Living with Cyberspace

Chronotopia is a combination of the Greek concepts for speed and utopia. We introduce this idea to elucidate the fundamental correlation between speed and utopia that is manifest in the ‘social imaginary’ of popular contemporary business literature broadly centred on cyberspace and the particular social imaginary of the chronotopia found in cyber society. In the first part of the chapter we offer a speculation on the form of chronotopia distinguishing the social imaginary of this and related literature. In so doing, we identify a ‘hypermodern’ or ‘excessive’ individually experienced chronodystopia that has its roots in ‘the individualized society’ and its antennae in ‘the twilight of the grounds’ or ‘speedspace’.

However, in the second part, we also identify a significant and specific kind of chronotopia emerging from a key social group, ‘the global kinetic elite’.