IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017 - 23

unacknowledged assumptions about
social class and gender.
Wajcman continually emphasizes
that treating time as a uniform measure is not suitable for understanding
the way different people experience
time in different circumstances.
Instead, it's possible to talk of different temporal regimes, namely different parts of life that are experienced
in different ways, for example as
rushed, intense, or drawn out. What
is fascinating is that people's feelings about the causes of time pressure may not correspond to what is
actually happening. One example is
email, often seen as the source of
time pressure. Wajcman points out
that because email is asynchronous,
dealing with it can be postponed so
that at the end of a period of intense
or extended activity, the accumulated batch of emails seems symbolic
of time pressure. Actually, though,
the other activities chewed up much
more time but they are not identified
as a cause of time pressure because
they leave behind no accumulation
of tasks.
Wajcman's most important point
is that people's changing experiences of time should not be attributed
solely to technological change. New
technologies, everything from vacuum cleaners and cars to ATMs and
smartphones, undoubtedly affect
time use and experience, but not in
any straightforward way, because
people's habits and expectations
change along with the technology,
leading to new patterns of humantechnology symbiosis.
In some ways, new technologies
have led to time-wasting, at least
from the point of view of households. Faster and more convenient
transport, especially the car, has
encouraged people to live further
from their workplaces, so commuting times remain much the same.
Rather than spend time on preparing meals, people now spend more
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time shopping and traveling to get
to stores. One solution is home
delivery, for example buying goods
via Amazon. In the U.S., this can be
seen as a return to routine home
delivery of meals and goods of over
a century ago. In these and other
examples, technologies on their own
do not lead to a particular outcome,
but always interact with social conditions, expectations, and habits.
Wajcman highlights that people's
understandings of what makes them
feel "pressed for time" are often
limited. When people feel rushed,
they correctly identify their own feelings but may not appreciate how
these feelings arise, as noted in the
examples of emails and housework.
Wajcman also highlights that theoreticians of digital capitalism who
present sweeping interpretations
may unconsciously be assuming all
of society reflects their own experiences and fail to appreciate that time
experiences vary considerably from
person to person and are shaped by
gender and social class.
Wajcman did not set out to provide a manual for coping with feelings of being harried, but within
her systematic analysis of evidence
and arguments are clues for doing
so. One of the challenges is that in
many circles, there is greater status in being busy, in having every
moment filled with one or more
activities. Being unoccupied is seen
as unattractive and unfulfilling,
and boredom is to be avoided at
all costs, most commonly by going
online. Wajcman sees the ubiquitous checking of phones as a way
of coping with otherwise uninteresting times, and in general is positive
about the way people are handling
their own situations.
While Wajcman's perspective
is a valuable counter to the determinist view that people are at the
mercy of technological innovation,
there is another factor in time use:
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IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

the concerted efforts of "attention
merchants" [1] to colonize people's
time, most commonly for commercial purposes. People may voluntarily
spend their time watching television,
playing video games, or checking
Facebook, but at the same time their
attention to screens is being sold
to advertisers.
It is also possible to use other
bodies of evidence to interrogate
time usage. Researchers in the field
of positive psychology examine
activities for their capacity and likelihood of making people happier and
more satisfied with their lives. A key
finding is that most people know
when they are happy but systematically misunderstand what made
them happy in the past and what will
make them happy in the future [2].
For example, most people think they
will be happier during leisure activities than during work time, but measurements often find the reverse.
Expressing gratitude, being optimistic, helping others, and physical
activity are well documented means
for increasing happiness and are far
more reliable and potent than earning more money and owning more
material goods. Positive psychology
thus can be used to make recommendations for spending time and
using technology that are quite different from typical patterns.
Another relevant body of research
is about expert performance. To
become extremely good at any activity requiring skill - chess, swimming, violin, research - requires
thousands of hours of dedicated
practice [3]. Those committed to
acquiring the highest levels of excellence must set a priority on regular
practice, which necessitates different attitudes towards time than held
by those content with doing well
enough to get by.
An underlying message in Pressed
for Time is that people have the
capacity to change their attitudes

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2017