ABSTRACT
This chapter defines and explains what social time theorists mean when they talk about ‘network time’. It summaries the theory behind some related concepts – real time, timeless time – and establishes that, collectively, they can be understood as instantiations of network time: a temporal experience produced through digital communication networks. To achieve this, it reviews some of the major contributions to constructivist network theory and social time theory, especially the work of Manuel Castells, Paul Virilio, Barbara Adam and Robert Hassan. The chapter has two aims: to establish why network time should matter as a concept, both theoretically and practically, to time experts and social theorists more broadly; and to argue that network time would be a more potent concept if it could be measured. This argument introduces a fundamental problem about time: we still don’t know exactly what it is.
