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gslife's review against another edition
2.0
I didn’t care for Pressed for Time. The reasons for this are a) it’s a sociology book and sociological language obfuscates a point beyond all layperson understanding; b) it has a few good points to say but can’t say them effectively. I guess that’s really the same reason.
Wajcman notes the invention of the telegraph as the first time information can travel faster than humans, which is a fascinating distinction. Past this point (and somewhat before this point) technology is generally defined as an innovation that makes an action faster. A train gets you to San Francisco faster than horses and trains demand a consolidation of time. You have to be on the platform at 8:19, or at least by the time the train departs at 8:21, or you won’t be going to San Francisco today.
I wish Wajcman would have delved more into a historical understanding of time. I can imagine that ancient peoples may have understood time as cyclical—stuff like “spring comes every year”. Day follows night, the moon waxes and wanes every 28 days, there is a time for planting and a time for harvesting. We tend to forget a lot of this stuff, especially in our unusual year where our typical delineations of time don’t apply.
The other thing I wish Wajcman had touched on more was what the acceleration of time is doing to our brains. In chapter 4, she details a study about time spent on “episodes” during a workday—essentially, time spent focusing on a single thing. 90% of these are 10 minutes or less. I’d like to read a Walter Ong-like book about the human capacity for concentration and focus in our modern era. It’s far more difficult than writing and orality, but worthy of discussion, I think. In everything from the four-minute segments of Sesame Street to the 30-second read of a tweet, our minds are constantly encouraged—if not demanded—to shift focus to something else. It becomes hard to sit down and focus on a book for an hour at a time.
Wajcman notes the invention of the telegraph as the first time information can travel faster than humans, which is a fascinating distinction. Past this point (and somewhat before this point) technology is generally defined as an innovation that makes an action faster. A train gets you to San Francisco faster than horses and trains demand a consolidation of time. You have to be on the platform at 8:19, or at least by the time the train departs at 8:21, or you won’t be going to San Francisco today.
I wish Wajcman would have delved more into a historical understanding of time. I can imagine that ancient peoples may have understood time as cyclical—stuff like “spring comes every year”. Day follows night, the moon waxes and wanes every 28 days, there is a time for planting and a time for harvesting. We tend to forget a lot of this stuff, especially in our unusual year where our typical delineations of time don’t apply.
The other thing I wish Wajcman had touched on more was what the acceleration of time is doing to our brains. In chapter 4, she details a study about time spent on “episodes” during a workday—essentially, time spent focusing on a single thing. 90% of these are 10 minutes or less. I’d like to read a Walter Ong-like book about the human capacity for concentration and focus in our modern era. It’s far more difficult than writing and orality, but worthy of discussion, I think. In everything from the four-minute segments of Sesame Street to the 30-second read of a tweet, our minds are constantly encouraged—if not demanded—to shift focus to something else. It becomes hard to sit down and focus on a book for an hour at a time.
tkadlec's review against another edition
4.0
This is a really interesting take on the topic of technology and its influence on the widespread feeling of not having enough time in the day. While most books on the topic place the blame directly on the technology itself, Wajcman digs much deeper. Early on, she points out that "temporal demands are not inherent to technology. They are built into our devices by all-too-human schemes and desires." In other words, to really understand how technology is impacting this feeling of busyness, we need to look beyond the technology itself and see what other factors are contributing.
While the writing is certainly quite dry (sort of par-the-course for a lot of University-based publishers), the ideas are fresh, nuanced and well thought out. I do think that referring to studies conducted prior to smartphones to establish how people use mobile phones was a little short-sighted. However, in the end I support the conclusion: "busyness is not a function of gadgetry but of the priorities and parameters we ourselves set."
While the writing is certainly quite dry (sort of par-the-course for a lot of University-based publishers), the ideas are fresh, nuanced and well thought out. I do think that referring to studies conducted prior to smartphones to establish how people use mobile phones was a little short-sighted. However, in the end I support the conclusion: "busyness is not a function of gadgetry but of the priorities and parameters we ourselves set."
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