Time Crises
One doesn’t scroll through a book, eyes in fixed in roughly the same place, but instead scans across, down, and across, turning the page when appropriate. Unlike a feed, the content isn’t infinitely regenerated, but has a discrete (if large) quantity: you’re heading towards an ending. At issue is two experiences of time, one associated with codex and one with the refreshing web page. The first involves racing forward into the future, awareness of a coming end pulling you forward and a visible, easily accessible past behind you in the form of surrounding text and turned pages. The second involves a continuous present, the narrow aperture of the screen, the past erased with a single algorithmically-generated refresh. Less the experience of moving into the future than the future cascading into the static now.
By Andrew Eckholm.