Program or Be Programmed Response

I really liked the foundation of this piece. The connection that the author makes between time and the Internet is a very thoughtful one. I had not really considered that when I was an adolescent in the dark ages of dail-up, I actually had to plan my Internet time. My mom and I had to negotiate between our two landline phones and our large, aqua accented Mac to figure out who could do what at which time. The idea that the digital age has increased asynchronicity, beginning with e-mail and culminating with the plethora of apps available today, is as interesting as it is dismaying. I think that this was an important article to read for our class because it addresses the fact that the very medium we are using to display time actually has no concept of time; clocks built into computers only "take orders". You can have a continuous, asynchronous conversation with someone who is halfway around the world without having to even think about time zones. Not only does the digital world have its own time zone, it is its own zone all together. Before reading this article, I hadn't been aware of these now very clear time discrepancies. This course has made me more aware of time but before now, it had not extended into my online time as well. I appreciate the fact that we read this piece for that exact reason – mindfulness of time in the digital age is few and far between and therefore important.