Digital technologies (computers, global communication networks, multimedia, electronic games or art installations) have not merely changed our relationship with the world and the other, they have disrupted our relation to time and rocked the very foundations of our culture. We find ourselves torn between two temporalities. The first temporality belongs to chronic time, the longitudinal time of history, of the events absorbed and retained by writing, writing being what organizes memory and oblivion. The second temporality belongs to machines and plunges us in a time outside of time, that virtual or “uchronic” time when events give way to eventualities. What happens to our world when writing, which has ensured the permanence of history until now, conforms to the model of hypertext and splits? When the thread which history spans from the past and present to the future threatens to break under the pressure of “uchronic” time? Are we to reinvent our relation to time? What are the consequences of this change in temporality on the preservation of digital art works and on the sphere of art as a whole? This text was first presented as an oral statement during the symposium The Digital Oblivion held by the ZKM.