AS the turn of the millennium looms on the horizon, expectations, fears and hopes focus our thoughts on an event that is symbolically of huge significance but is ultimately just another date.

A spate of articles has been written to prove that the new millennium actually began a couple of years ago. This kind of hair-splitting is about as interesting as the endless speculation on who actually wrote Shakespeare's plays. Who knows, and who cares? The important thing is that they were written and are with us today as part of our common heritage. As an era draws to a close, it is irrelevant to speculate on which precise day it actually comes to an end. We can all pick the night we want to ring out the old and ring in the new, but for my part, I will stick to December 31, 1999.

The whole business about New Year's has just been an excuse to party. This is fine by me, but there is often an air of desperation as the revellers feel almost obliged to have a good time. The date imposes a pressure of its own as people go from one party to another in a frenetic attempt to have "a good time." Indeed, plans for the millennium were laid years ago by some serious jet-setters. A hotel in London is charging 5,000 pounds per person for the festivities which include dinner on new year's eve plus two nights in the hotel. Punters determined to squeeze every ounce of forced fun out of the occasion will fly to Samoa to catch the first light of December 31, and then fly West with the sun, stopping to party en route. My own plans are much more modest, but do not include incurring the wrath of our home-grown Taliban.

The whole business of calendars and clocks running every moment of our lives is a relatively recent phenomenon. Accurate clocks were not commonly available until around 150 years ago, and did not become prevalent until the logic of capitalism and nascent industrialization imposed their own rhythm on urban life. Factory workers, recruited from the fields, suddenly had to clock in and clock out. Time, earlier measured by the rising and setting of the sun, suddenly acquired a precise and quantifiable value. Festivals that had been traditionally associated with certain seasons were now given exact dates.

These warped temporal values were then transmitted around the world by colonisers, traders, mercenaries and clerics. Natives from Bombay to Borneo, and from Angola to Arabia were taught the value of time. Fortunately, most of the colonised population did not have access to clocks and watches, nor did they work in sweat shops and factories, thus escaping the tyranny of time. Much to their colonial masters' fury, they ambled in and out as their stomachs and the seasons dictated. For them, the European preoccupation with ticking machines was a complete mystery. They simply could not comprehend why they had to be at a certain place by a given time and why an hour here or there should make any difference.

This same laid back attitude towards punctuality prevails in much of the developing world. Indeed, now it is the educated elite who - in other ways the heirs to the colonial heritage - make a point of being late. They invite people to dinner at eight and are stunned if a guest arrives at nine. Dinner, of course, is not served until midnight. The time fixed for meetings is more of a declaration of intent than a precise appointment. Of course, this attitude is frowned upon by multinational corporations, and all the imported management books teach the virtue and value of punctuality. Local entrepreneurs are not impressed: they are invariably late in meeting export orders, just as they seldom bother to keep their appointments.

Technology has had a strong though indirect impact on the way we view time. Early clocks were made progressively more accurate as their precision was crucial in determining the latitude of a ship. Even a small error could result in a vessel being hundreds of miles off course. Indeed, thousands perished at sea through navigational mistakes. But once the mechanism was perfected, clocks invaded our lives, making us slaves to the inexorable tick-tick of time.

For centuries, letters were the only form of long-distance communication. When you received one, you could read and re-read it while mentally composing a long and elegant reply. Then came the telephone, and all of a sudden, you were forced to answer straight away without time for reflection. At the office, you could tell your secretary to inform the caller that you were out, but this was difficult when the phone rang at home. The fax has added yet another twist to office communication. Because you receive a written query so quickly, there is pressure to respond just as fast. In the case of a letter, you could lie and say you hadn't received it, but a fax machine has the effrontery to confirm to the sender that you are in fact reading the missive at that very moment.

Computers have compounded this pressure. Originally invented as number-crunchers to speed up complicated and boring calculations, they are now connected in a vast and insidious network that not only threatens to take over our lives, but have imposed a rhythm of their own. People now communicate almost exclusively on the Internet through e-mail and in online chat rooms. When you get a letter by e-mail, it is invariably badly written and full of spelling mistakes; unfortunately, your reply is little better. The problem is that there is now a compulsion to respond immediately as the incoming message shows up on the screen. But the worst offenders live their virtual lives in chat rooms where 'you' becomes 'u'; 'your' becomes 'yr'; and every kind of grammatical error not only goes unpunished, but proliferates.

If we are lucky, the Millennium Bug will crash all computer hard drives, wreck the Internet, and erode the foundations of Bill Gates' empire. And if we get exceptionally lucky, all watches and clocks will simultaneously explode at midnight on December 31. Amen.