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

2 | Time and Process

32 two tIme and Process Panta Rhei (all things flow) Heraclitus for heraclItus, as well as for Whitehead and Deleuze, reality is not a constellation of stable things but of processes, which cannot be substantialized into a priori things or substances. For these process thinkers it is not the stable things but the fundamental forces and the fluctuating activities that constitute reality.1 For instance, in relation to the theories of media ecologies, mediation, and convergent media proposed by thinkers such as Matthew Fuller and Henry Jenkins, Whitehead would insist, in line with these theorists, that it is not so much individual media objects or media content that should be the focus of inquiry. Instead a processbased media theory would argue that media objects and their content take form from a process or flow of information between digital and physical occasions. Whitehead states, “If we are to look for substances anywhere, I should find it in events which are in some sense the ultimate substance of nature.”2 When we apply this thought to questions of interactivity, and particularly interaction with technology, we see that it is not so much the use of an object by a “user” that constitutes an interactive relationship. It is rather made up of the relations and activities that are brought about as these two entities encounter each other in the interactive event. Take, for instance, an everyday and relatively simple example of interaction with technology such as using a telephone. When we speak down a telephone line, air leaves our lungs and is passed through the throat, vocal chords, tongue, teeth, and lips. This then creates vibrations in the atmosphere , which are registered on the diaphragm of a microphone on the telephone. This vibration is then translated into electricity and passed through a network of cables, which may alter the message, adding noise Time and Process 33 to the signal. Furthermore, the voice connects to and is affected by a network of social, political, and economic processes in which the technology of the telephone is connected, including the protocols established by the telecommunications company, which of course involve the rate at which they charge users to use their phone lines, the way our particular social groups use phones, and the media ecology in which the telephone now finds itself, which increasingly includes elements such as the Internet, social media, and cameras. The voice passes through these biological, technological, economic, and social networks and is then heard at the other end of the line. This voice is not the voice of a subject alone, but their voice in constant contact with both their physical and social milieu, including the levels of agency at play within the technological, economic, and political network of the telephone. In the discussion of mediation and convergence presented in the Introduction , these concepts were positioned as involving a flux of information across the processes, components, and practices of various forms of media.3 Here, media processes work through one another, occasions of new media work with occasions of old media, processes of digital systems work with processes of social systems; these comminglings then form a collective or assemblage of technological, social, and economic actors, which tends to direct the further processes of the technological assemblage.4 The contemporary state of the Internet, for instance, includes a complex technological infrastructure of things such as fiberoptic cables, servers, and computers. This works with an economic infrastructure including Internet service providers, search engines, advertising , market research, and data analysis companies. Within this ensemble there is also, of course, a social infrastructure of users, which includes an extremely complex mixture of social groups, values, and practices, as well as a history of media use and development. All these processes take place within the assemblage of the Internet. All of these processes are conditioned by the other processes that they connect to in this assemblage . And all of these processes direct the future becoming of the technological , social, and economic ensemble. Social demands change, new technologies emerge, and new companies start up. Some of the old companies go under, some old technologies become mediated by new ones, and some old social practices are augmented by new media: all of this 34 Time and the Digital happens in relation. Each element in the ensemble of the Internet plays its part in the development of the ensemble, as technological, social, and economic interests and developments become...