Nettime is an internet mailing list proposed in 1995 by Geert Lovink and Pit Schultz (then half-jokingly called “the nettime brothers” at the second meeting of the “Medien Zentral Kommittee” during the Venice Biennale. Since 1998, Ted Byfield and Felix Stalder have moderated the main list, coordinated moderation of other lists in the nettime “family,” and maintained the site as their nexus.
The name nettime was chosen as a statement against space metaphors such as cyberspace, dominant at the time.
The time of nettime is a social time, it is subjective and intensive, with condensation and extractions, segmented by social events like conferences and little meetings, and text gatherings for export into the paper world. Most people still like to read a text printed on wooden paper, more than transmitted via waves of light. Nettime is not the same time like geotime, or the time clocks go. Everyone who programs or often sits in front of a screen knows about the phenomena of being out of time, time on the net consists of different speeds, computers, humans, software, bandwidth, the only way to see a continuity of time on the net is to see it as a asynchronous network of synchronized time zones.
From the beginning, the aim has been to provide a space for a new form of critical discourse on and with the nets, focussing on longer, substantive, yet non-academic writings and discussions.