The transformation of time in the information society

Abstract

This article assesses the extent to which social transformations involve changes in their socially constructed temporal profiles and draws distinctions between cyclical, linear, absolute and relative conceptions of time. It could be predicted that, in the information society, with the appropriation of information technology, our conceptions of time will again be radically transformed. However, the article refutes the claim that in the information society we are moving into timeless time where being online and real time are ideals everyone strives for, where modern computer‐based wars are fought in instants and where individual life projects have lost their temporal order. Instead, it concludes that time is transformed in the information society but not radically, and that our lives and related processes are temporally ordered even though the processes are speeded up and reshuffled thanks to the information technology and the production of goods and services it has enabled.

Citation

Kamppinen, M. (2000), "The transformation of time in the information society", Foresight, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 159-162. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636680010802609