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A (Very) Brief History of Time: From Analogue to Digital

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Time, Technology and Narrative Form in Contemporary US Television Drama

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Abstract

This chapter offers a detailed account of the key debates about the relationship between time, technology and narrative form. Although this book is primarily concerned with the contemporary television landscape, this chapter contrasts the temporal regimes of earlier media with the current television industry, examining television’s early development as well as the origins of other time-based media, namely cinema and radio. Through this comparison, this chapter draws attention to one of the key material differences between early and contemporary media technologies, that of analogue and digital. Drawing on a diverse body of scholarship and early cinematic examples, it demonstrates that our perception of time is inextricably linked with material (and technological) processes and maintains that in order to understand the narrative developments of TVIII, it is therefore necessary to examine and emphasise the significant role that digital technologies play in this dynamic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Media Arts, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK

    JP Kelly

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  1. JP Kelly
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Kelly, J. (2017). A (Very) Brief History of Time: From Analogue to Digital. In: Time, Technology and Narrative Form in Contemporary US Television Drama. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63118-9_2

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