The present became a collage, an edit, moving under your very feet. The widespread use of VCRs and video cameras brought another phase. Taping favorite TV shows or sports events cuts them loose from their original setting, the snowy Wednesday at seven that explains the antifreeze and cold medicine ads. They become endlessly revisitable time capsules, every unimportant detail preserved forever. On the other hand, taping family birthdays or a baby's first steps envelops these events in a timeless banality fading memory doesn't gloss or veil.
Every moment becomes equal.
Video technology also destroys our unconscious assumption of time's linearity. It unknots the rope of history, which no longer seems to tell a story or, maybe, have a point or an interpretation. Chronological order no longer seems the invariably right way to read experience. They are always open, always accessible. For a generation shaped by experiences of TV, video and cyberspace, the past isn't there, fixed, inert.