Time and Textual Practices

I have been mulling over two recent posts on time, one at “Reading Archives” and another at the Long Now blog.

The first post considers how time is reflected in records—how recordkeeping can provide insights into timekeeping. (Note the date and time recorded on this post.)

The second post considers the phenomenon of “temporal chauvinism,” an uncritical adoption of a view of time that is disproportionately fixated on the present. (Note the order of the posts here—the past is epi[b]logue.)

Reading through the papers of a former college president recently, I was fascinated by his insights into a time that was characterized by new media, liberating play, and short attention spans. He was writing about the 1920s.

Links to posts: http://readingarchives.blogspot.com/2007/09/time-and-record.html
http://blog.longnow.org/2007/09/13/we-are-all-temporal-chauvinists-now

Image: The Clockmaker, detail from a watchmaker’s advertisement, Maclean’s Magazine, 1954