Road Signs: Travel, Technology and Space-Time in 20th Century Europe and America

Technology-facilitated mobility presents both contemporary cultural and social challenges as well as challenges in terms of historical understanding. As noted in a range of discourses, historical and contemporary processes of identity de- and reterrit...

Technology-facilitated mobility presents both contemporary cultural and social challenges as well as challenges in terms of historical understanding. As noted in a range of discourses, historical and contemporary processes of identity de- and reterritorialization have been both facilitated and engendered by the advance of travel technologies over the course of the twentieth century. Moreover, the historical imagination of particular modes of transport and mobility – from the automobile to the train to the recently grounded commercial supersonic jet – frame and support social imaginations of particular historical eras and events. Such imaginations can span, e.g., the allure of the road and travel to the Beat generation, the comradery of the underground and air raid shelters in London under the Blitz and the recent marketing of Smart cars for crowded European cities.

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