Toward a Minor Tech:Yu

Time Scales Under the Logic of Optimisation

Time and technology have been widely studied throughout the past few decades, from Stiegler’s repositioning of technics as time in the exteriorisation of memory (1998), to Harvey’s space-time compression where machines shrink our sense of distance and its relation to time (1990), to theorists writing about the ways photographic and film technologies introduced new and asynchronous timelines (Solnit, 2003; Mroz, 2012). In related analyses of how the quotidian use of technology alters experiences of time, the degree to which experiences of time are affected by digital technologies is unprecedented. For example, Wolfgang Ernst has noted the incredible speeds of digital media that generate micro-temporalities in processes outside the scope of human detectability (Parikka, 2013).

The intensification of these changes renders a time that is without presence and a present that is without time, lacking past and future. Time scales are stretched and squeezed to the point of disappearance, experienced and expressed in various ways that hint at a crisis of time, such as Berardi’s study of an impotence that denies us the ability to imagine alternative futures (2017). Time thus becomes paradoxically both negligible and perpetual in the wake of digital technologies, where its negligibility stems from the incredible speed at which information can be processed, leading to a perceived instantaneity of digital services and imperceptible loading times (Crary, 2013), while its perpetuity is based on the supposed endurance of decentralised, unchanging informatics (Groys, 2016), an archive of knowledge built on the mythical backbones of a system made to detect and withstand nuclear threats (Abbate, 1999).

While previous changes in how time is experienced have occurred throughout human history, a new underlying logic of digital technologies pushes this shift to a new extreme. This logic, I argue, is that of optimisation, where the remarkable degree by which time scales have shifted originates from the inextricability of digital technologies and the managerial infrastructure of our current socioeconomic system. Cannibalistically exacerbating one another, digital technologies and contemporary capitalism is consolidated through the joint logic of optimisation to actualise a disruption in common-sense experiences of time.

Discourse on digital technologies often looks at its underlying structure, such as Soon on the metaphor of the “flow” of data in network technologies (2016). It also takes into account the systemic issues that the usage and proliferation of such technologies lead to, such as Crary, who writes on the speeds at which information is processed, habituating end users to make wait times intolerable (2013), or Lovink, who traces the overall depressive state of individuals today to the wide use of social media. Seldom have theorists explored the ways in which the underlying structure of digitality and socioeconomic systems relate to one another, with one of a few exceptions being Galloway. He makes this connection by outlining how object-oriented programming, which most of Big Tech operates on, resembles in name and logic the popular yet often criticised philosophy of Object Oriented Ontology that has been accused of an ahistoricism endemic to neoliberal policies. Such an affiliation may be nothing more than coincidental, but Galloway points out that if the philosophies ideologically underpinning this world mimic the languages that structure our reality, then such philosophies are both epistemologically suspect and politically retrograde (2013).

Continuing the tradition of comparing computational processes and socioeconomic systems, optimisation is a seemingly obvious but as-yet unexplored phenomenon. Optimisation as a mode of operation is observed at every level of digital integration, from mathematical programming to the “aesthetic” optimisation of code (Galloway, 2021), to user-end processes such as search engine optimisation. Culturally, we see optimisation in the form of self-care gurus and influencers endorsing “the grind” and “hustle culture” via social media (Carter, 2016).

Although optimisation is a relatively new term, its specific logic of directionality and forward-thrust implications are found throughout modern history. The related word “progress” comes to mind, which according to Azoulay is “a destructive force, a movement, a condition embedded in temporal and spatial structures that in the course of a few hundred years has shaped the way we relate to the common world and narrate our modes of being together” (2019:21).

Carried forth into the current era of computational capitalism, we see the residue of what Azoulay terms an “imperial temporality” (2019) permeate the logic of digital technologies and media at every level. Imperial temporality, thus, transmutes into optimisation under the sovereignty of the digital. Although we see similar mechanisms at work in the history of capitalist production, for example, the scientific management of Taylorism (Braverman, 1974), optimisation is particular to computational capitalism and its digitally mediated ways of communication in that its logic folds into every mundane operation, necessitated at the stage of code, organisation, and experience. It underlies the very language on which the world is built, such that speed and persistence for their own sake become its raison d’etre, and the effects of time scales altered so drastically outside the scope of human experience become the norm.

Optimisation might mean hiding the discrete units that necessitate digitality, to make processes seamless so that the metaphors of flow or stream are taken to be reality, predicated on the contrived synchronicity of micro-processes (Soon, 2016: 211). It could involve the trimming of code to fewer lines to achieve an aesthetic particular to “good” algorithms (Galloway, 2021:227). It could be following an unofficial but known set of rules in an attempt to get web pages in front of more viewers such as with the novel yet already dying industry of Search Engine Optimisation, or else squeezing every last drop of value from a data set (Halpern, 2022: 201). Regardless of how it materialises, the logic of optimisation mirrors the mechanics of “progress”, a hangover from post-enlightenment sentiments that continues to plague the current state of socioeconomic affairs. Consequently, the skewed time scales we are left with leave us with no future to work towards and no past for which to be liable, a perpetual present without time.

Whilst some theorists deny systemic issues as culpable for restructuring digital media (Schiermer, 2018), that the very processes behind digital technologies mimic managerial systems may be cause for alarm. As the logic of optimisation continues to pervade every aspect of digital systems, its mode of operation will continue to manipulate and erode common sense experiences of time, heightening the adverse effects already detected by theorists of digital technologies and media.

Works Cited

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