Does it make sense, then, to think about the Internet as necessarily saving time? It certainly allows messages to be sent at amazing speeds. If technologies existed independently and outside of society, then surely faster technologies would save time as people would be doing the same things, but at a faster pace. At one level, this rings true—faster, more powerful computers enable us to process more information more quickly. Yet, paradoxically, we seem to end up with less time than before.
In reality, the impact of technological innovation is far from uniform or straightforward.40 It is not only a matter of the presumed inherent capabilities of the technology in question. The extent to which its technical potency will be realized fundamentally depends on the social significance it is accorded and how it becomes embedded in its concrete and practical application. The Internet is especially open to manifold usages. In some instances, e-mail, for example, may genuinely encourage faster decision making, while in others, what is colloquially referred to as “information overload” may lead to inertia. Either way, what is clear is that technical velocity does not necessarily translate into more eficiency and convenience. As I detail in chapter 4, the significance of e-mail lies as much in the way it has transformed social expectations and standards of the time activities take as in the actual speed of communication.
My point is that qualities such as speed and eficiency are not produced by technologies alone but are related to social norms that evolve as devices are integrated into daily life. Rather than simply compressing time, information technologies change the very nature and meaning of tasks and work activities. Moreover, like the mobile phone, the Internet generates new kinds of material and cultural practices, reconfiguring the temporal and spatial basis of social interaction. It makes sense, then, to think about the relationship between technology and time as one of ongoing mutual shaping.
In order to understand this reciprocal process, I read technologies of all kinds as sociotechnical or sociomaterial “assemblages.” This view, that technologies are combinations of people, materials, equipment, components, and institutions, is also sometimes referred to as an ensemble, a web, or a network. Whatever the term used, the idea is that the technical is not reducible to the social, nor is the social reducible to the technical. Whereas sociology tends to give primacy to social relations, treating them as existing prior to the intervention of technology, this perspective sees society and technology as mutually constitutive. In other words, the material world makes society possible.
Hig h-Speed Society
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