Virtual Typography

5.5

5

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Typography and the process of reading: 5.5 Time consciousness

5.4 The prospective interpretation of text contents 5.6 The dialectics of transition

Time consciousness

Without understanding people’s perception of time, it

is diffi cult to appreciate the benefi ts of virtual typography.

Virtual typography defi es the instantaneous presentation

of information. Thus it undermines what people

frequently refer to as ‘real time’ in relation to digital

communication.

Perceptions of time

Design critic Jessica Helfand declares ‘real time’ a myth

by claiming that in reality, time can take on many forms.

The urge for time effi ciency is a cultural phenomenon.

So is people’s dependence on the clock. The degree to

which one enjoys a period of time cannot be measured

in terms of minutes or seconds. This is where Helfand’s

notion of ‘quality time’ comes into play. The fact that

the quality of time cannot be measured reminds us of

Henry Bergson, a French philosopher who proposed to

distinguish between time extensity that is marked by the

succession of different events, and time intensity, which

refl ects the degree to which people are immersed in

individual events. Bergson claimed that time extensity is

an artifi cial construct that blinds people to the true nature

of time, which is in fact continuous and non-fragmented.

If people enjoy a period of time they will fi nd the extent

of this period diffi cult to evaluate in terms of the ‘amount’

of time that is passing by. Time becomes immeasurable.

Even though Bergson’s point of view has been highly

disputed in the course of the twentieth century, we

cannot deny the fact that we become oblivious to the

amount of time passing by when we are captivated by

an experience. If time consciousness is the result of

a constant interchange between a perceptual future

‘From our division of time into

uniform, visualizable units comes

our sense of duration and our

impatience when we cannot

endure the delay between events.

Such a sense of impatience, or

of time as duration, is unknown

among non-literate cultures.’

Marshall McLuhan

‘...most ironically in our impatient

electronic culture, the phrase “Real

Time” has come to symbolize the

instantaneous, the nanosecond, or,

what distinguished media oracle

Marshall McLuhan once referred

to as “allatonceness”. Today, as

we struggle to reconcile the virtual

against the tangible, what does it

mean to be real at all?’

Jessica Helfand

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