{"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":122,"pdf_page":134,"physical_index":134,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"cd9e86c51b4f99d222a2e89c9bfd94777013f900d3d29785fc8dbdc613d0bed8"},"chapter":"Pressed for Time","content":"Household Appliances: An Afterthought?\n\nThus far I have emphasized how new tools for living escalate standards and transform domestic practices. However, we rarely reflect on the material form of the household equipment that has become available to us, and why it is so. I have argued that the predominance of the single-family household has profoundly structured the design and configuration of our appliances. Little attention has been given to the innovation, development, and difusion processes of specific technologies themselves.\n\nYet if there is one lesson that an STS perspective teaches us, it is that domestic artifacts, like other technologies, are both socially constructed and society shaping. Rather than speeding up existing activities, often as not they change the very nature and meaning of tasks and introduce novel practices. Given that much domestic technology has its origins in very diferent spheres, rather than being specifically designed to save time in the household, it is not surprising that its impact on domestic labor has been mixed. Indeed, the temporal landscape of the factory that informs the design of these technologies necessarily carries over into the home. Technologies that emerge as “transfers” from the production process in the formal economy to those in the informal domestic economy are unlikely to be attuned to the complex timescapes of the home.\n\nTypically, new products are initially too expensive for application to household activities; they are employed on a large scale by industry only, until continued innovation and economies of scale allow substantial reduction in costs or adaptation of technologies to household circumstances. Many domestic appliances were initially developed for commercial, industrial, and even military purposes and only later, as manufacturers sought to expand their markets, were they adapted for home use. Gas and electricity were available for industrial purposes and municipal lighting long before they were adapted for domestic use. The automatic washing machine, the vacuum cleaner, and the refrigerator had wide commercial application before being scaled down for use in the home.\n\nChapter five\n\n122","previous_page":121,"next_page":123}