Table Of ContentPressed for Time
Pressed
for Time
The Acceleration of Life
in Digital Capitalism
Judy Wajcman
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
Judy Wajcman is the Anthony Giddens Professor of
Sociology at the London School of Economics, the author
of TechnoFeminism, and the coauthor of The Social
Shaping of Technology and The Politics of Working Life.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2015 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2015.
Printed in the United States of America
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 19647- 3 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 19650- 3 (e- book)
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226196503.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Wajcman, Judy, author.
Pressed for time : the acceleration of life in digital
capitalism / Judy Wajcman.
pages ; cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978- 0- 226- 19647- 3 (cloth : alk. paper)— ISBN 978- 0- 226- 19650- 3 (e- book)
1. Time— Sociological aspects. 2. Time pressure. 3. Time perception—S ocial aspects.
4. Information technology— Social aspects. 5. Technological innovations—S ocial
aspects. I. Title.
HM656.W35 2015
304.2′37— dc23
2014010889
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1 992 (Permanence of Paper)
Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Tools for Time 1
1 High- Speed Society: Is the Pace of Life Accelerating? 13
2 Time and Motion: Machines and the Making of Modernity 37
3 The Time- Pressure Paradox 61
4 Working with Constant Connectivity 87
5 Doing Domestic Time 111
6 Time to Talk: Intimacy through Technology 137
7 Finding Time in a Digital Age 163
Notes 185
Index 211
Preface
Many moons ago in the summer before I started university, I went on a
trip to Papua New Guinea, then still an Australian protectorate. I had a
pen friend from a coastal fishing village, an hour’s slow boat trip from
Lae. I remember this time vividly, as I felt like I had experienced what
was then thought of as “primitive communism,” a utopian natural state
of cooperation.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels use this concept to denote an early
form of society whose members collectively share all resources and in
which there is no hierarchy. I have since read “The Original Affluent
Society,” where anthropologist Marshall Sahlins describes how hunter-
gatherers, with very little of what we would call technology, spend most
of their time relaxing or in leisure pursuits, as they satisfied their needs
with a three- to five- hour working day.
In the village, I was plagued by mosquitoes but tropical fruit grew
abundantly for the picking, taro and sweet potato were cultivated in gar-
dens, and fish in the sea were plentiful. The living conditions were indeed
primitive, and I slept on a bench next to a row of girls in a women’s hut
with no privacy whatsoever. But there seemed to be all the time in the
world. Needless to say, there were no clocks!
I recall one day, as it was nearing Christmas, spending an entire day
making coconut milk. Young and ignorant as I was, I suggested that if
we altered the method by which the coconut flesh was squeezed in the
cloth, we could make the milk much faster and increase productivity. The
young people I was doing this with looked quizzical and told me that the
vii
Preface
making of the milk always took a whole day. They were not in a hurry.
They were not interested in speeding up the process—i t always had and
always would take a full day to make. Now, forty years later, as I write this
book on time pressure, I wonder why I so insisted that saving time should
be our overriding orientation, an unquestioned good. I have since learned
that the important things in life can’t be quantified, timed, measured, or
accelerated.
viii
Acknowledgments
Every book builds on an author’s previous research, and compiling ac-
knowledgments becomes more difficult with every new project. For de-
cades, many people have helped clarify my thinking about the subjects
treated here. I cannot begin to name them all. I owe a general debt to the
Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) for providing a stimulating cli-
mate for discussion, a wealth of excellent papers at its annual meetings,
and the most generous international community of scholars one could
hope for.
The London School of Economics and Political Science is the ideal
intellectual milieu for a social scientist. I have enjoyed fruitful exchanges
with my colleagues here and have learned from my bright graduate stu-
dents. My only regret is that because of Dave Frisby’s untimely death, I
could not enjoy more of his insights on Simmel. Several postgraduate
students helped with bibliographic work, but I would especially like to
acknowledge the fine editorial work of Des Fitzgerald. I am grateful to
Louise Fisher for making Sociology a convivial department, and to Paul
Gilroy for acquainting me with some aspects of digital culture.
While on sabbatical, I enjoyed the hospitality of several other univer-
sities. The Oxford Internet Institute has provided me with a warm home
and various affiliations over the last decade. I ran a workshop on time
and technology with Leslie Haddon early on in the conception of this
book. Thanks to Bill Dutton for initially welcoming me there. Thanks also
to Nuffield College, Oxford, where I had the pleasure of being a visiting
fellow for a term, and in particular to Duncan Gallie and Jonathan Ger-
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