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Pressed for time: the acceleration of life in digital capitalism
The technologically tethered, iPhone-addicted figure is an image we can easily conjure. Most of us complain that there aren't enough hours in the day and too many e-mails in our thumb-accessible inboxes. This widespread perception that life is faster than it used to be is now ingrained in our culture, and smartphones and the Internet are continually being blamed. But isn't the sole purpose of the smartphone to give us such quick access to people and information that we'll be free to do other things? Isn't technology supposed to make our lives easier? In Pressed for Time, Judy Wajcman explains why we immediately interpret our experiences with digital technology as inexorably accelerating everyday life. She argues that we are not mere hostages to communication devices, and the sense of always being rushed is the result of the priorities and parameters we ourselves set rather than the machines that help us set them. Indeed, being busy and having action-packed lives has become valorized by our productivity driven culture. Wajcman offers a bracing historical perspective, exploring the commodification of clock time, and how the speed of the industrial age became identified with progress. She also delves into the ways time-use differs for diverse groups in modern societies, showing how changes in work patterns, family arrangements, and parenting all affect time stress. Bringing together empirical research on time use and theoretical debates about dramatic digital developments, this accessible and engaging book will leave readers better versed in how to use technology to navigate life's fast lane.
How Silicon Valley sets time
In: New media & society: an international and interdisciplinary forum for the examination of the social dynamics of media and information change, Volume 21, Issue 6, p. 1272-1289
ISSN: 1461-7315
Digital calendars are logistical media, part of the infrastructure that configures arrangements among people and things. Calendars increasingly play a fundamental role in establishing our everyday rhythms, shaping our consciousness of temporality. Drawing on interviews with Silicon Valley calendar designers, this article explores how the conceptualization and production of scheduling applications codify contemporary ideals about efficient time management. I argue that these ideals reflect the driving cultural imperative for accelerated time handling in order to optimize productivity and minimize time wasting. Such mechanistic approaches treat time as a quantitative, individualistic resource, obscuring the politics of time embedded in what can and cannot be graphically represented on the grid interface. I conclude that electronic calendars are emblematic of a long-standing but mistaken belief, hegemonic in Silicon Valley, that automation will deliver us more time.
The Digital Architecture of Time Management
In: Science, technology, & human values: ST&HV, Volume 44, Issue 2, p. 315-337
ISSN: 1552-8251
This article explores how the shift from print to electronic calendars materializes and exacerbates a distinctively quantitative, "spreadsheet" orientation to time. Drawing on interviews with engineers, I argue that calendaring systems are emblematic of a larger design rationale in Silicon Valley to mechanize human thought and action in order to make them more efficient and reliable. The belief that technology can be profitably employed to control and manage time has a long history and continues to animate contemporary sociotechnical imaginaries of what automation will deliver. In the current moment we live in the age of the algorithm and machine learning, so it is no wonder, then, that the contemporary design of digital calendars is driven by a vision of intelligent time management. As I go on to show in the second part of the article, this vision is increasingly realized in the form of intelligent digital assistants whose tracking capacities and behavioral algorithms aim to solve life's existential problem—how best to organize the time of our lives. This article contributes to STS scholarship on the role of technological artifacts in generating new temporalities that shape people's perception of time, how they act in the world, and how they understand themselves.
Anförande: Pressed for time: The digital transformation of everyday life
In: Sociologisk forskning: sociological research : journal of the Swedish Sociological Association, Volume 53, Issue 2, p. 193-199
ISSN: 2002-066X
From Women and Technology to Gendered Technoscience
This paper situates current discussions of women's position in ICTs in the wider context of feminist debates on gender and technology. While a common trend among early feminist theorists was a profound pessimism about the inherent masculinity of technology, this was replaced during the 1990s by an unwarranted optimism about the liberating potential of technoscience for women. This article gives an account of both technophobia and technophilia, arguing that recent approaches drawing on the social studies of technology provide a more subtle analysis. Avoiding both technological determinism and gender essentialism, technofeminist approaches emphasize that the gender-technology relationship is fluid and flexible, and that feminist politics and not technology per se is the key to gender equality.
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From Women and Technology to Gendered Technoscience
This paper situates current discussions of women's position in ICTs in the wider context of feminist debates on gender and technology. While a common trend among early feminist theorists was a profound pessimism about the inherent masculinity of technology, this was replaced during the 1990s by an unwarranted optimism about the liberating potential of technoscience for women. This article gives an account of both technophobia and technophilia, arguing that recent approaches drawing on the social studies of technology provide a more subtle analysis. Avoiding both technological determinism and gender essentialism, technofeminist approaches emphasize that the gender-technology relationship is fluid and flexible, and that feminist politics and not technology per se is the key to gender equality.
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TIC e inequidad: ¿ganancias en red para las mujeres? ; ICTs and inequality: Women's acquisitions in the net? ; TIC et iniquité: ¿des gains en réseau pour les femmes?
Este texto aborda las relaciones de género de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC). Teniendo como punto de referencia los estudios sociales de la tecnología, se argumenta que las ideas acerca de las prácticas de género informan el diseño, la producción y el uso de las TIC, y que, por consiguiente, los artefactos técnicos y la cultura son parte integral en la formación de la identidad de género. Discute críticamente las teorías ciberfeministas que ven en las nuevas TIC una posibilidad emancipadora para las mujeres, como si estas tecnologías, a diferencia de sus antecesoras, fueran inherentemente liberadoras. Opta por una propuesta desde el tecnofeminismo, como una política feminista situada, que observa críticamente tanto las maneras como las nuevas tecnologías abren nuevas dinámicas de género, pero también reflejan viejos patrones de iniquidad de las sociedades contemporáneas.Cómo citar este artículo:Wajcman, Judy, "TIC e inequidad: ¿ganancias en red para las mujeres?", traducido del inglés por Elida Giraldo, Revista Educación y Pedagogía, Medellín, Universidad de Antioquia, Facultad de Educación, vol. 24, núm. 62, enero-abril, 2012, pp. 117-134.Recibido: febrero de 2011 Aceptado: noviembre de 2011 ; This text approaches gender relations within the information and communication technologies (ICTs). Having social studies on technology as a reference, it states that the ideas on gender practices inform about the design, production and use of ITCs, and therefore technical devices and culture play an important role in shaping gender identity. It also discusses in a critical way the cyber-feminist theories that perceive new ICTs as a possibility for women's emancipation, as if these technologies, contrary to the previous ones, were per se liberating. It therefore makes a proposal on techno-feminism, as a feminist policy that critically analyzes the ways in which new technologies open new gender dynamics, and at the same time reflect old inequality patterns in contemporary societies.How to reference this article: Wajcman, Judy, "TIC e inequidad: ¿ganancias en red para las mujeres?", traducido del inglés por Elida Giraldo, Revista Educación y Pedagogía, Medellín, Universidad de Antioquia, Facultad de Educación, vol. 24, núm. 62, enero-abril, 2012, pp. 117-134.Received: Febrary 2011Accepted: November 2011 ; Le texte aborde les rapports de genre des technologies de l´information et la communication (TIC). En se fondant sur les études sociaux de la technologie, on argumente que les idées à propos des pratiques de genre donnent forme à la conception, la production et l´usage des TIC, et par conséquence, les artefacts techniques et la culture sont partie intñegrale de la formation de l´identité de genre. L´article conteste les théories cyberféministes qui considèrent les NTIC comme une possibilité émancipatrice pour les femmes, comme si ces technologies, contrairement à leurs prédécesseurs, fussent intrinsèquement libératrices. On opte pour un propos à partir du technoféminisme, comme une politique féministe située, qui observe de manière critique la façon dont les nouvelles technologies ouvrent nouvelles dynamiques de genre, mais aussi la manière dont elles reflètent vieux modèles d´iniquité des sociétés contemporaines.
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Further reflections on the sociology of technology and time: a response to Hassan
In: The British journal of sociology: BJS online, Volume 61, Issue 2, p. 375-381
ISSN: 1468-4446
TechnoCapitalism Meets TechnoFeminism: Women and Technology in a Wireless World
In: Labour & industry: a journal of the social and economic relations of work, Volume 16, Issue 3, p. 7-20
ISSN: 2325-5676
Pleasure, Power and Technology: Some Tales of Gender, Engineering, and the Cooperative Workplace. Sally Hacker"Doing It the Hard Way": Investigations of Gender and Technology. Sally Hacker , Dorothy E. Smith , Susan M. Turner
In: Signs: journal of women in culture and society, Volume 17, Issue 2, p. 478-480
ISSN: 1545-6943