Technology saves time yet people feel more time-starved than ever
Evidence
Our society seems like the utempian city of Kairos in many ways, and yet it is also radically different. But why? The “tempo of life” has increased, and with it stress, hecticness, and lack of time. One hears such complaints from all sides, even though, just like in Kairos, in almost every sphere of social life there are enormous gains in time by means of technology. We don’t have any time although we’ve gained far more than we needed before. The aim of my book is to elucidate this monstrous paradox of the modern world. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 58
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: This is the book’s central ‘monstrous paradox’ — dense enough to sit with: gains in time through technology coexist with universal felt scarcity.
- SHARE: Targeted at anyone into econ/technology paradoxes — the point that time-saving tech has not yielded felt time abundance.
- XREF: connects to: Technology failed to deliver the predicted society of leisure and liberation from work — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1627; Faster transport and communication do not inherently cause more frequent use or time scarcity — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 234; Technical acceleration delivers abundant free time and banishes boredom — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 55 (+7 more)
Broader Connections
- Time-saving technology coexists with unprecedented felt time scarcity
#corroborates(0.98) - Time-saving technologies become the means of extracting more labor time
#expands(0.85) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 451 - Modern advocates long expected technology to deliver abundant free time
#complicates(0.80) - Time scarcity is cultural and psychological, not just measurable
#expands(0.80) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 268 - Technical acceleration contradicts rather than explains modern time scarcity and stress
#complicates(0.75) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 236 - Temporal impatience preceded and enabled technological acceleration, not vice versa
#complicates(0.72) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 182