Instant access to digital platforms bearing whatever information we want whenever we want it has led to a swift evolution of our notion of the “present.” The evolution is ongoing, however, as the youngest adults among us struggle to define what, exactly, now constitutes the present. The casualties of this struggle include what previous generations would have considered priorities represented by the notion of the present. As part of this evolutionary transformation driven by generational differences, newer definitions of the present and its priorities will prevail sooner rather than later.
In the same way that “virtual reality” has come to complement reality, a “virtual present” has begun to dominate the attention and actions of the younger members of most societies. The concept of the present that has prevailed throughout human existence is under assault. This sometimes means that what humans have always considered the present is now sacrificed to the omnipresent. Examples abound in daily life. Older people notice—often disapprovingly—that “kids nowadays” pay little or no attention to hard copy mail and decline to answer ringing land-line telephones. These formerly dominant methods of transmittal of important information are, to young people, confusing or anachronistic because they demand immediate attention to what they regard as only a slice of the present, rather than the at-will consideration of the many possible presents afforded by digital platforms. Handling a piece of mail or accepting the tether of a phone call requires full attention there and then, rather than partial and/or on-demand consultation, thus interrupting the flow of the “virtual present” that exists across the many commingled simultaneous platforms of the digital world.
A perhaps more serious threat to traditional timelines is that deadlines, too, have come to be regarded as needlessly static in a world at flux. A deadline that arrives by hard copy mail, or even email, cannot hope to compete with the many other streams of information to which no specific window of time is attached—and, indeed, often sinks and drowns in that stream. Younger people today operate under an assumption that deadlines can be dealt with according to one’s own priorities, just like finding something on the internet is. That assumption is sometimes mistaken, yet it increasingly prevails. It is likely that the notion of “deadline” will, in many cases, evolve to fit the reality of omnipresence, rather than remaining attached to a traditional definition of the present.
In fact, modern life provides decreasing incentive to address something right in front of us—the present—when what matters to us is, or should be, omnipresent. This is a fundamental change in the way humans comprehend the present and the attention the idea of “the present” has always commanded. Throughout history, what is “present” has been what is happening or experienced now. The present was also accompanied by its priorities. Those priorities might be addressed or willfully ignored, but at least they merited some attention. That concept of “present,” however, now competes with many other “presents” that can be accessed anywhere instantly. The present has become something that is no longer firm and immutable. The priorities, attention, and presumed action the present traditionally demanded are now subject to interpretation, evaluation, and—most importantly—comparison with other presents.
The adage, “There is no time like the present” still exhorts us toward action in the way it always has, but the emergence of competing virtual presents furnish a completely new second meaning. Try saying the phrase while accenting the word “no.” This is a different notion altogether, but one that is demonstrably true today. We can expect even swifter and surer evolution of the concept—presently.
N. B. This is a companion piece to a prior post about internet-driven generational sociological change.