It is said that the ontology of data resists slowness and also that the digital revolution promised a levelling of the playing field. Both theories are examined in this timely collection of chapters looking at time in the digital world. Since data has assumed such a paramount place in the modern neoliberal world, contemporary concepts of time have undergone radical transformation. By critically assessing the emerging initiatives of slowing down in the digital age, this book assesses the role of the digital in ultimately reinforcing neo-liberal temporalities. It shows that both "speed-up" and "slow down" imperatives often function as a form of biopolitical social control necessary to contemporary global capitalism. Problematic paradoxes emerge where a successful slow down and digital detox ultimately are only successful if the individual returns to the world as a more productive, labouring neoliberal subject. Is there another way? The chapters in this collection, broken up into three parts, ask that question. By critically assessing the emerging initiatives of 'slowing down' in the digital age, we assess the role of the digital in ultimately reinforcing neoliberal temporalities. The book approaches the idea of digital refusal as a practice of resistance against the political and the corporate logic of compulsory digitazation.
Introduction and Overview: Sketching the field and history of resisting dominant temporal regimes Part I: Making time for....Disconnection 1: Digital disengagement: A neo-liberal management of time?, Adi Kuntsman, Manchester Metropolitan University, U.K. & Esperanza Miyake, Manchester Metropolitan University, U.K. 2: Managing the flow of time: Disconnection through apps, Carla Ganito, Catholic University of Portugal, Portugal; Ana Jorge, Catholic University of Portugal, Portugal & Catia Ferreira, Catholic University of Portugal, Portugal 3: Disconnecting to save time: An empirical analysis of apps that disconnect users from the network, Alex Beattie, Victoria University Wellington, New Zealand 4: Slow time: Media dreams of the out-of-sync, Nathaniel Edward Bassett, University of Illinois at Chicago, U.S.A. 5: The new men in grey? Understanding digital media (non-)use by personal concepts of time, time-theft and temporal autonomy, Manuel Menke, University of Munich, Germany & Christian Schwarzenegger, University of Augsburg, Germany Part II: Making time for... Synchronization 6: Managing temporality when multicommunicating on Facebook, Hannah Ditchfield, University of Sheffield, U.K. & Peter Lunt, University of Leicester, U.K. 7: Making time, configuring life: Smartphone synchronization, coordination, and scheduling, Martin Hand, Queen's University, Canada 8: 'I'm prepping myself for that feeling in the future': Temporal mobility and multi-temporality with mobile media, Roxana Morosanu Firth, University of Cambridge, U.K., Sean Rintel, Microsoft Research, U.K. & Abigail Sellen, Microsoft Research, U.K. 9: Rhythms of smartphone use and rhythms of everyday life: What can we learn from smartphone logs?, Mireia Fernandez-Ardevol, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Spain & Andrea Rosales, IN3 - Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, Spain 10: The waves that sweep away: older ICT (non)-users' experiences of digitalization Magdalena Kania-Lundholm, Uppsala University, Sweden Part III: Making time for... Commodification 11: Continuously connected?: Young people, acceleration and practices of communicative demarcation, Cindy Roitsch, University of Bremen, Germany 12: Subjective recognition in a distracted world: The affordances of affective habits and temporal discontinuities, Tim Markham, Birkbeck, University of London, U.K. 13: Life-hacking quotidian temporality: Organising life with datafication of time and tasks, Mikolaj Dymek, Soedertoern University, Sweden 14: Critical media appropriation and time: Prolonging the useful life of media technologies, Sigrid Kannengiesser, University of Bremen, Germany
