Time and the Digital: Connecting Technology, Aesthetics, and a Process Philosophy of Time

Introduction

2 Time and the Digital in many different domains that our experiences of time and space are linked to our experience of technology.2 It is relatively agreed—and I do not think too much of a generalization—that in the contemporary world, the development of vast networks, increasing data transfer rates and the ubiquity of computing have changed the way that the majority of us experience the world. As David Harvey has pointed out, developments in the speed of technological processes, such as the horse and cart, the jet engine, the telephone, telegraph, and new communications technology have resulted in a “time-space compression,” experientially shrinking the globe.3 However, the drive to conceptualize the way digital technologies may produce new temporalities, in addition to the new experiences of distance and global geography, has somewhat waned in contemporary digital theory. Time seems to have been given short shrift in descriptions of digital interactivity in place of space. This can be seen quite clearly in the wide array of spatial metaphors that have become part of the popular vernacular used to describe digital interactivity; these include the “virtual” space of the Internet, information “highways,” Web “sites,” data “clouds,” and the now ubiquitous metaphor-based global user interfaces (GUIs) that present the desktop as an office environment containing “files,” “folders,” and “trash.” The dominance of space in digital theory can be traced to the discussions surrounding 1990s cyberculture, where the idea of interacting across separate “virtual” and “real” worlds seems to have taken hold.4 We see this particularly in terms of sociological theories of Internet use, where it was postulated that the Internet existed as a virtual “third place,” a meeting and socializing space for distributed users, where they can transcend the space of their daily lives.5 Likewise, in digital art there has been a preoccupation with questions of space, with artists and writers focussing on the way layers of digital technology can overlay material space, “augmenting” or “mixing” this space with digital imagery or information.6 Attempting to move beyond these limits, Time and the Digital rethinks the relationship between time and digital technology, taking an approach grounded in aesthetic theory. In this book I want to indicate how a new theory of time, developed out of the work of a set of processoriented philosophers, can be seen to change the way we understand the relationship between the use of digital technology and time. To this end Introduction 3 I investigate a set of “experimental” digital artworks. These examples experiment with digital technology, pushing it beyond its usual application, and through this they allow us to see something unique about the manner in which technology may produce time. Emphasizing the temporality produced by the process of interacting with technology may make many important contributions to the way we understand our technological relationship with the world. Understanding how technological processes may produce temporality not only highlights the way recent developments in media technology have impacted upon our understanding of the relationship between the past, present, and future. It also leads to a reformulation of ideas of memory, affect, and agency in interactive settings, as we begin to position temporality as produced by a process involving multiple human and nonhuman actors dispersed across space and time. It also leads to a reexamination of the relationship between historical events, as new archiving and networking processes enable new links to be made between historical data. Time and the Digital, like many of the texts that deal with the intersection of technology and culture, situates itself in the in-between fields, attempting to flesh out the consequences of an encounter between aesthetics and digital technology. Of course, this is not the first text to do so; it leans on many major accomplishments in the field, including the work of thinkers such as Adrian Mackenzie, Matthew Fuller, and Brian Massumi. Building on this work, Time and the Digital makes a unique contribution to this body of work by approaching the theorization of the encounter with technology from the perspective of process philosophy, temporality, and aesthetics. In particular it explores the way digital technologies used in aesthetic pursuits may alter our sensory understanding of the world, specifically the way that these technologies may alter our understanding and experience of time. I do not, however, merely want to apply the philosophy of time, as a history of ideas, to the study of pieces of...