{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title":"Time, Consumption and Everyday Life Practice, Materiality and Culture","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","uuid":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title":"Time, Consumption and Everyday Life Practice, Materiality and Culture","normalized_title":"timeconsumptionandeverydaylifepracticematerialityandculture","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":236,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%2C%20Consumption%20and%20Everyday%20Life%20Practice%2C%20Materiality%20and%20Culture","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/search"},"page":{"printed_page":68,"pdf_page":71,"physical_index":71,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"f3dc1fb060925ea6498411af75c839288f86e6a64943291d278d2206f079ad44"},"chapter":"List of Tables and Figures","content":"Arguably, the advancing interdependence of technological systems and life-styles has made contemporary societies more prone to disruption than ever before. This is, in part, for technological reasons. Communication and transport systems all have increasingly come to depend on tightly coupled electricity networks and computer programs. Blackouts can demobilize sewage pumps, with serious consequences for public health, shut down the computers managing traffic controls and communication, set off fire alarms and deactivate electronic locks on garage doors. But it is also because increasingly complex rhythms of daily life have become more dependent on enabling technologies, making smooth coordination ever more difficult.\n\nIn many parts of life, disruption is becoming more frequent, not less. Traffic congestion is a good example. In the thirty-nine largest cities of the United States, the number of hours lost by travellers due to congestion has trebled in recent decades. In 1982, the average person driving in Boston or Chicago during peak hours (6–9 a.m. and 4–7 p.m.) lost twelve or fifteen hours a year. By 2005, it was an entire working week (forty-six hours each) (Texas Transportation Institute 2007: Table 4). One obvious way to reduce congestion would be for people to adopt car-sharing. That the take-up of such solutions has been so limited, traffic researchers recognize (Bhat et al. 2005), lies in no small part with people’s increasingly flexible and frequent use of the car for non-work leisure and family activities. Disruption here is the price paid for the sake of coordinating an ever more complex life-style.\n\nThis chapter looks at disruption to illuminate the tenuous, fragile nature of everyday life. In contrast to most studies of blackouts and other shortages, where the focus is on how to manage disasters, I am turning to breakdowns here to open up the temporal fragility of habits and the elasticity of everyday life. Disruptions reveal the flexible side of habits and routines so often imagined as stable and stubborn.\n\n68\n\nFrank Trentmann","previous_page":67,"next_page":69}