In the digital age, the idea of date and time is becoming obsolete. Nothing we do on the web is bound to the clock, so why are we still keeping timestamps on blogposts?
Here are a couple of statements about the internet:
• We read our RSS feeds as “catch up”-service. If the post we read (or mark as read) was published yesterday, the day before or last week really doesn’t matter when we browse our feeds.
• Release dates for cd albums are not relevant anymore. The music leaks or previews are posted on the band websites, Myspace or whatever.
• Release dates for movies aren’t absolute either. When does the experience of a movie begin? When the viral campaign/ARG begins? When fans start up forums and begin discussing? A movie is today much more than two hours at the cinema.
• Anytime we want, we can step in and out of the real-time web. Google Wave, Twitter and Facebook means there’s a steady flow of status updates and information. No one time is better to read them on than another.
I guess we can agree that date, time and longevity are irrelevant concepts on the web. You read an item or you don’t read an item and regardless of which, it’s not important when it was published.
With that comes the obvious question:
Why does all blog themes publish the exact time of a blogpost’s being pubilshed? Where all other information on the web tends to move towards feeds, waves and clouds, the blog has become the anamoly which clings to releasedates. Is that so much web 2.0?
I’ll admit that time may be a factor for political blogs or writers that cover current events as they happen. But for the majority of blogs (like Stilnocturnal), there’s simply no use for it.
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