Time hacking: How technologies mediate time

Fascinate Conference 2013, 2013

Within contemporary research discussion in interaction design, HCI and pervasive media the word time is commonly used to represent a wide variety of meanings, concepts and dimensions. Often this is without differentiation between contradictory interpretations of the simple word that belies complex relationships with our world and increasingly with media. The discussion or the experience of time can be traced to many sources, from Heraclitus and the river of time, Husserl’s phenomenological concepts and the Bergsonian interpretations of time to empirical measurements of the swinging pendulum of Captain Clock conflicting concepts of time are freely used to discuss media and interaction. As Chen and Boroditsky argue even the languages we speak influence how we conceive of and verbalise our ideas of time and the effects this has on our lives. This paper considers the issues of how to describe, compartmentalise and resolve the seemingly conflicting concepts of time using the consideration of time as a volume orthogonal to three dimensional space. Taking examples from digital culture, pervasive media, life logging and the quantified self the paper argues for a new analysis of concepts of time as discussed within contemporary digital media research and HCI practice

2021

The growing new digital world has changed our experience of time. Time today is not felt as irreversible and linear. We seem to be lost in an intensive now. We are mindlessly living in a now time. The moment has become intense and we are moving in all directions within the focal point of now. The arrival of the smart phone has amplified this experience of time. We have to make responses at the speed of a blink of an eye. This means it is difficult to offer a reflected or rationally considered responses to our condition. This is why this study proposes the adoption of reflexive responses through the cultivation of phronesis as well as embrace a habit that thinks what one does.

In this presentation, I summarized a paper, co-authored with Catherine Middleton, on the impact smartphone calendars are having on everyday life. I detail how smartphones are rapidly becoming a ubiquitous technology in Canada, yet despite this, we know little about time-reckoning technology in general, and almost nothing about digital calendars in particular. I then detail some of the findings from our study: the smartphone (and its calendar) are a "framework to operate in," according to one participant. Yet the calendar is often "invisible" to its users. Its "disappearance" signals its structuring force is largely escaping consciousness, yet it may play a role in our sense of "time poverty."

2017

University of Puerto Rico This paper situates time/space at the center of a research agenda from a psycho-social perspective. Crucially, smartphones are not just objects of enquiry but also are tools for research. This article also examines some important sociological works in time and space relationships, especially about communication and information technology (ICT) as well as empirical research on smartphone usage. Particularly relevant is Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow, as it has been adapted to information technology research. The proposed research agenda could help us understand how the users make judgements and actual decisions while using smartphone communication mobile application programs (apps), and the role of time perception (as it is related to the flow experience) in this process. In addition, we are interested in how the users negotiate social space. In the long-term we are seeking clues about how these judgements impact new configurations in the intersection...

This paper situates time/space at the center of a research agenda from a psycho-social perspective. Crucially, smartphones are not just objects of enquiry but also are tools for research. This article also examines some important sociological works in time and space relationships, especially about communication and information technology (ICT) as well as empirical research on smartphone usage. Particularly relevant is Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow, as it has been adapted to information technology research. The proposed research agenda could help us understand how the users make judgements and actual decisions while using smartphone communication mobile application programs (apps), and the role of time perception (as it is related to the flow experience) in this process. In addition, we are interested in how the users negotiate social space. In the long-term we are seeking clues about how these judgements impact new configurations in the intersection of the offline/online in everyday life situations. The need for more empirical work from a psycho-social perspective will be argued as well as the necessity to incorporate quantitative as well as qualitative methodological approaches. Finally, a brief discussion evaluating research on smartphone use and its social impact is presented.

2010 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society, 2010

In this paper we explore the implications of new technologies for performances in relation to work, family time, leisure and other everyday activities. Importantly, we mobilize our analysis around temporal patterns of daily life, rather than deploying cartographic metaphors and the 'boundaries' they produce. Through fieldwork informed by five families over a period of three years, we highlight the role that technology plays in constituting the rhythms of contemporary domestic life. We identify four particular rhythms and argue that digital technology is not homogenising time in the home, nor are daily activities demarked by boundaries. Rather, technologies are implicated in reordering the rhythms of domestic life. Attention to the presence of distinct temporal patterns is crucial to understanding everyday life, and to understanding the implications of digital technologies for everyday life.

The literature on agency neglects temporality; the literature on temporality neglects agency. This paper integrates these largely separate lines of research with the concept "time work," which is defined as individual or interpersonal efforts to create or suppress particular kinds of temporal experience. Semistructured, open-ended interviews were conducted with 398 subjects, who were asked to describe ways in which they engage in time work. Analytic induction yielded five themes: in descending order of prevalence, the subjects reported efforts to control or manipulate duration, frequency, sequence, timing, and allocation. The variety and prevalence of time work suggests the sovereignty of self-determination; for the most part, however, time work contributes to cultural reproduction.

Information Systems Journal, 2014

In everyday life, the role of computing devices alternates between the ordinary and mundane, the un-reflected and the extraordinary. To better understand the process through which the relationship between computing devices, users and context changes in everyday life, we apply a distinction between time-in and time-out use. Time-in technology use coincides and co-exists within the flow of ordinary life, while time-out use entails 'taking time out' of everyday life to accomplish a circumscribed task or engage reflectively in a particular experience. We apply a theoretically informed grounded approach to data collected through a longitudinal field study of smartphone users during a 6-month period. We analysed the data based on the concept of time-in/out and show the dynamics in the experience of a device that changes from the 'extraordinary' to the 'ordinary' over time. We also provide a vocabulary that describes this relationship as stages resembling the one between a couple, which evolves from an early love affair, to being married and to growing old together. By repurposing the time-in/out distinction from its origin in media studies, this paper marks a move that allows the distinction to be applied to understanding the use and dynamic becoming of computing devices over time.

Communications - Scientific letters of the University of Zilina, 2017

The Information Society, 2002

Time has recently become a central issue of discourse in social sciences and management studies. Partly due to the advent of the new millennium , scholars in social sciences and management studies have become fascinated with the notion of time and come to appreciate its complex nature. This newly awakened interest in time can be seen in the recent conferences and journal special issues on the topic. 1 In particular, much of this rising interest can be seen in an awareness of changing time in this "information age." Information technology, recently represented by the Internet, is "transforming time," the way time is perceived, used, managed, and disciplined. Although it is generally accepted that information technology is affecting temporal aspects of contemporary society, all too often the relationship between time and information technology fails to acknowledge the complexity of their relationship and is simply understood in terms of clichés such as "IT enables us to overcome barriers in time and space." While one key aspect of the effect of technology on time is that many things are getting faster, we believe the accompanying changes are much more fundamental. This special issue on time and information technology aims to provide this deeper understanding , and thereby to further research and discussion on time and information technology. In this editorial, we review why we believe that time and information technology should be a focal point in understanding current changes in organizations