This week, the reading was titled ‘Finding Time in a Digital Age’.
Finally that understands my daily dilemma, and something I actually do say each and everyday.
“There aren’t enough hours in a day”
I really liked the spin on it, and how Barbara Adam was about to discuss and contest previous predictions in terms of technological use, and work/life balance.
In a society and age that is always go, go, go, it is near impossible to properly switch off from work and technology. You may be physically “switched off”, but mentally, more likely than not, you are thinking about work or keeping up socially.
The first thing I do after a long plane ride is take a moment to breathe and thank the lord that we have landed safely, and then immediately switch my phone off plane mode and look forward to the anticipated influx of messages and then do a massive catch-up scroll on instagram and facebook. All before reaching for my overheard luggage. How pathetic.
It is becoming more and more prominent, this addiction and attachment to technology. It’s foundations are phenomenal, but the repercussions…??
There is no such thing as family dinners any more. I see a growing number of families at my work, come out for dinner, hand the kids and ipad, then sit on the phone themselves.
Kids are getting anxiety when phones or tablets are taken away. They aren’t used as rewards like tv or games were for us. They are just there. Like water and air. And I will leave it there before I go on another daily rampage surrounding this issue.
So a few takeaway point or ideas from the reading that really stuck with me.
- “We wonder whether a faster life, replete with gizmos, is necessarily a better life when the trade off between time and money seems to turn every hour into rush hour”
- There is a complex dialectic whereby increased technical speed can simultaneously provoke new slowed timescapes”
- Technology reconfigures time” – I say everyday that I can’t find enough time because I’m so busy, YET I don’t question my hours spent without my full conscious, on facebook, instagram etc…
I also really liked how she mentioned the difference in generations with work, and how much more people are working these days and have a stronger attachment to work then their own personal leisure. More and more people stay late at work, even though they may not be paid, because in such a competitive world of the job market, I think people feel pressured to perform, therefore sacrificing the important things….