Postscript on the Post-digital and the Problem of Temporality

Abstract

According to Florian Cramer, the ‘post-digital’ describes an approach to digital media that no longer seeks technical innovation or improvement, but considers digitization as something that has already happened and thus might be further reconfigured (2013; Cramer 2015, this volume). He explains how the term is characteristic of our time, in that shifts of information technology can no longer be understood to occur synchronously — and gives examples across electronic music, book and newspaper publishing, electronic poetry, contemporary visual arts and so on. These examples demonstrate that the ruptures produced are neither absolute nor synchronous, but instead operate as asynchronous processes, occurring at different speeds and over different time periods, and are culturally diverse in each affected context. As such, the distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ media is no longer useful.