From Jet Age to Internet Time

As residents of Silicon Valley, we may be forgiven for our belief that we invented "internet time" - that nearly ubiquitous sense that the pace of life has become so rapid as to be measured in milliseconds. To many observers of these NASDAQ-caffeinated days, it appears somehow new, almost bleeding edge-new, that cycles of a computer chip might replace more natural passages.

Several students in the San Jose State University Communication Studies Rhetoric and Public Life course (Spring, 2000) respond that the quickening pace of life in contemporary society may be traced back several decades prior to the explosion of online IPOs. Exploring the cultural geography of public life in San Jose, these students have discovered historical lines and arcs leading to a period in the early to mid-twentieth century America beginning with the streamlining movement and the 1939 World's Fair and culminating with the "Jet Age" of the 1960s when the promise of miniature electronics and high speed transit promised a global village before the internet was even invented.


Pavilion of American Interiors - New York World's Fair 1964-65










Futurama Bowl, Stevens Creek Boulevard, San Jose - Photo from Alan Hess's Googie

Describing this as the Populuxe age, Thomas Hine remarks that by the 1964 World's Fair (held on the same site as the 1939 Fair), "Americans seemed to be getting a bit jaded about the future; it had been around for too long a time" (p. 168). However, as we explore in these student notes, the curved trajectories of the "Jet Age" did not crash with Vietnam and Nixon - they simply continued underground before resurfacing in the Internet Age. It is perhaps appropriate that these student-authored remarks are "notes" rather than essays, given this topic. Instead of taking a leisurely stroll through the intellectual hinterlands of public life, these passages are specific, direct, and Silicon Valley-fast.

In "Streamlining," Susan Yamada traces the aesthetics of the Jet Age back to 1930s "modern" design. In "Migrating," Liz Ault continues the path around suburban cul-de-sacs and the growing privatization of public space. In "Isolating," Karen Hegglund describes a literary attempt to round off the sharp edges of the postwar world. Finally, in "Progressing," Ramon Rodriguez outlines an alternative future of the "Jet Age" that never quite came true. These notes (and those which will follow) illustrate the mission of Woz Way - to provide students a space where they can mark the edges of our cultural geography, wherever and whenever they may be found.