Time, Information and the Fluid Society

Without processes there is no time. We often speak of “the turbulent times we live in” as if time itself were a container in which events unfold. That image is misleading — especially in a world that is becoming increasingly digital and fluid. Neither the past nor the future exist as independent physical realities. There is only the now: an ongoing process of becoming. Time is not an autonomous force, but a measure derived from that process. Without processes, there is no time. And when processes accelerate, slow down or reorganize, what is experienced as time changes accordingly.

Time is the bookkeeping of processes. This insight is not merely philosophical; it is deeply practical. For over a century, relativity theory has shown that time is not absolute. Clocks run differently under the influence of speed and gravity, not because they malfunction, but because conditions determine how processes unfold. Time does not flow like a river; time is the accounting system of process dynamics.

The same applies to information. In the digital age, information is often treated as if it were an independent entity, detached from matter and context. Yet information exists only by virtue of a physical medium, a carrier. Without matter or energy, information cannot exist. A chip contains information just as a human body contains information in its brain. Without a physical carrier, information disappears — unless one assumes, without empirical evidence, that a mind can exist independently of a body. Information emerges where order, difference and complexity arise. The more complex a material structure, the greater its information density.

Global processes. These insights directly relate to the societal transformation of our time. Digitalization has turned processes that were once largely national into global ones. Economies, communication, knowledge production and even identity increasingly escape classical territorial boundaries. The information required to operate digital processes is stored in servers distributed across the globe. The nation-state, once the dominant organizing principle of the industrial era, loses its self-evidence as processes become ever less constrained by geography. National processes are replaced by global processes and global actors, including Big Tech companies.

From fixed structures to fluid ones. Humanity is therefore not merely undergoing a transition, but entering a phase shift — from fixed structures to fluid processes. Just as time is not a static background but an emergent property of dynamics, institutions, states and markets are transforming from stable structures into temporary nodes within ever-expanding global networks.

Even black holes — often imagined as ultimate endpoints — illustrate this way of thinking. In modern physics, they do not signify an absolute end, but the boundary of our current descriptions. Mathematics refers to this as a singularity: a point where the model ceases to be valid. When a description fails, the process does not stop; it escapes existing frameworks. New situations demand new ways of thinking — and ultimately, new mathematics.

Perhaps this captures the core of our time. Where old models break down, reality does not end. It transforms. In a fluid world, stability is no longer found in fixed structures, but in the capacity to think in terms of processes, relations and transitions. The world is becoming fluid. Time always was.

Learning to swim in a fluid society. Those who wish to remain effective in this fluid society must learn to swim. Where it was once sufficient to hold one’s ground within fixed structures that provided stability in turbulent times, today requires letting go of old anchors and developing new forms of orientation in a dynamic, digital and global reality.