{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908","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":"bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908","id":"bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908","uuid":"bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908","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/bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908","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/bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bff2be14-96b0-46f1-8e61-474593cba908/search"},"page":{"printed_page":2,"pdf_page":14,"physical_index":14,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"0823aaae94b9a8d223605d82b66b03fc46442d1cfbd8ce2708f0860f12ceda46"},"chapter":"Pressed for Time","content":"Instead, the iconic image that abounds is that of the frenetic, technologically tethered, iPhone- or iPad-addicted citizen. Academic discussions of the impact of digital devices, such as the Internet and the smartphone, typically confirm the popular view that technologies are speeding up life and making us busier. Rapidly evolving information and communication technologies are seen as marking a whole new epoch in the human condition. It is as if the exponential growth in computing power predicted by Moore’s law applies to every aspect of modern society.2\n\nAs technologies proliferate, we find that we do not have more time to ourselves; in fact, many of us have less. How, exactly, has technology hastened the pace of everyday life? How has it made us busier rather than making us more free? Why do we turn to digital devices to alleviate time pressure and yet blame them for driving it? This is the central paradox that I want to examine in this book.\n\nModern patterns of time can scarcely be conceived of without the use of technology. We rarely have a chance to live outside technologies—they are inextricably woven into the fabric of our lives, from birth to death, at home, in school, in paid work, and in leisure. From simple tools to large technological systems, our lives are intertwined with technology. We delegate tasks to devices and use them to mediate ever more complex social networks. Our actions and society itself are built on and with technical artifacts.\n\nWhile sociologists emphasize that time is a social entity, formed through collective rhythms of human engagement with the world, technology is rarely accorded the same treatment.3 Technology is too often seen as outside social relations. But if time cannot be separated from the collective rhythms, assumptions, and hopes of human life, then neither can the technologies that increasingly mark and shape time for us. This may not have been an important distinction in previous eras—but in the digital age, it really matters. For example, the tyranny of the clock, with its linear measurement of the hours of the day, is basic to narratives of the accelerating world. It is as if technical devices incorporate functional time demands that determine unequivocally our uses of time.\n\nIf we have, up to now, been too quick to accept the temporal logic built into our new technologies, then we need to remember that the social determination of time is built in to those technologies, just like the size of the screen is, or the power of the processor. Consider, for example, the fiber-optic cable between Chicago and New York. While previous cables between the two cities had been laid along railway lines, the new cable takes the shortest route possible, even drilling through the Allegheny Mountains. It shaves 1.3 milliseconds of the transmission time of the earlier cables. “Speed” is thus built directly into the design: the cable was laid where it was to make transmission faster. But what compels its use by financial trading firms isn’t anything directly technical; rather, it is the structure of competition among such firms.4 Temporal demands are not inherent to technology. They are built into our devices by all-toohuman schemes and desires.\n\nIntroduction\n\n2","previous_page":1,"next_page":3}