IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017 - 22

Brian Martin

Pressed for Time
Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism.
By Judy Wajcman. Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2015, 215 pages.

o you feel ever more
rushed, with never
enough time to do
everything you want
and expect to do? Is
this connected with new technologies, which go faster and faster?
But wait just a minute: weren't
new technologies meant to make
work and life more efficient? Technologies are supposed to be laborsaving, so why should there be less
free time than before?
The paradox of time pressure is
the topic of Judy Wajcman's book
Pressed for Time and her contention, in short, is "It's more complicated than it seems on the surface."
Scientists and workplace managers
think of time as a linear, constant
flow, but people's perceptions of
time are varied and complex.
To begin, not everyone experiences time the same way. Those
who constantly feel rushed tend to
be affluent and have high-powered
jobs, often with family responsibilities as well. There is a significant
gendered dimension to the experience of time pressure. More women
have paying jobs but they still carry
out a much larger proportion of
unpaid work in the home, so they
are especially prone to feeling overwhelmed and short of time.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2017.2703178
Date of publication: 8 June 2017

Wajcman addresses these and
other issues in a careful, scholarly
style. She cites a considerable body
of research about people's use of
time, perceptions of time, use of
digital technologies, and much else
relevant to time as a social and psychological facet of life today. There
are also all-encompassing theses
about social change and the acceleration of life, especially as linked
to capitalism. Wajcman presents
the evidence and sorts through the
arguments, and in so doing questions many conventional views.
For example, it is commonly
thought that household technologies
such as dishwashers and microwaves
save time, but studies show that, to
the contrary, the time spent washing and cooking has changed little.
With this and other examples, Wajcman shows that fixating on technological change distracts attention
from accompanying social change.
She argues it is necessary to look at
change as a sociomaterial practice,
namely an interaction of social and
technological factors. The introduction of household technologies has
been accompanied by changes in
expectations for hygiene, child care,
and domestic work.
Wajcman challenges the usual
view that information and communication technologies, epitomized
by the smartphone, have meant that
work is infiltrating home life. Instead,
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she questions the traditional distinction between spheres of work and
leisure, or public and private, seeing it as increasingly irrelevant. The
usual thinking is that private life
should be protected, but cultural
change is making that idea obsolete. Many people now desire to use
their phones to manage their time,
so even when at home, they may be
connecting with friends and family
who are not physically present.
This brings up another conventional idea that Wajcman questions:
that face-to-face interactions are
more valuable or real than ones
mediated by technology. She cites
evidence that face-to-face time has
not been decreasing but is instead
supplemented by other ways of interacting, which can make for a
richer life.
While questioning many assumptions about technology and time,
Wajcman does not jump to the opposite pole and suggest that everything
is rosy. She regularly emphasizes
that time pressures are especially
acute for mothers and that people
with good incomes can enhance
their leisure - for example highintensity activities - by offloading
some of their domestic tasks to others, who are most likely women and
mothers with considerable time pressures of their own. Wajcman thus
exposes much of the writing about
time, work, and leisure as based on
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june 2017

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