The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
Aaron Z. Lewisaaronzlewis.comSaved by Sixian and
The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
In the early days of the internet, the Web’s surface was relatively smooth and its “gravitational force” was weak. You could random walk without getting sucked into any black holes. During the 2010s, social media platforms “dug into the Web surface, dragging activities down their slopes … As a result of this magnetic-like attraction, caused by the ... See more
Aaron Z. Lewis • The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
In the digital age, everything from the evening news to the 9 – 5 workday has been freed from the cage of industrial era timekeeping. As long as you have an internet connection, you can march to the beat of your own second hand.
Aaron Z. Lewis • The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
In a 1970 interview, Marshall McLuhan foreshadowed this situation and described what it might do to our minds: “We live in post-history in the sense that all pasts that ever were are now present to our consciousness and all futures that will be are here now. In that sense, we are post-history and timeless. Instant awareness of the varieties of huma... See more
Aaron Z. Lewis • The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
Forgetting is a feature, not a bug. It makes us feel like we’re moving forward through time, rather than standing still or running in circles. My grandmother and her ancestors knew this all too well. Artful forgetting, editing, and curation allowed them to craft narratives that helped their children understand the past and orient towards the future... See more
Aaron Z. Lewis • The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
The conflict between old and new media is in many ways a dispute over who gets to control the “clocks” we live by; who gets to set the pace; who gets access to the technologies that make it easy to synchronize (or de-synchronize) large groups people.Clocks may seem innocuous, but they’re never ideologically neutral. Timekeeping doesn’t just happen.
Aaron Z. Lewis • The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
In the past, our timekeeping systems were synchronized with the systems of the earth. The rhythms and seasons of nature help us orient and make sense of when we are. Digital media has warped our subjective sense of time and thrown us into a state of atemporal confusion. Aside from surface-level features like “dark mode,” digital temporality is blin... See more
Aaron Z. Lewis • The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
It seems to me that, through the way Reddit and YouTube and social media work, there’s such an emphasis on creating distinctions and communities, and it’s just created an explosion of interest in ideological sub-groupings that had been completely forgotten. I started in politics in the early ‘00s, and it just didn’t have this flavor. If you were a ... See more
Aaron Z. Lewis • The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
Imagining the future is just another form of memory. It’s a kind of forward-looking nostalgia. “The history of utopias is the history of rear-view mirrors. Every utopia is a picture of the preceding age.”3 If your memory gets scrambled, your ability to envision a coherent future is severely hampered. When the past feels slippery or shifty, you lose... See more
Aaron Z. Lewis • The garden of forking memes: how digital media distorts our sense of time
The old guard is now left to study the activities and new realities of online tribes. These groups are constantly churning out unsanctioned narratives that attract large followings, and that’s how things have sorted out. As in the media revolution sparked by Gutenberg, the powers that be are not too pleased about losing their monopoly over the tech... See more