technologies of temporality

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Temporality is a culturally specific perception of time. One of its accentuated facets concerns social structures of time, that is “organizing and coordinating action with schedules and plans” (Bluedorn, 2002, 2). Expressions of such structures are calendars, the division between working days and weekends, habits of eating lunch or sleeping at certain hours. Considering Clark’s framework of symbiosis between humans and technologies, I wish to argue that temporality counts among opaque technologies and allows for agency of the user. Due to this “symbiotic relationship”(Clark, 2003, 24), the way humans relate to a certain organization of time shapes their individual experience of time.

Perception of time is, commonly, connected to society’s objective measured time, whereas experience of time is related to the individual’s lived time (During, 2016, 2). In order to depart from this binary, I regard experience of time as a practical dialogue with the manifestations of temporality in everyday life, which has a type of affect on humans and non-humans. Before wristwatches, humans organized their lives according to the movement of the sun and to seasonal change (Clark, 2003, 40). They visualized their labour in the harvest of their crops. Industrialization and easily accessible clocks created standard working hours, an obsession with productivity and the need for punctuality. Who could be punctual in 15th century without a watch? For industrialized societies punctuality was (and still is today) a cultural virtue, a character trait of the social individual. The transition from agricultural to modern temporality went alongside with a shift in how humans perceived themselves and the world and how they experienced time.

Temporality differs from culture to culture and it, also, differs between individuals (Bluedorn, 2020, 1-20). This renders temporality heterogeneous. However, clocks claim to precisely and objectively measure time (Clark, 2003, 40), and social structures of time attempt to organize action according to specific patterns applicable to all social individuals. It goes to show that temporality as structure appears to be homogeneous, whereas the daily practical dialogue with its manifestations is heterogeneous. Due to heterogeneity and within this practical dialogue appears the space of agency for the user.

I am used to going to bed at around 1 a.m.. Yet, when I feel tired, I can easily go to bed earlier and, when I happen to be at a party, I can choose to stay up late. I perceive my bedtime, which is an expression of temporality, as a habit that is flexible and adjustable to specific conditions. In this case, the technology of temporality does not resist control.

Let us think of an office, now, where the amount of work is organized in weekly deadlines and I, as an employee, am expected to complete x number of tasks by the end of the week. In this case, the weekly schedule is a more fixed tool that coordinates the work of several employees and serves productivity. This manifestation of temporality that affects a group of people and comes with an agreed upon responsibility (an amount of work is completed at certain time in exchange for money) is less flexible and adjustable. It seems that technologies of temporality that allow control call for a continuum that negotiates between agency and responsibility, between individual and collective coordination.

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