"Helga Nowotny's exploration of the forms and meaning of time incontemporary life is panoramic without in any way partaking of theblandness of a survey. From the artificial time of the scientificlaboratory to the distinctively modern yearning for one's owntime, she regards every topic in this wide-ranging book from afresh angle of vision, one which reveals unsuspected affinitiesbetween the bravest, newest worlds of global technology and themost ancient worlds of myth."
--Lorraine Daston, University of Chicago
This book represents a major contribution to the understandingof time, giving particular attention to time in relation tomodernity. The development of industrialism, the author points out,was based upon a linear and abstract conception of time. Today wesee that form of production, and the social institutions associatedwith it, supplanted by flexible specialization and just-in-timeproduction systems. New information and communication technologieshave made a fundamental impact here. But what does all this meanfor temporal regimes? How can we understand the transformation oftime and space involved in the bewildering variety of options onoffer in a postmodern world?
The author provides an incisive analysis of the temporalimplications of modern communication. She considers theimplications of worldwide simultaneous experience, made possible bysatellite technologies, and considers the reorganization of timeinvolved in the continuous technological innovation that marks ourera. In this puzzling universe of action, how does one achieve a'time of one's own'? The discovery of a specific time perspectivecentred in the individual, she shows, expresses a yearning forforms of experience that are subversive of establishedinstitutional patterns.
This brilliant study, became a classic in Germany, will be ofinterest to students and professionals working in the areas ofsocial theory, sociology, politics and anthropology.
