Virilio (1995 [1993]; 1997 [1995]; 2000d [1998]) has gone to great lengths to show that the essence of post- Second World War telematics involves the virtual elimination of both spatial and temporal distance between events’ occurrences and their representations. The will- to- speed unleashes the absolute speed of real- time technologies, annihilating real space. For Virilio (OS, 3), this causes a massive distortion in our perceptual fi eld. Speed is no longer limited by moving across geographic distances by means of physical transport – that is, movement through the real space of chronological time. Rather, speed is equated with data transmission moving at the absolute speed of light – giving rise to what is now understood as real time.

Clearly, a key driver of real time is the shift to an instantaneous mode of production and consumption, or just- in- time systems. Flexible accumulation, or ‘post- Fordism’, was a response to the previous crisis of capital overaccumulation during the 1970s and 1980s. The shift from a fl exible to an instantaneous mode of accumulation is what I have referred to as ‘Gatesism’ (Purser 2000). This confi guration is coupled to the dynamic and logic of late capitalism, in which new information and communications technologies provide the means for accelerating turnover times of capital in production (Harvey 1989; Hassan 2003; Hassan and Purser 2007).

Emerging real- time technologies remove the friction of the real world, by promising ever more ‘user- friendly’ interfaces. For example, Regis McKenna's (1997: 3) book, Real Time, opens with the invitation: ‘Imagine a world in which time seems to vanish and space seems completely malleable. Where the gap between need or desire and fulfi llment collapses to zero. Where distance equals a microsecond in lapsed connection time.’ The ideal for McKenna is to eliminate the temporal distance between desire and the commodifi ed objects. Such time- negation has become a reality, for new information and communications technologies compress the distance between ‘here and there’, ‘now and then’.