Making, managing and experiencing ‘the now’: Digital media and the compression and pacing of ‘real-time’

Abstract

Digital media time is commonly described as ‘real-time’. But what does this term refer to? How is ‘real-time’ made, managed and experienced? This article explores these questions, drawing on interviews with UK-based digital media professionals. Its specific concern is with how accounts of the time of digital media indicate a particular, yet supple, temporality, which emphasises ‘the now’. I draw on current literature that explores how real-time is a temporality capable of being stretched and condensed, or variously compressed and paced. While much of this literature focuses on the technological fabrication of real-time, I explore how ‘the now’ is produced through the interplay between human and non-human practices. Through discussion of the interviews, the article concentrates on social, cultural and affective dimensions of ‘the now’, fleshing out more technologically focused work and contributing to understanding of a prevalent way in which time is organised in contemporary digital societies.