Lifespan

READER: What just happened?

I’m taking it step by step.

So you broke up the conversation into smaller pages?

Yes. But you’re not going to have to read everything all at once… don’t worry.

Fine. But are you going to get on with it or what? 🙃

I’m just working up to it.

OK. So time is a big and important thing, right?

Yes…

Well, the idea is to create a way of mapping and exploring time, for yourself and for everyone and everything.

What do you mean?

A way to see, explore and document your own life alongside public history, and do the same for public history through the lens of your own life.

That sounds… well… I’m not sure yet.

What does that mean?

Lots of different things. It’s quite big.

Imagine being able explore things like:

• What was this person I’ve just watched a programme about doing when they were my age?
• What was I doing when they did that thing that they did?
• What were other people doing at that time?

…and… I dunno…

• What was my mum doing when The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper?

…things like that.

Rabbit-holes to disappear down in the same way you can disappear down Wikipedia rabbit holes.

You can click on links, by the way, I’ll wait :-)

Ah, OK… rabbit holes.

But slow down… I have so many questions.

Who’s this for? What problem are you trying to solve here?

I don’t 100% know yet. That’s one reason why we’re here.

I think it’s trying to solve a problem that people don’t necessarily know they have yet.

I call it the archive problem - but I haven’t written the part of the conversation where we talk about that.

Yet.

But it’s why this all matters.

OK. For now, let’s try a different angle…

Why are these rabbit holes you’re talking about different or interesting?

Because I think those X-Y-Z comparisons (what was X doing when Y was doing Z?) are all around us, and underpin a lot of the things that we find deeply significant… even if we don’t realise it.

What do you mean?

Think about how often we collectively celebrate the anniversaries of cultural or historical milestones…

…and how they make us think “what was I doing then…?” or “what would I have been doing then…?”

Yeah, I sometimes think we live as if time and biography were the very organising principles of meaning…

…and that we’ve never built any form of web infrastructure that treats them that way.

Well… yeah, exactly.

(How did you know I was going to say that?)

You’re writing all this.

Oh yeah.

Another page, do you think?

OK. Can I do it this time?