摘要：An anthropology of speed is drawn to the experience of speed, as was noted in the introduction to this Openings collection, focusing on contemporary forms of acceleration and the foreclosures that result. In this article, I suggest that an anthropology of speed must attend to infrastructures of connection, and to speed as what transforms randomness into facticity. Taking a cue from the semantic clustering of acceleration, speed, and epidemics, and attendant notions of things “going viral,” my proposal stems from a consideration of viral speed. At the most fundamental level, viral speed is expressed as the number of infections generated over time, such that a fast epidemic like Ebola infects many people in a short period of time, compared to a slow epidemic like HIV. Speed is a product of connectivity. Frequent users of urban transit, railway systems, or airlines know that the fastest route from point A to point B is not the shortest one, but the one that takes routes served at the highest frequency, ensuring shorter waiting times and mitigating the impact of missed connections. Molecular epidemiology shows that the speed of viral outbreaks also depends on network effects, suggesting that speed is a function of what connects us. Molecular epidemiology makes visible an ontology of speed, of how life is connection and connection makes space and time matter: how life is speed. Viral sociality foreshadows human sociality, at least in the age where human connection increasingly relies on technology. The molecular epidemiology of viral outbreaks illuminates speed as the product of infrastructures of connection.
