THE THIRD WAVE
If, therefore, we look across the board at the way our society now treats time, we find a subtle but powerful shift away from therhythms of the Second Wave and toward a new temporal structure in our lives. In fact, what is happening is a de-massification of time that precisely parallels the de-massifi-cation of other features of social life as the Third Wave sweeps in.
SCHEDULE-A-FRIEND
We are only just beginning to feel the social consequences of this restructuring of time. For example, while the increasing individualization of time patterns certainly makes work less onerous, it also can intensify loneliness and social isolation. If friends, lovers, and family all work at different hours, and new services are not laid in place to help them coordinate their personal schedules, it becomes increasingly difficult for them to arrange face-to-face social contact.The old social centers—the neighborhood pub, the church clambake, the school prom—are losing their traditional significance. In their place, new Third Wave institutions must be invented to facilitate social life.
One can, for example, easily imagine a new computerized service— call it “Pers-Sched” or “Friend-Sched”—that not only reminds you of your own appointments but stores the schedules of various friends and family members so that each person in the social network can, by pushing a button, find out where and when his or her friends and acquaintances will be, and can make arrangements accordingly. But far more significant social facilitators will be needed.
The de-massification of time has other consequences, too. Thus we can already begin to see its effects in transportation. The Second Wave insistence on rigid, mass work schedules brought with it the characteristic rush-hour crush. The de-massification of time redistributes traffic flows in both space and time.
In fact, one crude way to judge just how far the Third Wave has advanced in any community is to look at the traffic flows. If the peak hours are still heavily accented, and if all the traffic moves one way in the morning and reverses itself in the evening, Second Wave synchronization still prevails. If traffic flows all day long, as it does in an increasing number of cities, and moves in all directions, rather than merely back and forth, it is safe to assume that Third Wave industries
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