{"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":120,"pdf_page":132,"physical_index":132,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"898e4988cb9a4c057ff6ebd05de5e44de7b6844d4629526db8b70e1cb288d30a"},"chapter":"Pressed for Time","content":"Expectations of comfort, cleanliness, and convenience have altered radically over the past few generations, but these dramatic changes have largely gone unnoticed. Elizabeth Shove demonstrates this by taking three dimensions of “ordinary” life—the comfort of air-conditioning, the personal cleanliness of bathing and showering, and the convenience of contemporary domestic laundering—as probes into major changes in the fabric of daily life and social being over the last few decades. As these new domestic tools for living become a normal part of consumption, they escalate standards of comfort, shifting conventions, practices, and routines of consumption.\n\nLet’s take her example of bathing. Although “the technologies involved—the bath and the shower—have changed hardly at all over hundreds of years . . . patterns and logics of use are continually on the move.”18 How do we explain the increasing popularity of the shower, especially the power shower (which pumps out water at a higher rate), and the decline of traditional British bathing habits? Power showers far exceed the water and energy consumption of a twice- or thrice-weekly bath, however long the bather spends in the tub. In both the UK and the United States, the seven- to eight-minute daily shower is taken for granted as the norm for those who regularly shower.19 This drive for personal cleanliness has intensified in a context where the shift from industrial to white collar service work and decreased air pollution has reduced the need for washing.\n\nThe constant availability of hot water and the heightened value of hygiene are prerequisites for the increasing frequency with which people wash. However, a key diference between bathing and showering is that the latter is associated with speed, immediacy, and convenience. The shower is not inherently quicker than a bath, but its potential to be used in this way fits our current preoccupation with saving time. The issue is not a literal lack of time itself. As I have argued, the experience of rushing is as much the result of the temporal disorganization of daily life. The proliferation of time-demanding social practices makes the achievement of collective routines harder to achieve. Even the once-weekly routine of a Sunday bath demands a form of temporal and sequential scheduling not required of privatized, fragmented episodes of washing. By contrast, showering can be slotted into narrow time frames—like those between waking in the morning and leaving for work—from which bathing is excluded. It is in this context that the ability to take a rapid shower acquires its appeal.\n\nChapter five\n\n120","previous_page":119,"next_page":121}