Medieval Royal Seals at the National Archives, London

[stag_dropcap font_size=”90px” style=”normal”]O[/stag_dropcap]ne chapter of Waiting for Word looks at how power allows people to wait differently, often giving them immunity from waiting altogether. Yet, how does someone in a position of power exert his or her influence from a distance? How does the power get communicated through messages where the person can’t be present to assert their own authority? This is one of the primary dilemmas with messages — they remove the communicator from the person they want to communicate with. The medium of that message (whether it come in the form of a letter, an oral message, or text message on a mobile device) must communicate that person’s presence and position. That is, the message itself and the medium on which it’s conveyed have to do a lot of heavy lifting to carry the sender’s identity as someone in power. How is this done?

One piece of this book looks at an important attempt to communicate power through messages (and thus shift the waiting time for messages and their responses): medieval seals that signified the status of the person sending the message. These were marks on a message that let the recipient know the prominence of the one sending the message and that a response should not waste the valuable time of this important person. This chapter tells the many stories of when message delays — especially when a quick response was expected as part of the social code — shifted the course of history. Power, privilege, and expectations of quick responses have been bound together in how people in different social standings experience waiting.

I was able to spend quite a bit of time at the British National Archives in London looking through these amazing artifacts. Holding seals and documents that were created over 900 years ago was such a rewarding and unique experience for me as a scholar who has almost entirely studied the digital age. Below are some of the great images I captured of these seals.

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Jason Farman

Jason Farman is a Professor of American Studies and the Associate Dean of the Graduate School at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is also a faculty member with the Immersive Media Design Program and the Human-Computer Interaction Lab. He is the former Director of the Design Cultures & Creativity Program, which he helped launch in 2010. He is author of the book Delayed Response: The Art of Waiting from the Ancient to the Instant World, which was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology. He is also the author of Mobile Interface Theory: Embodied Space and Locative Media, winner of the 2012 Book of the Year Award from the Association of Internet Researchers. His work has been featured in The Atlantic, the BBC, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, NPR, National Geographic, 99% Invisible, Atlas Obscura, ELLE Magazine, GQ, Aeon, Vox, and others. He earned his Ph.D. in performance studies from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television.

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