Time-out/time-in: the dynamics of everyday experiential computing devices (original) (raw)
Related papers
Technology Use: Time-In or Time-Out
2010
This paper investigates evolving technology use by applying the distinction of time-in and time-out usage. This distinction describes how uses of technology within the life-world (ie the ordinary, the un-reflected) can be punctuated by time-out use when a user takes out time to consciously use or reflect on a medium. Data was collected through a longitudinal field study involving focus groups, interviews, and surveys from smart phone users during a six-month period. We have adopted a theoretically informed grounded approach to ...
Smartphones and Temporalities in Everyday Life: A Research Agenda
This paper situates time/space at the center of a research agenda from a psycho-social perspective. Crucially, smartphones are not just objects of enquiry but also are tools for research. This article also examines some important sociological works in time and space relationships, especially about communication and information technology (ICT) as well as empirical research on smartphone usage. Particularly relevant is Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of flow, as it has been adapted to information technology research. The proposed research agenda could help us understand how the users make judgements and actual decisions while using smartphone communication mobile application programs (apps), and the role of time perception (as it is related to the flow experience) in this process. In addition, we are interested in how the users negotiate social space. In the long-term we are seeking clues about how these judgements impact new configurations in the intersection of the offline/online in everyday life situations. The need for more empirical work from a psycho-social perspective will be argued as well as the necessity to incorporate quantitative as well as qualitative methodological approaches. Finally, a brief discussion evaluating research on smartphone use and its social impact is presented.
Smartphones and Temporalities in Everyday Life: A Research Agenda 1
2017
University of Puerto Rico This paper situates time/space at the center of a research agenda from a psycho-social perspective. Crucially, smartphones are not just objects of enquiry but also are tools for research. This article also examines some important sociological works in time and space relationships, especially about communication and information technology (ICT) as well as empirical research on smartphone usage. Particularly relevant is Csikszentmihalyi's theory of flow, as it has been adapted to information technology research. The proposed research agenda could help us understand how the users make judgements and actual decisions while using smartphone communication mobile application programs (apps), and the role of time perception (as it is related to the flow experience) in this process. In addition, we are interested in how the users negotiate social space. In the long-term we are seeking clues about how these judgements impact new configurations in the intersection...
ICTs and the decoupling of everyday activities, space and time
This article is an introduction to and reflection on the papers about ICTs and everyday life in this issue. It outlines the motivations for the focus on the decoupling of activities, physical space and chronological time and characterises this process and three of its modalities: activity fragmentation; multi-tasking; and personalised networking. The piece concludes by singling out some common elements that run through the set of papers and by identifying four avenues for future research.
Mobile Technosoma: some phenomenological reflections on itinerant media devices
Fibreculture, 2005
Portable media devices and 'wearable' communications technologies are becoming both increasingly ubiquitous and personalised, penetrating and transforming everyday cultural practices and spaces, and further disrupting distinctions between private and public, ready-to-hand and telepresent interaction, actual and virtual environments. Such devices range from the standard mobile phone-which itself is exceeding its role as a communication device-to highly sophisticated multimedia hybrids, personal digital assistants (PDAs), MP3 players, personal media centres and handheld networkable game consoles. This article presents some initial thoughts preempting a bigger research project on mobile connectivity and media, and their emergence as portable microworlds or pocket technospaces. The project en large aims to investigate the emerging socio-cultural and techno-corporeal effects of mobile interactive media, and how they are changing the ways people interact with both their digital interfaces and each other, altering the shape and meaning of community and spatial location, and our embodied and agentic placement within metropolitan, pedestrian (i.e. literally 'walkable') and urban environments. Much of the research and analysis in this project will focus on the mobile phone itself and its ostensible mutability into digital video camera, email and web interface, MP3 player, personal organiser, wireless broadband laptop-link, data storage and game device. In her study on mobile phone use in the global context, Sadie Plant observes that the mobile phone is often used as the primary means of Internet access (Plant, 2003).[1] The multi-functionality of the mobile phone, together with high-speed wireless third generation (3G) and Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) networks, and the adoption of Internet protocol technology, means that both mobile phone carriers and makers of handheld phones are poised to move beyond the voice market and into that of mobile media and data communication (strategy+business magazine, May 10, 2004). Moreover, today's advanced handsets 'are disrupting many industries simultaneously, including photography, music and games' (The Australian, September 7, 2004). Yet while the mobile phone is perhaps the most significant technology in the context of this project, and will be the focus of much of this article, it is part of a more general telematic trend towards wearable, handheld and pocket communications and entertainment media. Aside from the multimedia mobile phone, MP3 player and PDA, there exist a number of handheld interactive media devices including Nintendo's GameBoy and DS (dual screen), Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP), phonegame hybrids such as Nokia's N-Gage QD and Samsung's recent rival (the SCH-V450), and the Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB) handset which can receive TV broadcasts over the cellular network. The PSP, for example, has been launched as an all-in-one multimedia entertainment platform targeted for the adult market, with a USB 2.0 port for further expandability and connectivity to other devices, and the capability for wireless multiplayer interaction, network applications and data transfer. Thus, such handheld games and portable multimedia devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and should be examined both in terms of their potential merger with mobile phone functionality, and in their own right as nascent new media forms. Significantly, over the past two decades many of the distinctions between mass media and communications technologies have converged to become-as suggested at a recent symposium-"network media"
Time, technology, and the rhythms of daily life
2010 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society, 2010
In this paper we explore the implications of new technologies for performances in relation to work, family time, leisure and other everyday activities. Importantly, we mobilize our analysis around temporal patterns of daily life, rather than deploying cartographic metaphors and the 'boundaries' they produce. Through fieldwork informed by five families over a period of three years, we highlight the role that technology plays in constituting the rhythms of contemporary domestic life. We identify four particular rhythms and argue that digital technology is not homogenising time in the home, nor are daily activities demarked by boundaries. Rather, technologies are implicated in reordering the rhythms of domestic life. Attention to the presence of distinct temporal patterns is crucial to understanding everyday life, and to understanding the implications of digital technologies for everyday life.
Making Time, Configuring Life: smartphone synchronization and temporal orchestration
The claims made by the 'habit tracker' smartphone app Habitify indicate the continued cultural dominance of the notion that we are 'too busy'. In this case, the app promises to 'remove distraction and build a stronger routine', as part of the normative project of pursuing life's journey in which you need to 'know where you are going'. To get back on track, users need to classify and subject all their habits (reading a book, learning a language, doing yoga, etc.) to
The role of ICTs in everyday mobile lives
Journal of Transport Geography, 2010
Information and communications technologies (ICTs) are permeating modern lifestyles, shaping and colouring the undertaking of activities and travel. This article reports on a qualitative diary and interview study that explored the ways in which ICTs are being used by students aged 18–28 and part-time working mums. Study participants were selected on the basis of being ‘informal experts’ – reflecting their affinity for engagement with ICTs. Through an exploration of the interview findings, it becomes clear that relatively new technological devices and applications have quickly become embedded into the participants’ everyday travel and communications. Changes in social practice at the level of the individuals are not visibly dramatic, but at the same time, there is evidence of a cumulative influence of ICTs on their daily lives. Technologies are enabling the participants to better accommodate the uncertainties in activity and travel scheduling and yet also contributing to a ‘fluidity’ in time–space co-ordination of activities. They are also allowing the juggling of life roles in time and space leading to apparent fragmenting of activities. The article reflects upon the travel behaviour consequences of ICTs in their influence on everyday life.► ICTs are incidental rather than instrumental in shaping social practice and travel. ► ICTs contribute to and compensate for unpredictability in activity scheduling. ► Absorption of ICT-related practices into lifestyles prevails over creative behaviour.
Time & Society
Screen time once referred to television. Nowadays, it includes various screen sizes that are internet-enabled devices, and the pervasive smartphone. Regardless of what kind of screen is used, screen time comprises much of life itself. Being online and offline is now fairly blurred because of the ubiquitousness of technologies, Wi-Fi and screens. This paper puts forth the notion of ‘temporal digital control’ to explain the choice of when and why smartphones and other portable digital devices are used in today’s cultural milieu, and it theorizes the ‘why’ of contemporary smartphone use is so prominent suggesting it enables temporal digital control in an autonomous space. Coupled with the engrossment of such use, the article elaborates how gazing at a digital device comprises a temporal connection, alongside a disconnection from real life, and a possible inauthenticity that could affect well-being. Recently published literature on ‘waiting’ is included to help theorize why actors choos...