Cultures & Time in the Digital Age
Time varies by culture. In the digital age, this is impacting geopolitics & sovereignty as well as cultural identity.
When we think about the internet and everything we do with it today, we tend to consider speed first. The faster the better. For the average citizen, that is what matters. Speed for streaming movies and shows, speed for browsing the internet. But what about time? Increasingly, time, or temporality, is playing a role geopolitically. From weaponisation to cultural preservation and respect. Why?
In 2017 when Iran was in the depths of massive anti-government protests, the government didn’t turn off the internet, they throttled it, significantly slowing it down. This was a deliberate act to desynchronise local and global information flows. In 2011 during the Arab Spring, Egypt turned off internet access in an attempt to stop protests. Instead it drove more people onto the streets. These were early attempts at weaponising digital time.
Some countries today, notably Russia and China, slow down internet traffic coming into their countries from Western nations while speeding up national content. This is using digital time as a means of excerpting digital sovereignty.
In South Korea during national exams the government has implemented digital cooling off periods to help students stay focused on their studies. It works. France has at times attempted to slow down the spread of English language content to protect national identity. During Ramadan, the Saudi government throttles internet speeds to better match the rhythm of such an important religious and cultural period.
So why do we see these efforts to manage or control time around the world? While in some cases it’s weaponisation for political and sovereignty purposes, mostly it is a sociocultural reaction for cultural preservation and the way different nations and cultures perceive time.
Just as different cultures have styles of dress (fashion), kinship systems (family, friends etc.), foods and customs, so do various cultures see time in various ways. The perception of time is an aspect of culture as a whole.
As such, cultures react to the evolution of digital technologies that interact with our digital spaces or worlds. This creates what I call “artificial cultural rhythms”. In a way it is an act of maintaining cultural sovereignty through a manufactured means.
All cultures have their cultural rhythms. In Islam there is Ramadan and Eid as key moments of the year. Christians have Christmas, Easter, lent. Judaism has Passover and Hanukkah, Hindus have Diwali and other key times. Pagans have Samhain, Imbolc and other key times. Many represent the turning of seasons, reflecting ancient practices around agriculture and seasonal changes and our representations of birth, death and renewal. Often accompanied by various dishes, music and dress alongside various rituals. All of them wrapped in a quilt of time.
Even in industry, there is a set rhythm of time; quarters and year-ends. Historian E.P. Thompson, a Nobel prize winner, argued that much of today’s sense of time emerged through capitalism, specifically manufacturing and heavy industry. This has shaped the notion of the five day work week in many, but not all, countries.
They make up our sense of the passing of time, passing on generational knowledge, customs and traditions that help us feel bonded to our particular culture into which we were born or become a part of through choice. Time is a part of culture. In anthropology, we call this “event time” rather than “clock time”.
In the digital age, cultural transmission is moving faster than ever before in human history, amplified through information technologies such as the internet and all the devices that connect to it. Prior to the digital age, there was time and space between cultures. As the global population grew and we invented new transportation and communication technologies, this time and space slowly collapsed to where we are today. There is no longer any time or space between global cultures.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A major upside is that we can more easily learn and come to understand each others cultures. It’s a bit turbulent right now because we’re all trying to figure out this new dynamic. So for now, it’s messy. Which is in large part why different cultures and nations practice various forms of temporal politics.
This has also lead to the rise of “cultural time zones” where we see cultures and nations take actions to enforce their perception of time through content delivery delays, modification of algorithms, access restrictions and data localisation. Vietnam, for example, has implemented regulations for foreign platforms to reduce the rate of content removal to match the digital rhythms of cultural absorption rates.
Too, some governments are even beginning to assert more control over their digital past as well. Such as the EU’s “right to be forgotten” laws. Some nations are enacting rules and regulations around how long data should persist. A sort of bureaucratisation of time for a digital society.
And now of course, there’s Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is a whole bunch of tools. Most impactful in sociocultural terms being Generative AI (like Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini). These GAI tools can generate, transform and mix cultural elements like music and languages at hyper speeds. In other words, much faster than any real-world culture can process. This adds yet another layer into temporal politics and culture.
Much of the influence on time has been driven more recently by Western linear thinking. This isn’t bad or wrong, it just reflects Western influence over much of the world. But each culture has its own orientation to time. Some prioritise the past (ancestor-focused), while others emphasise the present. Highly industrialised nations focus primarily on the future. Many have complex combinations.
Cultures and nations themselves are increasingly understanding that sovereignty in the digital age requires not just control of information flows, but how fast it flows. So we end up creating these sort of temporal zones of protection. Feel like the world is getting more complex? It is a timeless issue.