This article analyses the temporal dimensions of knowledge production. Specifically it discusses the mechanics of the process and how these have changed through what are termed ‘knowledge epochs’. It argues that with the widespread dissemination of clock-time through the Industrial Revolution, the production of knowledge was significantly shaped by the temporality of the clock. Through the convergence of neoliberal globalization and ICT revolution a new powerful temporality has emerged through which knowledge production is refracted: network time. The article concludes that the spread of network time into the realm of the everyday has profound implications for the production of critical and reflexive knowledge in contemporary culture and society.

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On 26 January 2007, President George W. Bush signed a mandate (Executive Order 13423 -Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management) requiring government agencies to employ green technologies, and government suppliers to employ 'sustainable environmental practices'. This kind of government regulation, with potentially significant effects on all government suppliers, is becoming widespread in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. One bright hope for achieving these goals comes from the potential of information and communications technologies (ICTs) to effect major reductions in energy use. Among the various solutions, one which is beginning to capture substantial industry interest is cloud computing: the use of remote servers not only to store files but also the software needed to access and change them. Its best-known forms in consumer markets are Amazon S3 and Google Docs, but a large number of companies provide such services for bulk storage and handling of corporate, public service and government data (see the list of companies provided in the appendix to Carr, 2009: 235-44). The theory is that end-users no longer need a complex and expensive computer with ecologically damaging hard drives and CD-DVD players, or memory-and power-hungry local software. In place of fullblown computers, for all but highly professional or necessarily secure uses, a 'thin client' will be sufficient. This is the fundamental design of the netbook generation of computers heavily marketed in the 2009 consumer electronics fairs: a machine with limited capabilities of its own, but which can be linked instantaneously and constantly to remote data centres, also known as server farms, where all their software, documentation and files can be securely stored and accessed.According to the US Department of Energy: Data centers used 61 billion kWh of electricity in 2006, representing 1.5% of all U.S. electricity consumption and double the amount consumed in 2000. Based on current trends, energy

The essay analyses the global economic crisis from a critical perspective on the function of capital accumulation in space-time. It argues that the relative ‘speed of collapse’ is a historically new phenomenon that has been generated through the neoliberal and ICT driven mode of capitalism that has dominated since the 1970s. The ‘speed of collapse’, I argue, will be followed by a rapid financially led recovery that signals not that the system is self-stabilizing and durable, but that the system is out of control. This lack of control and the irreconcilable effects of space-time upon a constantly accumulating capital with fewer and fewer profitable outlets mean that a future system crisis is both inevitable and will carry greater destructive resonance.