Abstract
Algorithms have become increasingly dominant and pervasive, warranting a need to scrutinise and study these technologies further (Finn, 2017; Hassan & Purser, 2007; Kitchin, 2016). Existing literature have explored how technologies have introduced a virtual dimension in our lives, often considering such relations in a spatial sense with limited study on temporality despite space and time being “indivisible elements” (Hassan & Purser, 2007). This paper seeks to shift discussions to examine the relation between time and algorithms in an attempt to become “time aware” (Sabelis, 2002), exemplified through an analysis of interactive film ‘Bandersnatch’ and borrowing concepts from New Media theorists Manovich (1995) and Røssaak (2011).
Invisible Hands: Algorithms and Time
As algorithms become increasingly dominant and pervasive in our lives, the need to scrutinise and decipher these technologies become more apparent (Finn, 2017; Hassan & Purser, 2007; Kitchin, 2016). Existing studies of algorithms – and more broadly information and communication technologies (ICT) – have explored extensively how such technologies have introduced and planted a virtual dimension in our lives, although much of these literature tended to consider this relation in a spatial sense (Hassan, 2007; Kittler, 1995). Often, ICTs are thought to have allowed for the “shrinking” of the world, where a person connected to the Internet can interact with another person across the globe or gain access to real-time news from another country (Crang, 2007 ; Kwak, Poor & Skoric, 2009). In other words, users “share a common space, a virtual space that both accept as being a real space, a real virtuality that has real-world effects” (Hassan, 2007 p.41). Naturally, in this instance, the notion of time comes into play as ICTs have allowed for this immediate exchange of information to occur. Despite the close relation between space and time, present literature have focused on understanding technologies spatially, with limited understandings of time.
Indeed, “we have cyberspace so why not cybertime?” (Hassan, 2007, p.41). He suggests this gap in literature is “rather strange” given that “space and time are indivisible elements” where “one makes no sense without the other.” This essay attempts to address this gap in literature, specifically rooted in an analysis of algorithms and how they have altered our perceptions of time. That is not to say, however, that existing literature have entirely ignored the temporal aspect in understanding technologies; these perceptions of time will be addressed with greater detail in later sections of this essay. What is significant in putting a spotlight on ‘time’ in our networked society, is to open our eyes to how our increasing use of networked technologies have accelerated the way in which we experience time at an unprecedented scale, thereby trapping us further in an environment where we may lose control and autonomy over our use and understandings of time (Hassan, 2007; Hassan & Purser, 2007). As Hassan and Purser (2007) posits, the network society “annihilates space (and clock time) and has brought time (and speed) as a legitimate dimension of social inquiry to the fore.” To attempt an examination of time within the context of these technologies is to attempt to become “time aware” (Sabelis, 2002), perhaps moving us closer towards freeing ourselves from the clutches of the clock time, of modernity and of capitalism.
This discussion on rethinking time within the context of a networked society is timely, as we move into the era of “Web 3.0” where ICTs become “smarter” – some even liken this to an artificial intelligence assistant (Nath, Dhar & Basishtha, 2014; Technopedia, n.d.). With increasing complexities in technologies, it becomes even more imperative to understand how technologies have influenced our lives, especially in ways that are less visible to us. An algorithm is one such example – elusive yet pervasive. Finn (2017) highlights the power we, as users, have entrusted onto algorithms. “We imagine these algorithms as elegant, simple, and efficient, but they are sprawling assemblages involving many forms of human labor, material resources, and ideological choices” (Finn, 2017, p.7). Clearly, algorithms serve as a useful and fascinating example to better understand issues of time.
Given algorithms and time have both been rendered invisible – although not intentionally – in our increasingly networked society, this essay embarks on an ambitious process to understand how algorithms have altered our understandings of time and to be “time aware”. The first section of the essay attempts to answer the following questions:
- How do we presently think about algorithms and time?
- How can we rethink our understandings of algorithms and time so we may free ourselves from the workings of [clock] time in our increasingly networked society?
The second section of this essay closes in on the specific workings of algorithms in film – an area of study with limited research, and how they work to change our perceptions of time, drawing from Lev Manovich’s and Eivind Røssaak’s works. As Rossaak (2011) argues, “film and photography are no longer medium-specific qualities, but are rather two of the ways algorithms hide themselves” (p.191). The shift from analog to digital in film amidst a post-industrial society makes for a fresh and interesting analysis in this study of time.
Rethinking Algorithms
Algorithms are commonly defined and understood as sets of instructions to be carried out in a particular sequence to accomplish some task, usually to solve a problem (Algorithm, n.d.; Mackenzie, 2005). These algorithms are often embedded within softwares – a hidden logic (Manovich, 1995), thereby imbuing in this technology a sense of mystery and a level of power (Chun, 2011; Finn, 2017). As Kittler (1995) points out, “the so-called philosophy of the computer community tends to systematically obscure hardware by software,” suggesting programmers into today’s society are contented with managing technological complexities by hiding them from our view. This obscurity and complexity of algorithms many scholars have spoken of, in some ways, explain why time is difficult for us to understand. With such advancements in technologies, new time fractions – like the nanoseconds and picoseconds – have to be used to measure computers because they run so quickly. Time has quite literally sped up and it becomes more difficult for us to comprehend or perceive time within this technological context. “These are invisible moments that we can only capture mechanistically and mathematically” (Hassan & Purser, 2007). In other words, only the software we use to carry out other algorithms can measure these new time fractions; people like us can rarely comprehend these types of time which becomes problematic as we are swallowed into this intense, acceleration of time through our use of these softwares.
Beyond thinking about algorithms as “linear sequences of steps to be carried out mechanically” (Mackenzie, 2005), it would make for a more meaningful discussion of time if we expanded our understanding of algorithms not just in relation to other technologies, but attended to as object of analysis in themselves. Through an analysis of the Viterbi Algorithm, Mackenzie (2005) uniquely argues that algorithms should be “judged as embodying singular applications of human individual or collective intelligence.” In simpler terms, as Hassan and Purser (2007) suggests, the algorithm “brings the deadening logic of ones and zeros – the basis of binary code – to life,” where it rejects the notion of algorithms as mere mechanic repetition and establishes possible relationships between “things that are disjointed, by concatenating events in paths.” Much like the way Finn considers algorithms as “culture machines” which serve as “filters” through which we consume entertainment and news, Mackenzie illustrates this power of algorithms (2005, p.103):
Algorithms make the world they work in hang together in certain ways and not other today. They give weight to relations, and they treat relations as real by holding things together and by making some conjoined path of translation discernible.
Imperative in this manner of thinking is Mackenzie’s conclusion that the “mechanical clock entimes according to a preset and invariable rhythm” while the “computer-based time of the network is a microworld that is entimed by the irreducible traces of human intervention and the potentially unlimited experiences of duration that these may generate” (Hassan & Purser, 2007, p.16). Simply, time is relative and contextual. Likewise, though not specific to algorithms, Hassan (2007, p.15) argues “human control over temporal processes is possible in network time in ways that were impossible through the mechanical time of the clock.” Algorithms, like clock time, have long been assumed to possess an absolute and axiomatic quality. Since we have broadened our understandings of algorithms, rethinking time empowers us to expand our experiences of time beyond that of clock time, especially amidst today’s networked environment.
Changing Perceptions of Time
For many people, time seems to exist in the background and it is “something we deal with almost without conscious thought” (Hassan & Purser, 2007, p.4). To raise prominence and challenge dominant notions of time, we must first understand how these understandings of time came about and how such understandings have shackled us to our temporal experiences within a networked society. “Time is social,” where “the living body, nature, and culture came together in ancient societies across the world to form a diversity of relationships with time” (Hassan, 2007, p.38). This “social production of time” simply referred to how people and societies “created time” in giving meanings of duration, of growth and of decay. One example Hassan (2007) highlights in his essay is the Chinese practice of zuo yuezi where a woman goes through thirty days of confinement after pregnancy, that coincides with a lunar cycle. From a temporal perspective, he argues this is motivated by the desire “to create a cultural significance for the embedded temporality of pregnancy, to order it and bring it more directly under human understanding and therefore control” (Hassan, 2007, p.39). This idea of ‘control’ and ‘order’ shall be explored further in the second section of the essay using a specific example of a contemporary film.
The introduction of the clock can be said to diminish our control over time and limit our temporal experiences (Hassan, 2007; Mackenzie, 2005). We now follow “the rule of the clock” which Hassan (2007, p.40) refers to as “a mechanical abstraction that places time outside the immanency of human creation and experience.” Our experience of time has now been standardised; clock time has become the universal system of time for the benefit of modernity, industrialism and capitalism (Gurevich, 1976, as cited in Hassan, 2007). With the introduction of the Standard Time and “time zones” around the world at the 1884 International Meridian Conference, “people in modern societies were schooled from infancy that the numbers around a clock face measured the reality of absolute time, and therefore the experience of time had to be measured by it,” thereby undermining our control and autonomy over the social production of time (Hassan, 2007, p.40). Quite simply, we have surrendered the way in which we live to the clock, to the extent of being able to guess the time without needing to look at a clock – for instance, when the canteen becomes crowded with people three hours into our work day, we know it is lunchtime and therefore it is 1pm.
This becomes especially problematic in our networked society, where technologies enable us to be connected to others around the world and we are expected to be available at anytime and anywhere (Crang, 2007; Hassan & Purser, 2007). What this means for us is that if we continue to adhere blindly to clock time, we continue to grant time the power to dictate our lives, as technologies have led to the compression and acceleration of time. For example, I receive an email at 11pm at night in Singapore, from an American-based director I am working with – there is a 12-hour time difference. Here, ICTs have allowed for instant communication (compressing time and space) yet because I am aware it is 11am in America when they are working, I adhere to the rules of the American clock and respond anyway almost immediately. In Shove and Southerton’s (2000) words, “this sense of synchronisation and choreography” hold “the promise to help people cope with the compression and fragmentation of time. But in so doing they lock their users into certain practices and habits, at the same time requiring an extensive if routinely invisible supporting infrastructure with the unintended consequence of tying people into an ever denser network of inter-dependent … relationships with the very things designed to free them from such obligations” (as cited in Crang, 2007, p.77). Not only does this example illustrate the types of time generated by the network society: words like instantaneity, real time, and 24/7 (Hassan & Purser, 2007), it is also reminiscent of how technologies have drastically shifted boundaries between organisational and private life, thereby affecting ways we understand labour, organisation and management (Sabelis, 2002). By rethinking the way we understand time beyond that of the clock time, we may begin to regain control of time and spend our time better in this networked society. Time can be social again.
Crang (2007) highlights several ways in which we can consider time afforded by New Media. He suggests ICTs have altered the duration and pace of events, although he importantly notes that our experiences of time “are contingent for different people in different places” (Crang, 2007, p.70), further emphasising the relativity of time. “With many users accessing services electronically on the basis that it is faster, there may be a slowing down for those without such access” (Crang, 2007, p.71). ICTs have not only changed the way in which we use our time, they have also changed our sense and measures of time, “away from abstract external time (“I’ll be there at 9am”) to one embedded in activities or a relational time between individuals and tasks (“I am just arriving at the station, how far away are you?”) and from absolute space to relative space (“How far are you from me? The bar?”)” (Crang, 2007, p.76). This acknowledgement of how ICTs have changed temporal and spatial relations allow us to recognise and understand how we negotiate time today.
Imperative is an understanding of time as social and as relative. As Hassan (2007) rightly highlights, “ironically, it is with the dawning of the computer age – the source of temporal acceleration – that our serfdom, vis-a-vis the relationship to the clock, is beginning to change.” He envisions a promising future to “control” time once more through the temporal worlds created by ICTs, allowing a new engagement with time.
Algorithmic Culture in Film: Mutable Temporality
In today’s post-industrial society, film – having changed from the analog to digital – provides for a fascinating example in which we can understand time. While film is traditionally understood as broadcast media, film – in areas of production, distribution and consumption – has developed with technology to allow interactivity and a digital generativity, thereby qualified as a type of New Media (Manovich, 1995; Manovich, 2003). New Media today can be understood as digital data controlled by software, that can be reduced to digital data to be manipulated by software as any other data (Manovich, 1995, 2003). For example, a shot in a film can be stored as matrix data that can then be manipulated, according to additional algorithms, to change colour or resize. Similarly, Røssaak (2011) posits film is a way in which algorithms hide themselves and borrows from Galloway to suggest an “algorithmic culture” exists in film (p.190). Like in gaming, Røssaak (2011) argues digital editing software, like Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro, is a “game” that is “all about finding the best algorithm,” where users can activate thousands of ready-made algorithms simply to transform the image.
Perfectly embodying Manovich’s (1995, 2003) understandings of New Media and Røssaak’s (2011) argument of film as an “algorithmic culture” is the interactive film ‘Bandersnatch’, recently released on streaming platform Netflix (Roettgers, 2018; Thomas, 2019). While the earlier paragraph focused at length on algorithms in film production, this example will illustrate how algorithms are also present in our consumption of film, thereby changing the way in which we experience time perhaps in ways we do not realise. Set in 1984, ‘Bandersnatch’ follows a geeky teenager Stefan who “sets out to turn a multiple-choice science-fiction book by the same title into a pioneering computer game that also presents the player with a series of choices” (Roettgers, 2018). This film was basically created and produced based on algorithms – a team of Netflix engineers built the company’s scriptwriting tool allowing creatives to “build complex narratives that include loops, guiding viewers back to the main story when they strayed too far, giving them a chance of a do-over” (Roettgers, 2018). Interestingly, the word ‘loop’ is often thought of in a temporal sense, suggesting an endless cycle of being trapped – as we have been talking about in our essay. According to Netflix (as cited in Roettgers, 2018), there are “over a trillion unique permutations of the story” although this also includes relatively simple choices users can make that do not alter the story. This is reminiscent of Manovich’s (1995) argument that new media follows the logic of individual customisation rather than mass standardisation in a post-industrial society where we see that ‘Bandersnatch’ exemplifies what Manovich refers to as “modularity” and “variability”. This fragmented presentation of the film very much mirrors our fragmented experience of time as we view the film, interrupted every time we are asked to make a choice.
Time is an important notion, especially in ‘Bandersnatch’, although expectedly less visible. Viewers have to make a decision within ten seconds or the algorithm decides for the viewer a ‘default option’ (Roettgers, 2018; Thomas, 2019). There seems to be a paradox in our consumption of this film – we are granted the power to decide for the character therefore dictating how much time we spend on watching the film in total, yet we are controlled by the time pressure exerted by the system. ‘Bandersnatch’ has challenged the way in which we relate time with film. The advent of the DVD, transcoding film from analog to digital formats, has allowed for viewers to temper with time in that we are able to pause, rewind and replay parts of the film – film no longer as a continuous experience. Here, the control of how we wish to experience time as we view the film is very much dependent on us. ‘Bandersnatch’ – or the algorithms built within the film, on the other hand, seems to have the upperhand in dictating our timed experiences.
To Infinity and Beyond: A Conclusion on Time
This essay has attempted to reimagine our perceptions of time and temporality amidst a networked society, broadening our understanding of algorithms. By examining the relationship between algorithms and time – both of which are often less visible, the hope is for users of technologies to be more “time aware”, therefore rethinking ways in which we may regain control over time. In this essay, I have explored multiple ways in which ICTs have changed our perceptions of time. Hassan (2007) and Crang (2007) perceive time as a social production, as contextual and relative, and suggest ways in which ICTs can expand our understandings of time to once again be considered ‘social’, thereby freeing us from the limits of clock time. The example of interactive film ‘Bandersnatch’ serves to illustrate the pressing need to think deeply about time in our consumption of ICTs, borrowing concepts from Manovich (1995) and Røssaak (2011). This essay aims to add another layer in the exploration of time and temporality in our networked society, with which we may, in the words of Hassan and Purser (2007) “interpret (and thus maybe have some agency and control over) the new world that digital networks have created and the (literally) new times that are being created with every network connection” (p.20). Surely, as more attention is placed on studying temporality in technologies, we can learn to renegotiate our relationship with time.
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