I like the idea that it comes from Milton, because Mrs. Nicholsons has shown that it is in Milton's writings that 'space' comes into English. Milton is a younger contemporary of Shakespeare. In young Milton it is the same thing. Only old Milton can step from star to star into infinite space.
Speed is something which contemporary people seem to take for absolutely granted.
We discuss high and low, fast and slow, endurable and destructive Speed. And I reflected on contemporaries caught in Speed, fantasising of odd becoming 'slowbies', as one just said. Speaking of the good life as for slow life, immediately makes clear that a life of low Speed is meant. We all knew that their prisons were useless, but we also knew that they were caught in a social trend to which people inside the system had no way to resist. For a moment I thought, trying to prepare myself, I'd tell them that I was a monk who was sent by his Abbot around the year 1300 to Jerusalem to see the holy places, but had fallen into a time warp and ended at this meeting in Oslo.