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Do Technologies have Time?

New Practices of Time and the Transformation of Communication Technologies

Daniela Ahrens

Anette Gerhard

This article explores the idea that certain temporalities of technology relate to temporalities embodied in different social practices. Our interest focuses on practices that do not seek a priori to domesticate time but rather seek to come to terms with it. Sociological analysis can no longer assume that technological artifacts incorporate functional time demands that determine unequivocally the uses of time. Instead it is concrete practices that generate those qualities of technology that we usually tend to grasp as `permanent' and `pregiven'. To what extent the complex inter-relationship of technology and time is revealed will be illustrated by three different types - the `surfer', the `sceptic' and the `gambler'. These figures show the complicated and multidimensional ways in which technology plays a part in the constitution of reality and assumes differing shapes in everyday life.

Key Words: communication technology • flexibility • new time practices • time prosperity

Time & Society, Vol. 8, No. 2-3, 293-308 (1999)
DOI: 10.1177/0961463X99008002005


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