Paper short abstract:

This paper makes the relation between media infrastructures of relaying and intensive time. Supported by ethnographic evidence, it argues that the efficacy of intensified time, enhanced by multiple forms of interconnected media, relies on an idea of extinction that alters our relation to the future.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explored the relationship between media infrastructures for sharing and relaying of information and the construction of intensive time. The paper argues that the production of intensified time, enhanced by multiple forms of interconnected media, relies on an idea of extinction that alters our relation to the future. Rather than calculable, the future is perceived as imminent: it casts a shadow on the present without actually presenting itself. Through the analysis of case studies on the role of media in the production of intense time, the paper conceptualizes the relation between technological infrastructures and temporal volatility. It shows how rather than just illustrators of events, the compression of capturing-time and real-time has turn media technologies into part of the phenomenon they mediate and describe.