This month's Frame: Byung–Chul Han on how meaning makes time less fleeting

This isn’t the same kind of attention we give to our Instagram and TikTok feeds. It is a ritualised form of intentional presence directed to a shared sense of meaning and history.

As a result, our digital commons has become commoditised and overrun by the cult of self. When we shout ‘listen!’ on social media, we are demanding that others ‘Listen to... See more

Today, we are nostalgists as much as we are futurists. The new technology enables the simultaneous experience and enactment of events from a multiplicity of positions. Far from signalling its demise, these emergent networks facilitate the democratisation of history, illuminating the forking paths along which its grand narratives may navigate the he

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This idea of relativity is what is often left out of the narrative that the internet has broken our relationship to “natural time.” It is presumed that if we could synchronize a perfect harmony between inner and outer time, we would rediscover a sense of belonging to the planet and to each other. We are haunted by the specter of an innate, perfect ... See more

To borrow from the language of economics, Salcedo sees time as a regular kind of “good”—a resource that’s more valuable to you the more of it you command. (Money is the classic example: it’s better to control more of it than less.) Yet the truth is that time is also a “network good,” one that derives its value from how many other people have access

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