Time

Time is discussed as a framework within which social interactions take place, a structure for synchronization and a resource for planning activities and projects. The centrality of time for cultural development is argued to be rooted in the relationship to finitude, change, and the rhythmicity of nature. Calendars facilitated social structuring, synchronization, and regulation, clock time the commodification and compression of time. With networked information and communication technologies, global simultaneity and instantaneity have displaced duration and distance and clock time is losing some of its all‐embracing relevance. Each of these technologies has changed the meaning of time, its cultural significance and, as such, impacted on social organization.