This is a relatively lengthy and scholarly post concerning invisible time geometries implicit in digital media. I begin with a history of chronographics (time representation), move on to the invention of the timeline and finish with an analysis of contemporary digital time representation.

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In early modern scholarship history was said to have two eyes: geography and chronology. Through the individual study of the two planes of space and time one could begin to understand history. In a shift of the Weltanschauung of the world,[1] space and time could no longer be separated, leading to a radical reconceptualization of history, the study of chronology for its own sake being abandoned. The advent of digital media undoubtedly has had a similar effect on our conception of time, and when the structural properties of digital media are considered, time representation is positioned at a point of friction at the interface between the human and the digital realm. Through an analysis of visual representations of time, this paper seeks out structural patterns and uses these to ask questions about the shape of time in digital media. While primarily concerned with graphic structure, I address the positioning of the human body in the digital realm, the inherent asymmetry in the experience of time, the directionality of history and the impossibility of the experience of digital time as absolute. I approach history as a form of memory, wherein timelines become the physical manifestation of the structure underlying the creation of histories.

It is important to lay out some definitions: In this paper “chronology” will refer to the dictionary definition, “a document displaying an arrangement of events in order of their occurrence,” while I will use the term “timeline” more broadly, referring to any representation of time, and the term “chronographic” for graphic representations. “Time-based digital media” refers to media which have an inherent chronologizing feature, which may record or generate events, including social media such as Facebook, Instagram, etc. “Events” refers to both the classical definition (something which happens at a certain time and place) and to the non-spatial digital version.

The Geometries of ‘Classical’ Time                                                              .

The study of chronology was born from the desire to determine the precise time of biblical events with respect to the current time. Thus, all occurrences were situated relative to important biblical events such as the birth of Christ or Creation, the timeline constantly being recalibrated in renewed efforts at precision, however forming a closed loop of absolute time with a determined beginning and end. The predominant form of the medieval chronology was that of the Eusebian table: a vertical structuring of events, usually tethered to the page of the manuscript by architectural detailing (Figure 1). Eusebian tables are perhaps the purest chronologies: a vertical sequence whose only structural constraint is the axis they occupy and the syntax of human language and typographical norms; however, their architectural bounding suggests a permanence that was not yet represented from within the chronology itself and indicate that chronology and graphic representation were still entirely separate. The meditation on time and eternity, as seen in Augustine’s Confessions (401 AD), in which he positions the earthly time created by God within the eternity in which he dwells,[2] created timelines which were necessarily finite, and thus the circle is a common metaphor.[3]

The visual revolution of chronography did not occur until the eighteenth century, as an important development in the theory of time had to take place, which was the conceptual fusion of space and time. Prior to this, the representation of a non-thing would have seemed entirely absurd, but the inherently spatial nature of all graphic representation allowed a newfound visual concretization of absolute time.

An excellent bridging example of the biblical conception of time and the infusion of spatiality is Thomas Burnet’s Telluris Theoria Sacra of 1681 (Figure 2), where a sequence of circles signifying biblical events form the large circle of Time. While measured space and time are still conceptually differentiated, the frontispiece illustrates the passing of time through geographic changes on the surface of the earth, thus making visible a previously invisible phenomenon.[4]

The fusion of space and time is commonly attributed to advancements made in cartography.[5] Albeit delayed by more than two hundred years,[6] visual evidence of this phenomenon exists in abundance in the explosion of graphic chronologies that ensued, an example being the Martignoni map, on which time becomes measured geographic space, flowing radially from the spring which is the Roman Empire (Figure 3).[7] As space is not one-dimensional, a linear organization simply did not work, and thus in this image the radial (outward) dimension functions as the future axis of time.

In their authoritative work on the history of the timeline, Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton situate the beginning of the modern linear timeline at Joseph Priestley’s Chart of History (Figure 4), which, after a brief experimental period, became so predominant that it is taken for granted today,[8] described by Stephen Boyd Davis as the “invisible scaffold” underlying all knowledge.[9]

In Priestley’s Chart of History, time is mapped spatially onto a two-dimensional field, the cartographic influence being undeniable in the colour-coded sprawl of historical empires through history. His contemporary who produced a similar chart, Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg stated:

“Geography has as its object the extent of the earth; Chronology has as its object the succession of time. May not duration be imitated and represented as effectively to the senses, as distinctly as space, and may not intervals of time be as easily counted in degrees? What impediment is there: it is quite as easy to measure years as to measure places…”[10]

Here, measured space becomes measured time, and an abstract concept takes on physical form.

In Priestley’s Chart of Biography (Figure 5), the distribution of names is regimented by a scaled time axis, and all symbols, writing and other distractions are eliminated, the sole text remaining being names, which served a merely indexical function.[11] Through measured mapping of events onto space, time could be shown accurately and simply, and negative space itself transmitted information, rather than it being transmitted by mere aggregation.[12]

Priestley’s timeline was truly the ‘ideal’ timeline – one ripe with strict visual rhetoric, its overwhelming graphic complexity conducive to a reading of history in its entirety; it became a representation of time itself. Priestley wrote of his charts: “the whole is before us. We see men and things at their full length, […]  and we likewise generally see them through a medium which is less partial than that of experience.”[13]

This statement shows that for Priestley, time was still absolute – in line with contemporary Newtonian thinking, and cemented by the fact that he was religious and therefore his timelines were teleological, the finitude of the map also enabling the absolute conception of time with a beginning and an end, indicative of only a partial realization of the potential of the linear metaphor.

 The Axes of Time: Subjective and Objective  

The ‘absolute’ is by necessity removed from any relation to the human body, but linguistic analyses of the conception of time show that the predominant positioning of time lies in contradiction to the representational axis that dominated eighteenth-century chronographics. In his linguistic study, Hoyt Alverson reminds us that language has long been infiltrated by spatial metaphors, and thus the spatial conception of time is a fundamental human experience.[14] In all human language,[15] the predominant positioning of the past and future with respect to the human body is on the sagittal axis, in which the body itself moves forwards through time.

However, the axis apparent in modern chronographics is undeniably lateral (horizontal). Alverson ascribes this to the fact that printing moved away from the graphic flexibility of manuscripts and contributed to the “channeling of graphic language into the linear interrupted configuration.”[16] Through the conventions of printed text, language was increasingly organized in this way, which gave rise to the left-to-right flow of history that is widely associated with the Western timeline. In concordance with Alverson, Derdre Gentner designates the lateral direction as the “time-moving metaphor,” and introduces the second and the sagittal as the “ego-moving” metaphor, in which the observer is a participant.[17]

As traditional chronographics can only occupy two dimensions, the vertical axis is the natural mapping of the sagittal onto a plane, and thus a distinctive two-way division can be drawn between the neutral “time-moving metaphor” and the “ego-moving metaphor,” which shows the inherent asymmetry in the directional experience of time.

The importance of the structure forced by the printing press can also be found in Vilém Flusser’s work, who, in the tradition of McLuhan, wrote of codes that their physical properties influence their structure even more so than their criterion of meaning. For him, linear causality is fundamental to the structure of written text and thus causes history to be understood in lines, as process.[18] Here, the technology of the printing press is imprinted in the graphic representation of time, forming a friction between the message coded into the meaning and the medial manipulation of it.

The Skeleton of Digital Time

In the early 20^th century, the conception of time changed radically under theories of relativity and simultaneity that emerged as the world was networked by undersea cables.[19] The erosion of the concept of absolute time, and thus the realization of the potential of the metaphor of the line was foreshadowed serendipitously in the work of Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg, who produced a 54-foot long chronographic chart that was placed in a viewing device with a crank which allowed the observer to isolate 150-year portions of history. While graphically similar, this chart is an inversion of Priestley’s, as the ‘beginning’ and ‘now’ of time are concealed, with only duration remaining in a dynamic flow. Time could no longer be conceived of as static, its movement through space becoming a metaphor for the passing of time. Here, the academic scrolled through events, the box becoming an early manual cousin to the gestural manner in which we engage with digital media today (Figure 6).

Digital media are full of temporal metaphors, not limited to the obvious ‘timeline,’ but also including ‘stories,’ ‘history,’ ‘seasons,’ ‘status,’ ‘events,’ ‘live,’ etc. Theories on digital time exist in abundance. Some have postulated that the digital world exists outside of the realm of time, Johnathan Crary has argued that the “always on” character of digital technologies in corporate capitalism has corrupted traditional rhythms of life,[20] Henri Lefebvre speaks of the ‘polyrhythm’[21] of the media day, while Wolfgang Ernst argues that media technologies’ microtemporal dimensions disrupt the human perception of time and are capable of time axis manipulation.[22]

Digital media have reconfigured the representation of time. While the aforementioned traditional chronographics still exist today, time-based digital media merely appropriate some of the formal aspects of these, as they require a graphic method for mapping events onto space for a function that is not historiographical or pedagogical, but is simply a mapping of the user in (the space of) time. In this sense, digital timelines are inherently participatory.[23] Early digital social media can be thought of as an extension of the memory faculty in the sense of McLuhan, where events are stored externally for longevity, and can even be compared to an annal-like record-keeping. This is reinforced when the structure of early versions of HTML are considered; contemporary timelines are essentially lists, devoid of any graphic sophistication,[24] much more like Eusebian tables than modern timelines. While digital media are fundamentally text-based, their code appearing to follow the Western linear interrupted, any spatial conventions that exist in written code, such as the breaks between words or paragraphs exist merely for human legibility, thus creating a system that is entirely structurally positive, resulting in an ultimate, uninterrupted linearity.

The use of the vertical spatial axis in digital media may also be considered a projection of the sagittal axis onto the two-dimensional medium. As these media do not construct histories, the use of the “ego-moving metaphor” underlines their participatory nature. This argument is further strengthened when this is considered, as they thus conform to Gentner’s “ego-moving metaphor,” and not the objective lateral direction.

An crucial disruption in the digital timeline is the loss of the transmission of information in measured negative space between events. This ‘non-content’ is replaced by digital timestamps, and as Paul Virilio has argued, the “real-time” (chronoscopic) digital time display erases the sense of transitional sequential movement:

“…the time of the present world flashes us a glimpse on our screens of another regime of temporality that reproduces neither the chronographic succession of the hands of our watches nor the chronological succession of history.”[25]

Computer memory, which makes use of digital timestamps, does not need to map onto space to conceptualize time.

Another important development in digital timelines is algorithmic sorting, which eliminated chronological sequencing. Events were now sorted according to an arbitrarily determined importance rather than their order of occurrence. Similar to how the graphical indexing of significant persons became absurd as soon as their names became too dense, the chronologizing of events in digital media no longer made sense when it became clear that their purpose was not to construct time-based histories. Here, individual users’ streams of time are met by a channel which creates an infinite array of personalized timelines, and although the media structure and their generative mechanisms are formally linear, paradoxically, they are not linearly sequenced.  The algorithm responds to a multiplicity of criteria, including time, importance and feedback from previous participatory acts, thus manufacturing future events in a feedback loop with the past.

Making use of the instantaneity possible through electronic communication, a crucial characteristic of modern media is the capacity to observe events at the moment of their occurrence. When the algorithm is considered, the mapping of occurrences onto a line consisting of a “past” and “future” becomes increasingly dubious. Henri Lefebvre spoke of the media’s capacity to generate events:

“The media occupies days; it makes them; it speaks of them… the media day has neither beginning nor end. Can you imagine this flow that covers the globe, not excluding the oceans nor deserts? Is it immobile? It has a meaning: time.”[26]

Here exist timelines that are no longer juxtaposed against the infinite, but instead inhabit it, realizing the true metaphorical potential of the line.

The property of instantaneity of the digital timeline has undermined its chronological intents. As it no longer strives to create histories it can be characterized by an ‘eternal present’ in which here, there, then and now are folded into the present in a phenomenon similar to the one described by Paul Ricoeur in his amendment of the impossibility of an infinite past and future, where these are processed into a present-past and present-future, [27] creating a feedback loop in which our cultural techniques program us.

To conclude with the logic of Flusser, the deconstruction of the timeline and the inevitable evolution of digital media from the Western alphabet and Indo-Arabic numerical system to an image-based system[28] could allow for entirely new temporal frameworks. Here, time representation, reconfigured by the geometric potentialities of digital media already untethered from Cartesian coordinates may take on wholly new forms, shifting the shape of the fundamental framework of human knowledge, which will in turn reposition the temporal consciousness of the human being. While the line is a useful metaphor for infinity, there are many others, and as digital space is expanded beyond the screen conceptually and in practice, we can begin to imagine timelines whose morphology aligns closer with their structuring.

[1]In this paper, I focus on graphic representations of time, and primarily Western ones. This is due to the geography of the media which have encapsulated themselves to become our contemporary digital media, which have strong Western medial influences and are founded on the European alphabetical and numerical system. However, in the argument that is commonly made which this paper also tangentially supports, digital (graphic) media are tending toward structures which are increasingly removed from European Enlightenment-era media.

[2] Augustine, Confessions, trans. Albert C. Outler (Perkins School of Theology, 1955), Book 11.

[3] Stephen Jay Gould, Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 6.

[4] Burnet was a cosmogonist by training, but his work emphasized the reading of the earth’s geology to affirm the truth of the bible.

[5] Daniel Rosenberg and Anthony Grafton, Cartographies of Time (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2013), 96.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Although Martignoni tried to minimize the use of text, he used symbols such as skulls, crowns, and rings to symbolize important events. While graphically beautiful, his map does not prove particularly useful as a chronology.

[8] Rosenberg and Grafton, Cartographies of Time, 149.

[9] Stephen Boyd Davis, “Two Papers for Design and Time at DHS Conference 2016,” Chronographics (September 5, 2016, accessed March 2019).

[10] Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg, Chronographie, ou, Description des temps, (Paris: Barbeu Dubourg, Lamote, Fleury, 1753), 43.

[11] Rosenberg and Grafton, Cartographies of Time, 126.

[12] It proved impossible to represent the time since creation at scale, as this would result in a vastly disproportionate blank. However, the reduced area at the far end of his history was merely a heuristic, and as Priestley was religious he even offered a condensed version of biblical history that could be purchased along with the map.

[13] Joseph Priestley, Lectures on History and General Policy, (Birmingham: Pearson and Rollason, 1755), 32.

[14] It should be noted that Alverson’s paper sought to discredit the widespread orientalising notion that non-Western people somehow experienced time differently than Europeans.

[15] With the exception of one. Rafael E. Nunez and Eve Sweetser, “With the Future Behind Them: Convergent Evidence from Aymara Language and Gesture in the Cross Linguistic Comparison of Spatial Construals of Time,” Cognitive Science 30 no. 3 (2006): 401-5.

[16] Hoyt Alverson, Semantics and Experience: Universal Metaphors of Time in English, Mandarin, Hindi, and Sesotho (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 207.

[17] Dedre Gentner, “Spatial Metaphors in Temporal Reasoning,” in Spatial Schemas and Abstract Thought, ed. Merideth Gattis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 203-22.

[18] Vilém Flusser, “Line and Surface,” in: Flusser, Writings, ed. Andreas Ströhl, trans. Erik Eisel (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 21-34.

[19] Peter Galison, Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps: Empires of Time (London: Sceptre, 2004).

[20] Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (London: Verso, 2014).

[21] Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, trans. Stuart Elden and Gerald Moore (London: Continuum, 2004), 48.

[22] Wolfgang Ernst, Chronopoetics: The Temporal Being and Operativity of Technological Media (London: Rowman Et Littlefield, 2016).

[23] Although early medieval chronologies often included blank spaces for the reader to fill in, these were intended for scholarly purposes and cannot be considered participatory in the immersive sense, as the user existed outside of the temporality of the timeline by necessity.

[24] Stephen Boyd Davis, “History of the Line,” Design Issues 28 no. 4, 7.

[25] Paul Virilio, Negative Horizon: An Essay in Dromoscopy, trans. Michael Degener, (London: Continuum, 2008), 137.

[26] Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis, 46.

[27] Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 21.

[28]Vilém Flusser, Into the Universe of Technical Images, Trans. Nancy Ann Roth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985).

Bibliography

Alverson, Hoyt. Semantics and Experience: Universal Metaphors of Time in English, Mandarin, Hindi, and Sesotho. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Augustine, Confessions. Trans. Albert C. Outler. Perkins School of Theology, 1955.

Barbeu-Dubourg, Jacques. Chronographie, ou, Description des temps. Paris: Barbeu Dubourg, Lamote, Fleury, 1753.

Boyd Davis, Steven. “History of the Line” in Design Issues 28 no. 4 (2012), 4-17.

Boyd Davis, Steven. “Two Papers for Design and Time at DHS Conference 2016.”

Chronographics. September 5, 2016. Accessed March 2019.

http://chronographics.blogspot.com/2016/09/two-papers-for-design-and-time-at-dhs.html

Crary, Jonathan. 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep. London: Verso, 2014.

Ernst, Wolfgang. Chronopoetics: The Temporal Being and Operativity of Technological Media. London: Rowman Et Littlefield, 2016.

Flusser, Vilém. Into the Universe of Technical Images. Trans. Nancy Ann Roth. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1985.

Flusser, Vilém. “Line and Surface.” In: Flusser, Writings, ed. Andreas Ströhl, trans. Erik Eisel. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2002, 21-34.

Galison, Peter. Einstein’s Clocks, Poincaré’s Maps: Empires of Time. London: Sceptre, 2004.

Gould, Stephen Jay. Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Gentner, Derdre. “Spatial Metaphors in Temporal Reasoning.” in Spatial Schemas and Abstract Thought, ed. Merideth Gattis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.

Lefebvre, Henri. Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life. Trans. Stuart Elden and Gerald Moore. London: Continuum, 2004.

Nunez, Rafael E. and Eve Sweetser, “With the Future Behind Them: Convergent Evidence from Aymara Language and Gesture in the Cross Linguistic Comparison of Spatial Construals of Time,” Cognitive Science 30 no. 3 (2006): 401-5.

Priestley, Joseph. Lectures on History and General Policy. Birmingham: Pearson and Rollason,

Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Trans Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

Rosenberg, Daniel, and Anthony Grafton. Cartographies of Time. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2013.

Virilio, Paul. Negative Horizon: An Essay in Dromoscopy. Trans. Michael Degener. London: Continuum, 2008.

Image credits

Figure 1 – Jean and Alexander Heard Library digital archive

Figure 2 – Christian Rohr

Figure 3 – Stephen Boyd Davis, chronographics.blogspot.com

Figure 4 – Cartographies of Time

Figure 5 – Cartographies of Time

Figure 6 – Stephen Ferguson