Technologies of Time: Work and life in a temporal maelstrom

From clocks to networks, smart phones to wearable sensors, technologies have shaped how humans understand and manipulate time. This talk will explore how taken for granted assumptions about time, and how humans can and should engage with time, are inextricably linked to the technologies of the moment. Tools that regulate bodily action, direct the movement of goods and people, and shape communication practices are all technologies of time. Such technologies of time layer upon each other throughout history. Networks did not replace clocks but amalgamated into them, creating contorted conceptions of time as both linear and simultaneous, measurable and limitless. As humans trying to coordinate, work, and live in this temporal maelstrom, the question becomes not just how we organize in terms of technologies of time but what these technologies don’t measure, make visible, or actionable? 

Time, temporality and process research

Process researchers and thinkers seek to understand and explain the world in terms of activity, temporality and flow instead of focusing principally on correlations between variables. In other words, a consideration of time is inherent to a process perspective. In this presentation, I will review four different ontological perspectives on process (as evolution, as narrative, as activity, and as “withness”) and consider their implications for the consideration of time and temporality in empirical research, drawing on examples from the literature.