Time in Our Times

Book excerpt: What is happening to perceptions of time, durability, and reality in the twenty-first century - and how do we deal with it? This anthology explores a diversity of uncommon insights about time, as seen from our historical and geographical standpoint. All contributions discuss how time can be seen, and how these views relate to changes in nature, technology, economy, working life, politics, religion, or philosophy specific to our own time. Findings are discussed within three themed sections; In Search of a Deeper Theory of Time, Time as Social Expectancy, and Time as Lived Experience. Contributions in this volume span from classical theory on branching time to personal experiences of drug-addicts' time. Together, these diverse contributions shed new light on how construction, perception and regulation of time influences a person's whole being in the world, collectively and individually, in the short and very long run, from the beginning of the Anthropocene to future cybertime.