From immediacy to intermediacy: the mediation of lived time

This article argues that claims of time in late-modernity collapsing or becoming irretrievably accelerated do not sufficiently account for the range of experiences of time that are supported in a media-saturated culture. Achieving this requires an empirical and conceptual shift. Research on the domestication of media technologies provides an initial empirical framework for this kind of exploration, but as well as rhythmic practices and processes of media use, experiences of time involves the imaginative and symbolic provisions of the media. Using Bergson’s concept of the zone of indeterminacy, the mediation of time will be considered as occurring in zones of intermediacy. This conceptual tool allows an exploration of the relational nature of temporal experience and the active negotiation of various mediated temporalities that this involves.