Is the web twisting your sense of time?

Concerned that you - or indeed your company - are falling behind in the race to be noticed in the digital age? It may be because you are operating according to an industrial concept of time.

In the railway age - an age when trains apaprently did run on schedule - timings were far more rigid, and the importance of abiding by them was paramount. Now our sense of time is more 'fluid', meaning we feel less willing to making temporal commitments because of the ease of breaking them - by making a call on the mobile or sending a text.

So, anyway, says FutureRealWorld - a research company which tracks consumer behaviour and trends. "The most obvious expression of this is in media consumption, where we've witnessed the end of prime time because of the advent of PVRs [personal video recorders]," said Tamar Kasriel, FutureReal's director, warming to her 'time' theme in a speech at Internet World in London. "But it's influencing social patterns too. Rather than arranging a meeting now, people schedule a 'proxy-meeting'. You'll say Friday. Then in the middle of the week - you might specify Friday afternoon, and then as time gets closer, you gradually nail down when and where you'll meet. There's a sense that you can bend time, and for some people that provides a great sense of empowerment."

Those starved of the vocabulary of digital marketing and consumer trends were also feeling empowered after Ms Kasriel's speech. Featured in her 30-minute talk were a raft of creative - and sometimes slightly bamboozling - phrases which sounded nothing if not very 2.0. Among them: "the half-life of data is much shorter than it used to be", the "world wild web" - a reference to the perceived unlawfulness of many activities on the internet, and "the tyranny of immediacy", which has something to do with the fact that we and many of the services we use are "always on". Still with us?

Comments

[Peter]

May God save us from marketing types and there ridiculous phrases, 'half life of data.....', what rot!

[Adrian]

How many people actually ever USED ALL the different programming features which their VCRs had/have to offer? I have owned a few over the past 15 years and after an initial period of experimentation only ever used pre-programming to record my favourite sitcom "of the time" when I was on travel. PRIME TIME has lost importance because people (or at least the kind of people advertisement is interested in) have more flexible lifestyles and are not necessarily at home watching TV between 6 and 9. Cancelling a meeting via mobile or email on short notice is allright if only two people are involved, but you don't want to try this if this involves a larger group (unless you are their boss). Chances are, that you will be the one standing out as being unreliable and disorganised.

The only outfits which seem perfectly allright with "bending time" are those, who have a quasi monopoly (railway services, utilities, some telecom operators) and therefore need not fear that their clients move on to competitors with more traditional views of time, and of course "public" institutions such as local councils and the government itself, who consider themselves above rules in general.

[Eats Wombats]

"half-life of data.. what rot"

I never came across the term before but I understand it at once and think it makes perfect sense (the length of time it takes for 50% of data to be obsolete). Perhaps it's because I know what a half-life is in terms of radioactivity.

Curmudgeonly half-wits won't stop people being inventive with English.

[John M]

The idea that someone should criticise the use of language by anyone, still less marketing types, while spelling 'their' as 'there'....beggars belief.

It beggars belief somewhat further, and is funny, that this dude, Peter, is stabbing wildly at neologisms, while commenting on a 'blog'. Does he even know what a blog is, or does he just accept it's 'this'?

What worries me more is the patronising tone the British media takes on tech. I am Brit living overseas, and the London media JUST DOES NOT GET IT. This is not the same as your Dad's teasmade. People are remaking the world all around you, and you will be - are being - left out.

Try some real curiosity about this, and then try some proper thinking, and then kick in with real journalism. And then the Peters of the UK will have less room for metaphorically spilling gravy down their tie while opining on the sorry state of the world.

[M@]

"Curmudgeonly half-wits won't stop people being inventive with English."

--I think we ALL know what half-life means "in terms of radioactivity," Mr. Einstein.

Inventive language? Perhaps. But I agree w/ the commenter that it was too cute by half.