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An Anthology of Digitised Chronologies c / An Anthology of Digitised Chronologies is an attempt to both expose the techniques employed by 'Big Tech' to cynically manipulate our perception of time, and explore the alternative opportunities and potentials of democratising digitised chronology.
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In the top right hand corner of every Twitter account sits a small constellation of stars that allow a user to choose between a classical chronologically organised timeline, or an neo-contemporary algorithmically rendered timeline. This small interaction opens a new, but largely unexplored, conceptual door to a new temporal dimension - digitised chronologies.
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Chronology classically refers to the arrangement of events or dates in the order of their occurrence. This singular concept of chronology has largely been abandoned by digitised technology. The chronologies we have now become accustomed to have little to do with an absolute order of occurrence, and far more to do with relative inference.
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Our digital technologies have come to embody the modern equivalent to a musicians metronome, each device and each app is set to a distinctly different tempo. But unlike the traditional metronome, digital users have no control of the tempo and often no awareness that a distinct concept of digitised chronology has been chosen for them. Each tempo is precisely engineered by the technology's creator in a cynical bid to maximise the profitability of their product(s).
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Every platform has seemingly taken up a differing chronology; SnapChat has built its chronological signature around "evaporative" content, while Instagram / Twitter / Facebook all recently jumped into "storified" content on "infinite" timelines that heavily favour "self-centric" threads of temporality, Wikipedia has committed to a "revisionist" chronology, and newcomer Club House has found success in revisiting a "scheduled" timeline traditionally associated with analog broadcast media. Digital broadcast media such as Netflix, Disney+ and iPlayer, for their part, have taken to "continuous" "suggestive" "skippable" and "emotive" chronologies.
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Creative Commons Attribution:
You are invited to publish, reference or iterate this c licensed material for non-commercial purposes as long as you follow the license conditions. Below is a suggestive copy and paste attribution for this work.
ted@ted-hunt.com | @_ted_hunt |
An Anthology of Digitised Chronologies c / An Anthology of Digitised Chronologies is an attempt to both expose the techniques employed by 'Big Tech' to cynically manipulate our perception of time, and explore the alternative opportunities and potentials of democratising digitised chronology.
--
In the top right hand corner of every Twitter account sits a small constellation of stars that allow a user to choose between a classical chronologically organised timeline, or an neo-contemporary algorithmically rendered timeline. This small interaction opens a new, but largely unexplored, conceptual door to a new temporal dimension - digitised chronologies.
--
Chronology classically refers to the arrangement of events or dates in the order of their occurrence. This singular concept of chronology has largely been abandoned by digitised technology. The chronologies we have now become accustomed to have little to do with an absolute order of occurrence, and far more to do with relative inference.
--
Our digital technologies have come to embody the modern equivalent to a musicians metronome, each device and each app is set to a distinctly different tempo. But unlike the traditional metronome, digital users have no control of the tempo and often no awareness that a distinct concept of digitised chronology has been chosen for them. Each tempo is precisely engineered by the technology's creator in a cynical bid to maximise the profitability of their product(s).
--
Every platform has seemingly taken up a differing chronology; SnapChat has built its chronological signature around "evaporative" content, while Instagram / Twitter / Facebook all recently jumped into "storified" content on "infinite" timelines that heavily favour "self-centric" threads of temporality, Wikipedia has committed to a "revisionist" chronology, and newcomer Club House has found success in revisiting a "scheduled" timeline traditionally associated with analog broadcast media. Digital broadcast media such as Netflix, Disney+ and iPlayer, for their part, have taken to "continuous" "suggestive" "skippable" and "emotive" chronologies.
--
Creative Commons Attribution:
You are invited to publish, reference or iterate this c licensed material for non-commercial purposes as long as you follow the license conditions. Below is a suggestive copy and paste attribution for this work.
ted@ted-hunt.com | @_ted_hunt |