The ‘lived now’. Observing the changes in the spatiotemporal experience of everyday life through the use of ICTs.

“By the early 2000s, bits had returned from cyberspace. They had gone on location in the material world” (Mitchell, 2003).
The mobile web has brought forth changes in timing regimes and spatial configurations in the experience of everyday life. The portal of access to cyberspace is now mobile and locational data are changing the way we interact inside it. It can be said that the spatiotemporal experience of reality is enriched with data sent and received instantaneously.
Today, using the portable networked data processor, the once disembodied experience of encountering and communicating with others online has transgressed and is now coupled with mobility and location specific interaction. Data and information become richer with temporal and spatial qualities, and location-specific data underpin content and interaction.
The paper addresses the argument of digital dualism using a philosophical approach that centres on the altered experience of space and time through the incessant use of ICTs in everyday life. The web as we knew it has changed; there’s no longer a distinction between online practices and street-level experience, these are now merged through the use of ICTs.
Firstly, this paper takes Bergson’s articulation of reality as something always in the making (1889 1896) and Lefebvre’s theory of Rhythmology (1992) as a method to observe urban space and everyday life, in order to shape an understanding of how the incessant access to ICTs alters the way time and space are experienced both in terms of walking in the city as well as regulating timings through smart devices.
Secondly, this paper asserts that content circulated in smart devices and social media, in the form of text, pictures and videos is mainly concerned with the recent past and immediate future – with the here and now. For example, research has shown that mobile media content (also upload on social media) conveys actions that the sender and recipient will perform in the immediate future or have done in the recent past. The paper’s methodological approach in is based on the idea that this kind of audiovisual material has temporal and spatial qualities and it depicts the rhythms of everyday life.
We are moving towards cultural content that is defined by the ‘When and Where’. With the increased use of smart devices in everyday life it can be said that technical mediations such as electronic maps, smartphone apps and ICTs in general, form part of the lived experience and the rhythms of everyday life in the urban environment.