The effect of the electronic technology upon the notion of progress is fascinatingly complex, for it manages to suggest both Greek pessimism and Western optimism. The synthesis comes from a new intimacy with time, as both ally and enemy: previously men and women lived in time and worked through time, but Turing’s man is the first who actually works with time. Like space, time is a commodity provided by the computer, a material to be molded, insofar as this is possible, to human ends. This intimate contact with time promises success in time (progress) but also an awareness of ultimate temporal limitations.

https://www.computerhistory.org/tdih/may/22/