Facebook and Time
Chris Ridgeway | 24 Sep 2011 | 11:46
Facebook took an interesting step Thursday against the cultural flow of the social graph as we know it. It has to do with our perception of time.
The printed book has always subtly preferred the past. Books, once published, become relatively unchanging bouys in the river of time. And the most important ones stay right there where they were dropped, which is why we were always taught in school that the year and author are the two most important things to cite when writing our research paper.
However, digital information culture as we’ve known it so far doesn’t work like this. Its time-orientation is toward the present: what is happening NOW. (Aside: It doesn’t flow quite as fast as “live TV”–it’s more viscous time syrup, with memes taking 24 hours to move to talking status, etc. More on this [pdf]). Searches give you a snapshot of what currently exists on the web, not what existed a five years ago. Aside from WayBackMachine, the web resists the “holding action” that defines print media.
This is why the 15th ed of the Chicago Manual of Style said that when you cite web pages in a research paper, you can stop putting “accessed on” in the citation. It’s meaningless, they said. It’s not likely that you can return to the website at that date. You can only access it as it is today.
So Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg introduced a new landmark feature for profiles called Timeline (watch the F8 keynote address). It tracks not only the years since you’ve been on Facebook, but lets you go fill in the gaps of your life, adding kid photos and important life events.
In some ways this adds an oddly historical view to an ahistorical world. For contrast, they’ve moved the live feed to the right of the screen: the perfect image of what is Now, with updates dropping off the cliff moments later.
But this is a digital take on a print orientation. I haven’t seen the actual timeline, but it seems that you can add data all across the timeline at once–say, all the 3-mile runs I’ve taken in the last years. But if I change my mind, in 1-click, I can remove them all as well. Not just the ones in the future, but the ones in the past as well.
This is not the old naive historiography that sees past events as unchanging anchors to be uncovered, nor is it post-modern history that seeks to reveal the forgotten past voices crushed by power. It moves past both of these, to view of history as data layers to be added or removed at will. We modify history not because we seek alternate views or are coming closer to the truth, but simply because we must. In an infinite world of information, there are infinite ways to tell the story, and only some of the layers can float to the top.
How will digital natives write history? Mark Zuckerberg just helped shape that.
i like these thoughts, chris, but doesn’t this still bode the question: *who* is adding or removing the layers? and *why* are they doing so? these are, as you well know, somes of the questions of so-called postmodern historians and theorists. to me, facebook is simply mirroring what these theorists have already argued for, namely, that we speak to and create the past always as a voice from the future. i embrace the notion of an “infinite world of information” generating “infinite ways to tell the story.” to me, the beauty of both language and technology (very general terms, but i’ll let them stand for simplicity’s sake) is that they are both excessive, much like desire – generating worlds that are always beyond our immediate perception and simple quantification or chronicling. but do layers simply “float to the top”? or does someone, some entity, some collective, enforce or determine which layers are most likely to float? i don’t know, for me, it always comes back to questions such as this. and i’m resistant to seeing zuckerberg as an altruistic player in this. the establishing of layers of history or reality seems to always reveal a series of struggles or contests, and i suspect facebook – based my perspective on zukerberg’s biography and facebook’s own questionable stance toward freedom of information and privacy – of being on the opposite side of myself or individuals or freedom or some nebulous concept that resembles these ideals. that being said, the complexity of these data layers certainly does carve out spaces from which alternative narratives can be constructed that resist the machinations of corporations such as facebook, so, i don’t want to simply present a sort of antagonistic reading as the only possibility. but i am and remain suspicious of how facebook has approached altering “our” conception of history. there is a difference between challenging linear chronology to reveal the irreducible complexity of interpersonal dynamics and manipulating linear chronology to alienate users from controlling their own productions and interactions.
i guess ultimately, this is me saying we should catch up. hope you’re well! ttyl.