ABSTRACT
This chapter reacquaints people with the political importance of the public sphere and what it is supposed to do for our democracy. It considers whether—and under what circumstances—it can function as sphere for democracy in our networked society. Time as a socially produced and experienced phenomenon is a deeply embedded essence of what it is to be human. Over countless human generations, the rhythms of time have functioned as an interaction between individuals and collectives and their natural environments. If humans are fundamentally temporal, then so too are we essentially technological. Anthropology tells us that as we define our tools, our tools in turn shape us. The breakthrough technology of writing was what got civilization off the ground. It gave us the capacity to organize our world, to create knowledge and disseminate knowledge, and to make possible the fixing in time and space of new ideas. Technologies proliferated and human societies became more multifaceted.
