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Modern advocates long expected technology to deliver abundant free time

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tagsja-picks, seed, causal_relationships, singleton, xref, category/factual-claims
aliases@rosa_social_2013, loc. 57

4 min read

Modern advocates long expected technology to deliver abundant free time

Evidence

The grind became even more efficient with technology. BlackBerrys, email, chat, and Skype allowed workers to maximize every waking moment across time zones. Yet the all-encompassing work culture often led to burnout, a fate Tim Ferriss narrowly avoided. A Princeton graduate, Ferriss started a business selling unregulated cognitive supplements under the brand BrainQuicken but found himself consumed by the work, even during vacations. Desperate to reclaim his time, he outsourced tasks to overseas assistants in lower-wage countries. From this experience, he found his true calling: packaging up his wisdom to sell to others. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 317 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

If one follows the analysis suggested by Marx, then in the first place labor time directly constitutes a decisive, i.e., value-creating, factor of production, as time is transformed by work into value. … As Marx already noted, the capitalist economics of time therefore provides one explanation for the paradoxical link between the introduction of time-saving technologies and the consequent increasing scarcity of time resources, i.e., the heightening of the pace of life: “hence too the economic paradox that the most powerful instrument for reducing labor-time suffers a dialectical inversion and becomes the most unfailing means for turning the whole lifetime of the worker and his family into labor time at capital’s disposal for its own valorization.” — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 451 (#contradicts, via linked claim)

Web 2.0 narratives also frequently assume that simply introducing social technology to a community will result in greater participation and democracy, while disrupting those institutions and industries that do not adapt. The idea that the adoption of technology causes behavioral changes and social effects, regardless of context, is false. Historical analyses of science and technology show that this technological determinism is a fiction, because political, economic, and social differences in places and times affect the deployment and use of technology. The printing press and the Gutenberg Bible did not cause the Protestant Reformation. To say so would ignore factors such as the rise of anti-clericalism, the breakdown of feudalism, the rise of urbanism and the merchant class, and the Renaissance. Likewise, when we introduce new technologies into different social settings, they find different uses. American teenagers, Japanese teenagers, West African entrepreneurs, and Egyptian activists, for instance, demonstrate different patterns of mobile phone use, and understand the use of technology differently. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 59 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Time-saving technology coexists with unprecedented felt time scarcity; Technological determinism is a fiction; context shapes technology use — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 59; Time-saving technologies become the means of extracting more labor time — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 451 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

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