The new time and space The New Time and Space examines the ways in which the experience of time and space has been redefined in the contemporary era. Mobile phones networked communications and freely accessible digital information have contributed to a shift in the way we understand time and space. There is a new virtual dimension to the public sphere a new immaterial venue for social life. The book illustrates how in this changed relationship to space the virtual is layered onto the actual. Smartphone users are overwhelmed by a compulsion to check their messages so that time becomes a montage of fractures. Interruption and distraction are the norm as time is absorbed by an endless stream of messages and information