http://webpages.ursinus.edu/rrichter/harvey.html
ECONOMIC/FINANCIAL BASIS OF THE POSTMODERN: In the most general terms, Harvey may be said to argue that the many manifestations of postmodernity flow from the basic operation of capital. He sees the operation of capital as a constant in the history of the past two centuries; its essential influence in postmodernity thus makes postmodernity less than unique but rather a special case of culture in a line of development that he traces back to the mid-nineteenth century in Europe and America.
SPACE-TIME COMPRESSION: For Harvey the most important cultural change in the transformation from Fordism to flexible accumulation--and from modernity to postmodernity--was the change in the human experience of space and time (Part III). His Plate 3.1 (p.241) gives a graphic rendering of his main point. It shows four maps of the world in descending order of size:
1500-1840 ("best average speed of horse drawn coaches and sailing ships was 10 m.p.h.")
1850-1930 ("steam locomotives averaged 65 m.p.h. and steam ships averaged 36 m.p.h.")
1950s ("propeller aircraft 300-400 m.p.h.")
1960s ("jet passenger aircraft 500-700 m.p.h.").
These increasing speeds of travel illustrate that in each phase the sense of global space changed; and with a change in the sense of space came a correlative change in the sense of time. Harvey carries this obvious point into a penetrating presentation of the change in sensibility, a change in the sense of reality itself, accompanying the changes in travel speeds.
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Postmodernity changes our experience of space and time (e.g. in time – space compression, image-based society, globalization, ‘futures’ markets, etc.).
Time – space compression or the incredible shrinking world
Classical world - cosmic harmony, enduring values, present as the fulfillment of the past, history has already happened, the ancient world is complete, no significant elsewhere.
Medieval world - fixed cosmos and Christian orthodoxy – present misery ameliorated by promise of future heavenly paradise, no historical development, vague sense of elsewhere (Indies and China were otherwordly)
Renaissance world – exploration, expansion, secular world, new sciences, realism, men in search of earthly destiny.
Modern world – capitalism, futurism, mass production, time is money, urbanization, speed, the world grasped and mapped.
Postmodern world – globalization, post-industrial society, virtual forms of over-accumulation, time a commodity to be traded, distance ‘no object’, ‘instantaneous’ communication.
Not for Socrates, it's still an aporia for Aristotle.
In the West, Augustine and Bede had a strong historical consciousness, something unexpected from Augustine since he is considered platonist. vague sense of elsewhere
This is incorrect. The medieval world had a very strong sense of elsewhere as they followed the framework of Augustine's City of God.
Good summary of the various time periods.