  Despite the traditional focus of network science on static networks, most
networked systems of scientific interest are characterized by temporal links.
By disrupting the paths, link temporality has been shown to frustrate many
dynamical processes on networks, from information spreading to accessibility.
Considering the ubiquity of temporal networks in nature, we must ask: Are there
any advantages of the networks' temporality? Here we develop an analytical
framework to explore the control properties of temporal networks, arriving at
the counterintuitive conclusion that temporal networks, compared to their
static (i.e. aggregated) counterparts, reach controllability faster, demand
orders of magnitude less control energy, and the control trajectories, through
which the system reaches its final states, are significantly more compact than
those characterizing their static counterparts. The combination of analytical,
numerical and empirical results demonstrates that temporality ensures a degree
of flexibility that would be unattainable in static networks, significantly
enhancing our ability to control them.
