Dynamics of Space and Time in the Digital Era

The digital era breaks the temporal and material boundaries of the physical, disorienting time and space. Time and space in the context of the digital era bends, folds, dilates and does not dismantle in linear form, which changes the perception of communication processes amongst its users. In Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, Gay (1997) states, “Electronic media destroys the specialness of place and time through their ability to ‘lift out’ particular signs, images, and sounds from their local contexts and to recombine them across time and space” (p. 105). The digital space allows for users to manipulate their communication and writing process because the affordances allow for tools such as auto-correct or various group editing functionalities. With the interrupted sanctity of time and space, “We can perhaps assume that the medium of communication over a long period will to some extent determine the character of knowledge to be communicated” (Innis 1951, p. 34). For instance, Google Docs allows multiple users to access the same document at different locations at any time.

This triggers a different kind of thought process with a different consciousness with multiple editors than individually writing on a piece of paper, at a single time and space. It is interesting to note that we inevitably begin to take on the qualities of tools and technologies we use (Carr 2011, p. 64), in the preceding context, the users take on to the qualities fostered by the Google doc, a shared writing, and editing tool, in contrast with a paper and pen. Thus the values fostered by particular technologies have a direct correlation to the perception and the culture, the user extracts out of the continuous interaction with those tools.

Furthermore, another point of contrast between the cyberspace and tangible items is that the physical published materials provide a sense of authority, integrity and certainty, the “digital medium provides a sense of instability, the fact that a URL may or may not exist on our next visit” (Weel 2011, p. 181). Unlike the digital realm, print assures the quality of content through rationalization process of publishing houses, whereas the democratization of the Internet gives anybody the power to publish online, which challenges the authenticity of the published content. Hence, it is crucial to note that in the current day digital era the lack of temporal and spatial sanctity also cause a lack of a level of trust, which is imperative in a source of knowledge.

References:

Carr, N. (2011). Is google making us stupid. In M. Bauerlein (Ed.), The digital divide. Penguin books.

Gay, P. (1997). Doing cultural studies: The story of the Sony Walkman. London: Sage, in association with The Open University.

Innis, H., & Watson, A. (2008). The bias of communication (2nd. ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Weel, A. (2011). Changing our textual minds: Towards a digital order of knowledge. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press.