Suspending the “Time Domain” : Technological Tempor(e)alities of Media Infrastructures

Abstract

Any media event is a time function of signals. In favor of a diagrammatic definition of technological media, media archaeological investigation is not only concerned with their structural “hardwired” level but with their operative unfolding-in-time as well. Such an understanding of techno-temporalities does not focus on phenomenal effects of media on humans but primarily refers to the microregimes within technological devices. In that sense, “hardwired temporality” refers to the infrastructuring of time by technologies and to temporal structures which are revealed from within techno-logical knowledge itself. From that arises an epistemology of technical processuality beyond the conventional notion of “time.”