Time Wars: The Primary Conflict in Human History

Time Wars is for anyone who has ever wondered why, in a culture so obsessed with efficiency, we seem to have so little time we can call our own. As the author states in his introduction:
If centralization, concentration, and accumulation epitomized the bigger-is-better theme of spatial politics, then efficiency and speed characterize the time values of the modern age. For a long time, the notion of efficiency and speed enjoyed the same kind of unqualified enthusiasm as the notion of gigantism. If bigger was better, then faster and more efficient was more effective[…]

“Time is money” best expresses the temporal spirit of the age.

As society at large careens towards the high-speed culture of the twenty-first century, small pockets of protest have begun to appear[…] They would ask us to give up our preocupation with acelerating time and begin the process of reintegrating ourselves back into the periodicities that make up the many physiological time worlds of the earth organism.
Contents

Introduction

I. THE TEMPORAL CONTEXT
1. The new nanosecond culture
2. Chronobiology: The clocks that make us run
3. Anthropological time zones

II. DIVIDING THE PIE
4. Calendars and clout
5. Schedules and clocks
6. Time schedules and factory discipline
7. Programs and computers
8. The efficient society

III. THE POLITICS OF PARADISE
9. The timeless State
10. The image of progress
11. The vision of simulated worlds
12. Time pyramids and time ghettos

IV. Cosmic timepieces and political legitimacy
13. The clockwork universe
14. The information universe

V. THE DEMOCRATIZATION OF TIME
15. Temporal treks and future options
16. Beyond Left and Right

Notes
Selected bibliography
Acknowledgements
Index