Time–space distanciation refers to the stretching of social systems across space and time. The term was coined by sociologist Anthony Giddens (1990) and refers to the interpenetration of people and places over increasingly large distances. Echoing McLuhan’s work (see global village section above) Giddens argues that people interact in two ways: face to face, and remotely through transport and communications technologies. The second has become increasingly important, ‘distanciating’ the relations between people. Thus people who are not actually physically present in absolute space can be important social actors. Giddens does not argue that this process leads to homogenization, indeed greater distanciation increases the potential for humans to restructure global scale systems. Massey (1991) builds on this concept when she discusses the ‘global sense of the local’ which pervades our everyday experiences.