Time (Big Ideas)

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Time has always been the great Given, a fact of existence with cannot be denied or wished away; but the character of lived time is changing dramatically. Medical advances extended our longevity, while digital devices compress time into ever-briefer units. We can now exist in several time-zones at once, but we suffer from endemic shortages of time. We are working longer hours and blurring the distinctions between labour and leisure. For many, in an inversion of the old age adage, time has become more valuable than money. How do such developments affect our societies and our selves? What impact do the hyper fast technologies computers, video games, and instant communications have on our capacity for concentration and reflection? The last decades have witnessed the rise of multi-tasking accidents and time-fragmenting emotional disorders. As we examine physiology and consciousness on ever more microscopic levels, what are we learning about the processes and patterns of time in our minds and bodies? Is there such a thing as natural human temporality, beyond which we venture at our peril? In this radical exploration of life s most ineffable element, spanning fields from biology and culture to psychoanalysis and neuroscience, Eva Hoffman asks: are we coming to the end of time as we have known it? Table of Contents Introduction Time and the Body Time and the Mind Time and Culture Time in Our Time Index.