The paradox of time and tech

I’ve been very interested in how there’s a general perception that somehow technology is speeding up time, that we live in a period of acceleration and that people experience living under time pressure. The common notion is that somehow digital technologies are to blame. We have this notion and this image of addiction to digital technologies in which we’re running ever faster to stand still … all those images of people carrying three mobile phones and listening to various conversations and multitasking. What particularly interested me about this in terms of the relationship between technology and time was this paradox we all seem to live, where, on the one hand, we blame digital technologies for speeding up time, speeding up life, putting us under time pressure, and yet we look towards digital technologies to be the answer to this and save us time.

We go around with tracking technologies on our wrists. We buy more and more sophisticated technologies that do things simultaneously. We’re caught in this paradox between the speed of technologies and feeling very time-pressured. What I wanted to do in my book, and what I’ve done in my work in recent years, is to apply a sociological perspective to these things.

Where sociology and technology intersect

I’ve been involved from the outset in the development of a new field of social science called science and technology studies, or the social studies of technology. Central to that project has been a critique of technological determinism, or trying to make it clear that the technologies in themselves are not the driver of social change. If anything, technologies reflect the values and the relations of the society we’re in, the inequalities of all the features of society we find in those very technologies. So, we’ve been very concerned with looking at the technologies we’ve got. But what do they say about society and who’s shaping and designing those technologies to have particular kinds of effects?

How much control do we have over time?

The discussion about technology and time is often framed purely in terms of the amount of time rather than the character of time or the control of time. One of the things I’ve been very interested in is the development in economics in the last 20 years or so when it comes to thinking about happiness and quality of life not only being measured in terms of inequality of income but also in terms of how much control over time we have, how much free time we have. One of the central features of many new technologies is how they offer us more control over time and scheduling.

A man using a time-managing software on a computer screen. By NicoElNino.

I’ve been studying mobile phones since they were literally first introduced into Australia, and one of the things they absolutely offered was more control over time in terms of scheduling and in terms of families being able to keep up with one another. They offered a lot of features in relation to coordination but those very same technologies have had very mixed effects at work. Here, one thinks immediately of retail workers, of Uber drivers, of call centre workers – the way in which a lot of these technologies have been used to intensify various kinds of service work and actually give sectors of workers less control over their time. For example, if we take Uber, drivers are very much at the mercy of the work that’s coming in and have very little control over their scheduling.

Time for everything?

At the other end of the spectrum, there’s the discussion about whether we should switch our phones off when we have dinner and about having time away from 24/7 connectivity. There are pluses and minuses: most people seem to love being connected with one another and they use Facebook et al. to keep in touch, but there’s a debate about the encroachment of these technologies on free time, family time, friendship time and communication time. I think that’s one very important area to look at.

A group of friends interacting with technologies. By Vasin Lee.

The other issue in terms of these debates about speeding up time is the extent to which these technologies really reflect our culture. Here, I mean a culture in which speed, busyness, being driven, working extremely hard are highly valued, are associated with prestige. We live in what I would describe as a culture of “time optimisation”.

Embracing a culture of “time optimisation”

A couple of years ago, I spent a year in Silicon Valley, working on digital calendars and digital assistants. Silicon Valley designers often talked to me about how these technologies were going to help us use our time wisely. What they were really talking about was maximising productivity: using our time efficiently, to the maximum, to have free time for other things. But somehow the free time for other things never seems to occur that easily. What we get is this discourse of productivity not only for workplace activities, but in everyday life, where, for example, we’re very concerned about how many steps we do every day.

There are all sorts of tracking technologies and a movement now called the “quantified self”, where we have more and more data about ourselves, more knowledge about ourselves. Although this is positive, it can also be a source of pressure in terms of living efficiently.

What tech gives and what it takes

There’s currently a lot of interest in how this period of COVID and how the shift to working at home has been both enabled by and impacted by technology. I can only speculate on this because very little research has been done so far, but it seems to me that a few things are becoming clear.

One is that those of us who are in white-collar knowledge work have been able to continue our work online. I pre-recorded all my lectures. I have a lot of meetings on Zoom that technology has facilitated. We also know that part of this period has involved homeschooling, which has been fabulously enabled by the technology. However, numerous studies show the extent to which mothers have actually borne the time burden and the work burden of this shift to home, and that women have had to give up their jobs more than men. I am worried about the long-term effects on women’s employment in this period.

Young woman leading a call from her laptop. By Nattakorn_Maneerat.

Those of us that are knowledge workers are very aware of the blurring of boundaries with working at home, doing everything at home; that work–life separation has been completely melded by these technologies. On the other hand, people who are out delivering and the key workers in hospitals doing the driving and service work that’s needed to keep things going are seeing an incredible increase in the amount of work they’re having to do – and in an intensification of work – which leaves them with very little time to themselves, very little control over free time. The workers, the drivers who are doing this, are all working to very tough, very fast schedules enabled by this very same technology. They are all subject to schedules, timetables and a speed of delivery.

Discretionary time as a citizenship right

I myself do not agree with the notion that somehow time has accelerated. My response to the notion that we’re in an era of speed-up is to think about this historically. What are they comparing this era to? I’m not completely convinced. I think a historical take is really important, if we consider this era in relation to the technological inventions of the turn of the 19th century – the steam engine, the telegraph, the jet plane – and how dramatic they were, and how people then thought that this was a revolutionary time in terms of speed-up. What’s more, we experience time very differently, whether we’re the person in the taxi being taken somewhere quickly or we’re the taxi driver waiting around for the next fare.

We have a notion that to be a citizen, you have a right to a living income. Philosophers and economists have been writing recently about what they call “discretionary time” and that the importance of discretionary time – what we might think of as leisure time or time to yourself – should be a human right, because that is part of living a good life. The way in which some sectors of work are being organised at the moment is squeezing out that autonomy, or control, over time.

Discover more about

sociology, technology and time

Wajcman, J. (2015). Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism. The University of Chicago Press.

Wajcman, J., & Dodd, N. (2017). The Sociology of Speed: Digital, Organizational, and Social Temporalities. Oxford University Press.

Sharma, S. (2014). In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics. Duke University Press.

Technology: the great accelerator or saviour of time?