Robert Hassan and

Ronald E. Purser

Stanford University Press (June 2007)

In the vast literature on the subject of the network society, a relatively neglected, but fast-growing area, is our changing relationship with time. Traditionally, our everyday relationship with time has been through clock time, something we rarely give much deep thought to, but nonetheless exerts an immerse influence over our everyday lives. But clock time, we often forget is a social construction. However, an emergent body of thought devoted to this subject sees the nature of time within the network society to be undergoing profound transformation; our temporal relationships are currently being recreated and reconstructed.

Due to the effects of the information and communication technology (ICT) revolution, time has been argued, amongst other things, to have ‘accelerated’ (Gleick, 2001); to have been ‘compressed’ into a ‘constant present’ (Purser, 2000); to have instigated a ‘loss of control’ in society’s functions leading to ‘information overload’ and information ‘gridlock’ (Virilio, 1995); to have evolved out of the rigid constraints of clock time into a multitude of user-generated ‘network times’ (Hassan, 2003a); to have transformed the basis upon which knowledge in produced and disseminated (Hassan, 2003b); and to have created the possibility of the creation of a diversity of culture- and context- generated and networked-based ‘timescapes’ (Adam, 2004). The ICT revolution has brought our relationship with time into a sharpening focus. Many of the traditional social, political and cultural habits of mind and ways of being that evolved under the régime of the clock are changing rapidly. Working times, schedules of production, the ways in which we ‘spend’ time, ‘save’ time, ‘optimize’ time, the ways we psychically differentiate between the working days, weekends and so on are no longer temporally fixed due to the effects of living in the network society and the network economy. The subject area of what may be generically termed ‘cybertime’ is thus an extremely important one and constitutes a potentially rich field of exploration that would contribute to a valuable publication.

"This collection of thought-provoking essays addresses the relationship between contemporary times and technology, especially cybertechnology. In doing so, the essays demonstrate so very well Elliott Jaques' statement of the ultimate justification for studying time: “In the form of time is to be found the form of living.'' For by developing this collection, Hassan and Purser—and the essays' authors—have made an important contribution to understanding both time and life in the early 21st century."
—Allen C. Bluedorn, author of The Human Organization of Time: Temporal Realities and Experience, University of Missouri-Columbia

“The authors gathered here are among the leading theorists of the new shift in dimensional thought. Original, provocative, and sophisticated, their arguments will have a profound impact on social theorists and the emerging generation of digital scholars.”
—Sean Cubitt, University of Melbourne