Continuing his exploration of relationships between social time and information technologies, Hassan argues that beginning before the industrial revolution, two temporal empires have ruled the inhabitants of modern (now postmodern) economies and society. One is these is based on the clock and other other--the network time of his earlier work--based upon a ubiquitous information network that comprises the network society. Over three centuries, he says, subjects of the temporal empire have come to imagine that the clock represents what time is--linear, measurable, and predictable--whereas, he contends it reflects in large measure the dominant values of Newtonian-Enlightenment science and technology. He explains that this clock time is at this moment (tick-tock, tick-tock) being undermined and replaced by another temporal empire based on a computer's idea of real time, and this disjuncture opens a crack through which is it possible to see that time, space, and timespace are social constructs. The treatise does not require expertise in any particular field. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)