Following in the footsteps of social media giants Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and now YouTube, several other companies announced that they also would be jumping on the not-in-chronological order bandwagon.
Chronological Order, best known for appearances in “A Christmas Carol”, “Back to the Future”, and “A Land Before Time” was laid to rest early last year.
The Schalostic Corporation, on Monday, announced that chapters in upcoming books will no longer be in chronological order.
“We feel the chapters that a reader cares about most should come first. We plan to optimize the chapter order, starting with the moments of climax: action, intrigue, and passion. Filler, side plots, and introduction material will still be there, it just will be in a different order. We really think this is going to revolutionize the reading experience.”
Rondam Penguin Home has similar plans, only they plan to take things a step further. Not only will chapters no longer be in chronological order, but paragraphs within each chapter will also be sorted by algorithms, allowing the reader to see the most relevant paragraphs first.
Not to be outdone, Schister & Samone have stated that neither of these options goes far enough.
“At a time when algorithms know best, we shouldn’t be limiting ourselves to chapters and paragraphs. Our goal, by the end of the year, is to have our algorithms sorting not only sentences, but words, and sometimes even the letters within a word for optimal relevance and engagement.”
Along similar lines, the US Department of Education met last week to discuss reordering the alphabet. “It’s really unfair that commonly used and beloved letters such as E and T are not at the beginning of the alphabet,” said a spokesperson. “We’re looking into ways that we can fix this.”
The new proposed alphabet ordering is “E T A O N R I S H D L F C M U G Y P W B V K J X Q Z” and will be voted on this fall before the beginning of the new school year. (Fortunately, the alphabet melody will still work with the new ordering.)
Beloved furniture manufacturer IKEA has also decided that chronological order is a thing of the past. Starting later this year assembly manuals will cease to be written in chronological order.
“Most of the time, people really just need help with the complicated steps,” said an IKEA spokesperson for North America. “So we’re going to put those steps first. Ordering the steps from most complicated to least complicated is clearly a better way of doing things because it puts the most critical information where it’s easiest to be seen.”
“It just makes more sense.”
Even the clock industry is embracing the technological benefits offered by non-chronological timepieces. Both Relox and TimeY announced a series of watches which will reorder the numbers, based on the popularity rather than chronology.
“People love 5:00 PM, we even have songs about 5 o’clock, so why should the 5 be near the bottom of the watch when it could be at the top?” Asks Thomas Fredrik Olsen, founder of Timex who died in 1969. “So we put the less exciting numbers at the bottom of the watch, or maybe we just won’t even include those numbers at all. It’s not like anyone lives for 9:00 AM anyway.”
As always, we’ll continue to update you on the situation, though we may hold information back until the algorithms tell us to post.