Pressed for time - Wajcman
Class Media technology & society
Black Friday or Black week in Europe ⇒ why??
→ to get rid of stock, so they can push Christmas and New Year’s stock
→ link to importance of scarcity (or at least illusion of it, ‘today it’s 10% off’)
Why was Bell so far off with his social predictions?
→ Judy tries to answer
Tools for time
Life = faster than it used to be
→ time is scarce
→ eg high-speed society, acceleration society, time famine, runaway world
→ eg always doing something (watching yt while eating, tiktok while waiting
for bus)
Trying to find time for work, families, leisure
Lack of control over one’s time & unequal access to leisure
→ important dimensions of social justice
Paradox = we should have more time than ever ↔ we feel like we have no
time
⇒ how did we end up here?
Commentaries about postindustrial society (cf Bell)
→ predicting a leisure revolution, “the end of work”
Instead tech = speeding up life
→ a whole new epoch in the human condition
→ exponential growth (predicted by Moore’s law) applies to every aspect of
modern society
→ we don’t have more time, in fact we have less
Why do we turn to digital devices to alleviate time pressure and yet blame
them for driving it
⇒ central paradox
Look at it through a social lens (rather than just technological)
Pressed for time - Wajcman 1
, Modern time cannot be conceived of w/o tech
Time = social entity formed through collective rythms of human
engagement
→ socially constructed (eg clock time, pace of social life, …)
Tech too often seen as outside social relations
→ time cannot be separated from assumptions of human life
→ neither from tech as it increasingly marks and shapes time
Tyranny of the clock
→ tech devices incorporate functional time demands
→ temporal demands are not inherent to tech, built into it by all-too
human schemes and desires
→ it is our choice to use it, but why do we use it then? (if it makes us
feel like losing time)
→ social expectation to not waste your time
Technology =/ inherently liberating or enslaving
→ skeptical about both extreme positions
⇒ tech only comes alive and have meaning as people adopt and use them
(eg last week little focus on agency)
Eg text went from being ‘delivered’ to ‘read at …’, pop-ups from apps,
buy with 1 click, daily duolingo streak
→ why is this built in?
→ sold as convenience, so that we use it more
→ it’s ‘our choice’, but heavily nudged in our choices
It’s not tech itself, but how and why it’s built
Social shaping approach to tech
→ tech change = open-ended & unpredictable, but shaped by social,
economic and political forces
Devices designed with particular capacities & affordances
→ nothing inevitable about the way they evolve and are used (cf
agency)
→ designers lean in to how users use the device (eg emergence of FB
marketplace, texting emerging as key feature of phones)
Relation to time depends on how tech enters & becomes embedded in
our institutions & patterns of daily life
Pressed for time - Wajcman 2
Class Media technology & society
Black Friday or Black week in Europe ⇒ why??
→ to get rid of stock, so they can push Christmas and New Year’s stock
→ link to importance of scarcity (or at least illusion of it, ‘today it’s 10% off’)
Why was Bell so far off with his social predictions?
→ Judy tries to answer
Tools for time
Life = faster than it used to be
→ time is scarce
→ eg high-speed society, acceleration society, time famine, runaway world
→ eg always doing something (watching yt while eating, tiktok while waiting
for bus)
Trying to find time for work, families, leisure
Lack of control over one’s time & unequal access to leisure
→ important dimensions of social justice
Paradox = we should have more time than ever ↔ we feel like we have no
time
⇒ how did we end up here?
Commentaries about postindustrial society (cf Bell)
→ predicting a leisure revolution, “the end of work”
Instead tech = speeding up life
→ a whole new epoch in the human condition
→ exponential growth (predicted by Moore’s law) applies to every aspect of
modern society
→ we don’t have more time, in fact we have less
Why do we turn to digital devices to alleviate time pressure and yet blame
them for driving it
⇒ central paradox
Look at it through a social lens (rather than just technological)
Pressed for time - Wajcman 1
, Modern time cannot be conceived of w/o tech
Time = social entity formed through collective rythms of human
engagement
→ socially constructed (eg clock time, pace of social life, …)
Tech too often seen as outside social relations
→ time cannot be separated from assumptions of human life
→ neither from tech as it increasingly marks and shapes time
Tyranny of the clock
→ tech devices incorporate functional time demands
→ temporal demands are not inherent to tech, built into it by all-too
human schemes and desires
→ it is our choice to use it, but why do we use it then? (if it makes us
feel like losing time)
→ social expectation to not waste your time
Technology =/ inherently liberating or enslaving
→ skeptical about both extreme positions
⇒ tech only comes alive and have meaning as people adopt and use them
(eg last week little focus on agency)
Eg text went from being ‘delivered’ to ‘read at …’, pop-ups from apps,
buy with 1 click, daily duolingo streak
→ why is this built in?
→ sold as convenience, so that we use it more
→ it’s ‘our choice’, but heavily nudged in our choices
It’s not tech itself, but how and why it’s built
Social shaping approach to tech
→ tech change = open-ended & unpredictable, but shaped by social,
economic and political forces
Devices designed with particular capacities & affordances
→ nothing inevitable about the way they evolve and are used (cf
agency)
→ designers lean in to how users use the device (eg emergence of FB
marketplace, texting emerging as key feature of phones)
Relation to time depends on how tech enters & becomes embedded in
our institutions & patterns of daily life
Pressed for time - Wajcman 2
