However, as Mark Poster points out, 'the new level of interconnectivity heightens the fragility of the social net­works. '·50 The source of control now undermines its execu­tion. For clock time to exist and thus to be measurable and controllable there has to be duration, an interval between two points in time. Without duration there is no before and after, no cause and effect, no stretch of time to be measured. The principles of instantaneity and simultaneity of action across space, as I have shown in chapter 3, are encountered in quantum physics; they have no place in the Newtonian world of causality and bodies in motion, the world chat we as embodied beings inhabit. The control of time that has reached the limit of compression has been shifted into a time world where notions of control are meaningless. More like the realm of myths and mysticism, the electronic world of interchangeable no-where and now-here requires knowledge and modes of being that are alien to the industrial way of life. Other modes of temporal existence, therefore, may hold some viral keys, their 'primitive' understanding of time point­ing not ro control but to more appropriate ways of being in the realm of insrantaneity.

'Interconnectivity', Hassan suggests, 'is what gives the network time its power within culture and society.'32 It is worth quoting him at length here. Network time does not 'kill' or render 'timeless' other tem­poralities, clock-time or otherwise. The embedded nature of the 'multiplicity' of temporalities rbat pervade culture and society, and tbe deeply intractable relationship we have with rhe clock make this unlikely. Rather, the process is one of 'displacement'. Network time constitutes a new and powerful temporality that is beginning to displace, neutralise, sublimate and otherwise upset other temporal relationships in our work, home and leisure environments