issues in communication research in recent years (Yu Ying, Qin Yidan, Fang Hui, Liu Hailong, 2020). Zhang Gehao and Zhang Lei directly compare Han Bingzhe with Friedrich · Fredirch Kittler, Vilém Flusser, Bruno Latour··· Donna J. Haraway, etc., as representative scholars of the "materialistic turn" in current media studies (Zhang Gehao and Zhang Lei, 2019). All this shows that Han Byung-chul's theory has strong applicability in the field of communication research.

Five

Media, Senses and the Resolution of the "Time Crisis":

"Resonance" or "contemplation"?

Rosa and Han Byung-chul not only present different "faces" of the "time crisis" from the perspective of modernity, but also propose different solutions: Rosa's plan is "resonance", while Han Byung-chul is "contemplation". These two different paths out of the "time crisis" imply that Rosa and Han Byung-chul have different responses to the problem of "human alienation" in modern society. These two seemingly completely different solutions imply a complementary logical relationship.

In 2016, Rosa put forward a complete "resonance theory" in his book Resonance: A Sociology of World Relations, and devoted a considerable amount of space to the function of media in constructing resonance between "us and the world". In his view, the way we build our relationship with the world usually happens not through direct physical contact with the world, but through the media. Rosa argues that the primary medium through which we have connected to the world for centuries has been the "soft, flexible, aromatic, and working" printed book, but now it has gradually transitioned to a "hard, rigid, cold, and indifferent" flickering screen, which fundamentally changes the way the subject resonates with the world. What's more, the screen has become a unified form of media, and more and more activities must be transmitted through the screens of smartphones and tablets to connect with the world. From this, Rosa argues that we are moving towards a society dominated by screens, but this inevitably leads to two consequences: first, the screen has become a kind of bottleneck through which we can only experience the world, which leads to a singularization of our underlying relationship with the world; Second, our physical experience of the world has been greatly reduced, and we only work and play in screens, without smell, without taste, without gravity, and without the sense of touch (Rosa, 2019:97-98). This describes a scenario in which digital media technology and the "alienation of man" and its consequences are described.

In Rosa's view, modernity itself is a resonant history of disaster. In modern times, with the accelerated development of science and technology, it has become more and more possible for human beings to control the world and body through technology. Digitalization and mediatization, on the other hand, have expanded the scope of human communication to such an extent that "making the world accessible has become the driving force of modernity as a whole." But Rosa finds that it is precisely in this process of accelerating modernization that there is a recurring, persistent, and pervasive anxiety about the subject's relationship with the world. This anxiety stems from a fear of being "atoms" who have nothing to do with each other in a silent or hostile world (Rosa, 2019:320). Zheng Zuoyu also pointed out in the "Translator's Foreword" of the book "The Birth of New Alienation: An Outline of Critical Theory of Social Acceleration" that in Rosa's critical theory of social acceleration, the disadvantage of accelerated society is that it leads to the emergence of new forms of alienation, and the solution to these problems "may be to pursue resonant social relations" (Rosa, 2013/2018:12). This actually reveals the intrinsic relationship between the "social acceleration theory" and the "resonance theory".

In Resonance: A Sociology of World Relations, Rosa proposes a solution to anxiety and fear in accelerated societies, which is called resonance. He defines "resonance" as a particular way in which the subject is connected to the world. The "world" he refers to includes other people, artifacts, and natural objects, as well as perceived wholes, such as nature, the universe, history, God, life, and even one's own body and emotions (Rosa, 2019:203-204). Rosa tries to construct a harmonious interactive relationship between the subject and the world, so as to obtain a "good life" in human society. Thus, Rosa argues that "modernity is not simply more materialized or alienated than any other epoch in history; It is also more sensitive to resonance than ever before" (Rosa, 2019:370-371). In short, Rosa seeks to construct a permeable subject-world relationship in an accelerating society: body and spirit, spirit and nature, individual and collective, individual and social are able to overcome their differences, connect each other as each other, and establish a dynamic and responsive relationship with each other.

In constructing the resonant relationship between the subject and the world, Rosa attaches great importance to the sensory function of "hearing". He argues that the resonant relationship we construct with the world through the medium of the screen lacks quality, and that music as a medium can solve this problem. This is similar to the function that music plays in movies, such as feeling loneliness, melancholy, anxiety, or emotions such as relaxation, contentment, and serenity. In Rosa's view, music can be a medium for film (or cinema) to empathize and "reach" the audience. Thus, Rosa argues that the world of sound lies in its ability to express or produce a variety of different, nuanced relationships: conflict, loneliness, desolation, resentment, alienation, and tension, as well as yearning, shelter, safety, love, and responsibility. And our relationship with the world can be physically, emotionally, and spiritually in harmony (Rosa, 2019:99-100). It should be said that this has a positive effect on solving the problem of "human alienation" brought about by the accelerated social time crisis.

Like Rosa, Han Byung-chul also tries to solve the problem of "time crisis" through the senses, if Rosa chooses hearing, then Han Byung-chul chooses smell. In "The Taste of Time", Han Byung-chul believes that time has a taste. In order to better illustrate this "taste of time", Han Byung-chul tries to use the example of the ancients using incense to measure time, evoking the change in the way people understand time and interact with space. This "creativity" is supposed to have been inspired by McLuhan, who described it in Understanding the Medium: Before the 17th-century missionaries and the introduction of clocks, the Chinese had been using the scale of incense to measure time for thousands of years. "Not only the hours and days, but also the seasons and the signs of the zodiac are represented by carefully arranged scents at the same time, and the sense of smell has long been considered the foundation of memory and the unity of personality." McLuhan sees it as "the most integrated and involved sense of time imaginable" (McLuhan, 1995/2005: 188). Han Byung-chul cites McLuhan's view that ancient Chinese incense records the slow passage of time in space, a tradition that influenced the ancient people's understanding of time and its interaction with space (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017:97). So, in today's digital age, how can people get the "fragrance of time"? Han Byung-cheol's plan is to "meditate on life".

The digital media has reshaped our concept of time, and it has also brought a different sense of time. Nowadays, people feel the acceleration of time in the course of their daily experience, and are enveloped by this accelerating force. This leads to a lack of depth in our lives to achieve human sufficiency. However, Han Byung-chul argues that thought itself has a special temporality that can connect time to something that lasts, and thus deepens time, "a depth that allows each point in time to be united with the whole of existence, with the unfading nature of existence's fragrance" (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017:125). It is for this reason that Han Byung-chul proposes to "meditate on life", which he sees as a "contemplative and meaningful thought", and "contemplation in the original means wandering" (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017:222).

In order to demonstrate the legitimacy of "contemplation", Han Byung-chul returned to the history of philosophy to trace the issue. He believes that since the Middle Ages, labor has been regarded as an unfree means of solving the difficulties of life, and "contemplation" is the only way to obtain the truth. However, by the late Middle Ages, attitudes towards labor had changed, with labor being elevated for its redemptive meaning and contemplation being despised as an act of inaction (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017: 182-185). However, can mere labor bring the ultimate meaning to life? Han Byung-chul's answer is no. In his view, the development of digital technology has made time highly refined, and in this process, the distinction between human labor and rest has become more and more blurred, because rest is only to restore people's ability to work, and all this is included in the category of economic growth and profitability. Han Byung-chul traces this phenomenon back to the industrial age, when the main body of labor was subject to the exploitation and enslavement of machines, but due to the immobility of large machines, people's work and leisure time could be separated. Today, the mobility of digital devices allows us to work all the time, blurring the boundaries between work and non-working spaces, and "everyone is like a labor camp, carrying their workstation with them" (Han Byung-chul, 2013/2019b:52). As a result, people have completely lost their leisure time and have been completely occupied by compulsory labor time. This "labor time is not continuous, it consumes time through production" (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017: 192). On the other hand, modern people are overly engaged in labor and work, often losing time for self-reflection, and "for managers and investors who are obsessed with efficiency, productivity, and profitable returns, this empty reflection seems to be a useless waste of time" (Taylor, 2014/2018:353). In order to correct this phenomenon, Han Byung-chul suggested rethinking the modern way of life, that is, opposing haste. From Han Byung-chul's discourse, it can be seen that "contemplation" is not a state of idleness, but thinking with a "leisurely" mentality. Obviously, Han Byung-chul is trying to regain the value and status of "contemplation" in the history of philosophy.

Of course, Han Byung-chul is not entirely opposed to labor, and the purpose of his re-introduction of "meditation" is to provide a way to prevent and solve the time crisis in the postmodern society. If people lose the time and ability to "meditate" in an actively working society, and their thoughts are excluded to a marginal position, life will lose its own meaning, which may lead to a serious crisis of time and life. Therefore, in today's positive society, the role of "contemplation" should not be completely underestimated or even discarded. Following this, Han Byung-chul is committed to "contemplating life" as an internal strategy to solve the time crisis. He believes that "contemplation of life elevates time itself", thus making time meaningful, and that when life regains the ability to contemplate, man himself has time (Han Byung-chul, 2009/2017:226).

From the above discussion, it can be seen that there is an essential difference between the ways in which Rosa and Han Byung-chul respond to the "time crisis". Rosa is committed to constructing the "resonant" relationship between the subject and the external world, while Han Byung-chul is committed to exploring the subject's inner "contemplation" ability. In a sense, only this combination of internal and external "cultivation" can constitute the integrity of the subject's inner world and the external world, so as to solve the problem of human "alienation". Therefore, the different answers of Rosa and Han Byung-chul to the question of modernity of "time crisis" imply an internal logic of complementarity.

Six

epilogue

Milan Kundera· Milan Kundera once asked in the novel "Slow": How did the pleasure of slowness be lost? (Kundera, 2003: 3) Clearly, both Rosa and Han Byung-chul are trying to respond to this "sociopathological" problem that has been prominent since the Industrial Revolution. However, after all, mankind cannot return to the pre-industrial era without railways, industry, and technology, on the contrary, the rapid development of digital media technology today will only accelerate time faster and faster. Rosa and Han Byung-chul's critique and reflection on the issue of social acceleration mean that they both maintain a clear understanding of it. From their critique of the time crisis and the solutions they propose, it can be seen that they have always maintained due vigilance against the traditional "myth of technology", which also highlights the important value of academic research. As far as the academic research of communication is concerned, whether it is Rossa's attempt to achieve the resonance of "subject and practice", or Han Byung-chul's attempt to restore people's ability to "contemplate life", these metaphysical philosophical reflections undoubtedly provide a valuable reflection path for the current research on critical theory of communication.

This article is an abbreviated version with references omitted, and the original article was published in the 5th issue of International Press in 2021.