Times of Innovation – Innovation of Times

Social relevant times are caused only by social events. However the variety of events rapidly increases by the density of possibilities rising the problem of synchronization of social time. Pre-modernity could refer to natural events for this purpose. More important was the reference to the idea of fixed temporal horizons – the past and the future though. These temporal fixations were broken by modernization, presenting the problem of synchronization anew and even exacerbate it by developments like sciences or the European expansion. Thus synchronization means the possibility of a joined temporal orientation by a fixed horizon rather than the alignment of times. At first modern synchronization could be ensured by the concept of progress. But once its singularity had dissipated into a manifold moving concept (Koselleck’s “Bewegungsbegriff”) the problem occurred again. It could also not be solved by introducing mechanical time measurements or longitudes. Nowadays innovations have been established as synchronizing mechanisms. The factual specific, recombination re-arranges particular social relationships in regard to their temporal conditions. Organizations shape innovations into plans, they appear as cycles for society. Innovations as plans and as cycles fix the temporal horizons. However innovations do not any more synchronize universal throughout all social different areas. Rather innovations synchronize in a particular way specific factual arrangements for specific social circumstances. In an evolutionary perspective these social structures are addressed by selections and re-stabilizations. The success incident to innovation in a sense of social far reaching and enduring affiliations provokes ever anew de-synchronizing variations of social structure trying to surpass earlier attempts in regard to range and endurance. Therefore innovations as alternative synchronization attempts increase in frequency. Under the current conditions of functional differentiation this can never result in a universal synchronization of world society but results in a highly dynamic multiplicity of temporal regimes.