TIme in the Age of Complexity

* Essay: Time in the Age of Complexity. Kingsley Dennis.

URL = http://kingsleydennis.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/time-in-the-age-of-complexity-kd-version.pdf

Abstract

"This paper examines the intensification of time through the lens of Complexity Theory and argues that increasingly networked infrastructures are moving towards an integrated global complexity in real-time. I suggest that shifts in physical-digital temporality are having a significant effect upon how the ‘social’ is being reconfigured."

Kingsley Dennis:

"This paper addresses how emerging environments of embedded physical-digital networks, and increasingly wireless connectivity, are informing new complexities in relationships of time and space. I also discuss shifts towards ubiquitous ‘everywhere’ computing and digitally-embedded environments where complex interrelations and interdependencies between person-object-environment in-form a more pervasive complex system. Such complex arrangements are incorporating increased awareness, reflexivity, creativity, and inclusion. Further, that these developments in informational connectivity and pervasive computing are having a significant effect upon notions of temporality, such as the shift towards merging ‘real-time’ into physical-digital relations. Whilst facilitating mobility these ‘real-time’ complex configurations may also manifest contestations of power.

This paper focuses specifically on the technologies of communication that are re-configuring relations of connectivity, communication, and time. I also examine how these increasingly pervasive computerised networks are informing sites of complex ‘real-time’, and what this real-time implies for both mobility and power. I turn now to examine temporal considerations within a framework of complex in-formations of information technologies and ubiquitous computing."