This is not to discount the cultural significance of our current orientation to, and valorization of, the fast-paced, full life as the good life. The tone of the debate on time pressure has been largely negative, concerned with problems such as balancing work and family life. However, the allure of metropolitan speed is indissolubly linked to the dominant ideals of modernity. Cultural acceleration, doing the most with the time one has and realizing as many options as possible from the vast possibilities that the world has to ofer, is the secular version of human happiness.54 Cultural discourses that value action-packed lives with high levels of consumption lead people to pursue busy lives that are at once both stressful and afirming. The increasing salience of consumption for modern identity formation fuels the demand for faster, hyper consumption. For those within high-status groups, prestige attaches to those who work long hours and are busiest at work. Moreover, these same busy people also have the most voracious pattern of leisure consumption.
The studies I have considered take the important step of bringing cultural norms about time to bear on the paradox of harriedness. However, they run the risk of implying that people are utterly seduced by the celebratory culture of speed in every aspect of their lives. In fact, there is as much organizational constraint as individual choice involved in lengthening working hours, for example, itself a cause of stress. Moreover, a wholesale condemnation of consumer culture, as expressed by Zygmunt Bauman’s sentiment that “the ‘consumerist syndrome’ is all about speed, excess and waste” both exaggerates the place of consumption in modern culture and fails to acknowledge the satisfaction that can be derived from it.55 Understanding the prevalence of time pressure requires a careful examination of the objective circumstances that cause harriedness, as well as an appreciation of changing cultural norms of busyness.
However, our interaction with the proliferating technologies of acceleration is also fundamental to the contemporary experience of speed. A notable omission from much of the literature on the time squeeze is the role played by information and communication technologies. Modern existence presupposes a technologically replete, multimodal world of ubiquitous connectivity. Electronic communication and new media systems increasingly constitute the fabric of our everyday lives. While there is research on multitasking with children, the study of multitasking with digital technology is only emerging. Yet the concept of the acceleration society outlined earlier presumes a direct link between technological acceleration and the growing scarcity of time. It is to this theme that I turn for the remainder of the book. The next chapter explores these issues in the context of paid work.
The Time-Pressure Paradox
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