Pressed for Time: Everyday Life in the Digital Age

Please join the Information Science department colloquium with guest, Judy Wajcman. Judy Wajcman is the Anthony Giddens Professor of Sociology. She joined the LSE as Head of the Sociology Department in 2009. She was previously Professor of Sociology in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. She has held posts in Cambridge, Edinburgh, Manchester, Sydney, Tokyo, Vienna, Warwick and Zurich. She was formerly a Centennial Professor at the LSE, a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Women in Business at London Business School. She was President of the Society for Social Studies of Science (2009-2011) and is currently a Research Associate of the Oxford Internet Institute. Her work has been translated into French, German, Greek, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish.

Title: Pressed for Time: Everyday Life in the Digital Age

Abstract: There is a widespread assumption that digital devices make us live too fast, a sense that time is scarce and that the pace of everyday life is accelerating beyond our control. The iconic image that abounds is that of the frenetic, technologically tethered, iPhone-addicted citizen. So what is the relationship between technology and time? Does technological acceleration inexorably hasten the pace of work and everyday life? This talk presents a sociological understanding of the paradoxes of time in a digital age. I will argue that there is no temporal logic inherent in technologies. As opposed to the technologically determinist approach, I will argue that it is our concrete social practices that generate those qualities of technologies that we usually consider as intrinsic and permanent. Technologies do play a central role in the constitution of time regimes, as our very experience of human action and the material world is mediated by technology. But, we make the world together with technology and so it is with time.