{"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":156,"pdf_page":168,"physical_index":168,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"6832391e584b198d8f5e63b007aee8e3715d2d4025bbd24b66e9cf9fc809bcca"},"chapter":"Pressed for Time","content":"Work or Play?\n\nMuch of my discussion to this point has been framed in terms of worklife balance, and changing forms of labor is a recurring theme. However, rather than work intruding into leisure, social media are forcing us to rethink what actually counts as labor, and even what kind of experience labor is, in the first place. The fact that Internet users create most of the content that makes up the web brings into sharp relief our changing relationship to leisure time. After all, these new types of “digital,” or “virtual,” activities can feel like either work or play. Indeed, there are times when leisure is also labor.\n\nFrom a political economy perspective, watching television advertisements and using Amazon, for example, can be viewed as forms of work in that they provide audiences and data for corporations. Tracking devices, such as cookies, record Internet users’ browsing patterns and preferences, which can then be monetized through targeted advertisements. Online shopping is big business, with Britons leading the way spending on average over £1,000 a year, often on smartphones and tablets.42\n\nLess visible is the free cultural and technical labor that drives innovation on the Internet: “simultaneously voluntarily given and unwaged, enjoyed and exploited, free labour on the Net includes the activity of building Web sites, modifying software packages, reading and participating in mailing lists, and building virtual spaces on MUDS and MOOs [multiuser text-based virtual environments].”43 Indeed, there are millions of amateur programmers who are motivated by a desire for pleasurable cultural production, their only reward being the social status that comes with being at the frontiers of innovation.\n\nIn the case of audiences and advertising, labor is combined with pleasure in the sense that the nonadvertising content is viewed by choice. The delivery of entertainment content is thus a key component of the role of ICTs in work-life balance. Indeed, the life being balanced is not only the life of personal intimacy but of pleasurable recreation and relaxation. Spending time on Facebook, for example, can be read as a form of leisure as well as a form of communication. And while the traditional mass media of newspapers, radio, television, and cinema conveyed content to passive audiences, interactive media ofer a much broader range of emotional and aesthetic expression, engagement and entertainment. By changing the relationship between the technology and the consumer in this way, ICTs arguably have transformed the quality of our leisure time.\n\nChapter six\n\n156","previous_page":155,"next_page":157}