{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","title":"Pressed for Time The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780226196473","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","id":"0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","uuid":"0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","title":"Pressed for Time The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism","normalized_title":"pressedfortimetheaccelerationoflifeindigitalcapitalism","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780226196473","isbns":["9780226196473","9780226196503"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":228,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Pressed%20for%20Time%20The%20Acceleration%20of%20Life%20in%20Digital%20Capitalism","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/0cf5c9df-7116-426e-ae21-ce72b2ccbe50/search"},"page":{"printed_page":112,"pdf_page":124,"physical_index":124,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"0445b7d72c6549378ced9b5b39340c30c32a78123fca1c2cba6a6b13fbdc52de"},"chapter":"Pressed for Time","content":"Household technology has largely been invisible in academic discourse about the acceleration society, and this is not unrelated to the invisibility of housework. Yet, as we saw in chapter 3, a principal reason for the perception that life has become more rushed is the rise of dual-earner households, with work time squeezing the time available for housework and caring activities. Any discussion of household labor is always at the same time a discussion of gender roles and relationships. So gender diferences in perceptions of time and time pressure will be a theme throughout this chapter.\n\nI begin by providing some historical background to the mechanization of housework, and then consider contemporary arguments about the impact of technological innovation on the ways in which households assign time to housework. I will examine the reasons why “time-saving” domestic technologies, such as washing machines and microwaves, have been more successful in time shifting than they have been in reducing the amount of time spent in domestic work. Changed cultural expectations about parenting, as we have already noted, point to the peripheral efect of technology. Here, however, my focus is on the related issue of how domestic activities and artifacts themselves are intertwined with gender identities. The way in which men and women divide their time in the home, and the type of housework they do, impacts upon their differing feelings of harriedness. Finally, I examine the cultural imaginaries around the digital home of the future, showing how they reflect the mindset of their designers.\n\nThe Industrialization of the Home\n\nWhat was the relationship between the technological developments in the economy and those in the home? To what extent did new technologies “industrialize” the home and transform domestic labor? Why, despite massive technological changes in the home—such as running water, gas and electric cookers, central heating, washing machines, and refrigerators—do studies show that household work in the industrialized countries still accounts for approximately half of the total working time?3\n\nThe conventional wisdom is that the forces of technological change and the growth of the market economy have progressively absorbed much of the household’s role in production. The classic formulation of this position is to be found in Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales’s functionalist sociology of the family.4 They argue that industrialization removed many functions from the family system until all that remains is consumption. For Parsons and Bales, the wife-mother function is the primary socialization of children and the stabilization of the adult personality; it thus becomes mainly expressive or psychological, compared with the instrumental male world of “real” work. More generally, modern technology is seen as having either eliminated or made less arduous almost all women’s former household work, thus freeing women to enter the labor force. To most commentators, the history of housework is the story of its elimination.\n\nChapter five\n\n112","previous_page":111,"next_page":113}