er. Each of these choices reflect power dynamics and conflicting tensions. Desires for ‘presence’ or singular focus often conflict with obligations to be responsive and integrate ‘work’ and ‘life

How do we understand such mosaictime in terms of striving for balance? Temporal units are rarely single-purpose and their boundaries and dependencies are often implicit. What sociotemporal values should we be honoring? How can we account for time that fits on neither side of a scale? How might scholarship rethink balance or efficiency with different forms of accounting, with attention to institutions as well as individuals?

rid. The apparent equivalency of thesetime chunksmask the affective experiences and emotional intensities of lived temporality

Our rendering of porous time imagines a newperspective on time, in whichthe dominant temporal logic expandsbeyond ideals of control and mastery to include navigation(with or without conscious attention) of that which cannot be gridded or managed: the temporal trails, multiple interests, misaligned rhythms and expectations of others.

Taken together, an orientation to time as spectral, mosaic, rhythmic (dissonant),and obligatedsuggestsa possible alternate understanding of what time is and how it can work.An initial typology ofporous time honors the fluidity of time and its unexpected shifts; it also acknowledges novel integrations of time in everyday practice. Addressingthese alternate temporal realities allows us to build on CSCW’s legacy of related research to questionthereach and scope of thedominant temporal logic.

This social state obligatesindividuals to navigate a temporal web of moral and professional expectations, and accountabilities to others. These temporalobligations affect tempora

In contrast to the assumption oftime as linear, with ordered chunks progressing ina straightforward manner, people often negotiate time rhythmically, arranging timein patterns and tempos that do not always co-exist harmoniously.

In contrast to the assumption oftime as linear, with ordered chunks progressing ina straightforward manner, people often negotiate time rhythmically, arranging timein patterns and tempos that do not always co-exist harmoniously. In line with earlier CSCW findings [e.g., 4, 9, 45, 46], we term thisrhythmic time, which acknowledges both the rhythmic nature of temporal experience as well a potential disorderliness or ‘dissonance’ when temporal rhythms conflict.Like mosaic time, bringing dissonant rhythms into semi-alignment requires adaptation, work, and patience.

Thinking abouttime as mosaic raises numerous questionsabout:when the mosaic is and is not obvious; what forms of interaction (or tiles) are given priority in any one moment; what skillsareneeded to engage in mosaic time with more or less effort; and what the effects of mosaic timeareon concentration, stress, and affect. Mosaic time appears mostsuccessful when people engage in attention switching in order to enact multiple social roles at once.

By mosaic, we mean that time is often simultaneouslyinhabited by multiple types of interaction that are forced to form a coherent whole. Unlikeconcepts like multi-tasking(doing multiple tasks ‘at once’) or polychronicity(a reported preference for doing multiple tasks at once) [44], mosaic timerefers to the negotiated merging of multiple social spheres into a layered or fitted set of simultaneous interactions

. Notably, this lack of predictability had large social, rather than individual, implications—a finding that strongly echoes prior CSCW research [1, 4, 13, 15, 20, 22, 34, 35, 36, 38, 45, 46, 59]

In alignmentwith Reddy and Dourish’s concept of temporal trajectory [45], spectral time suggests that temporal experience is more than a grid of accountable blocks; multiple temporalities create flowsthat often defy both logical renderingand seamless manipulation

Our data reveal that not every temporal experience is easily articulated, planned for, measurable orable to be renderedinto a schedule.We call these temporal experiences spectral time,to capture howtime trailsor ghostsin ways that cannot always be expected, planned, or accounted for.Spectral time referencesmoments that do not lend themselves to scheduling(i.e. chunking), either because the act seems toomundane to justify articulation (i.e., getting dressed), because it is difficult to assess (i.e., travel time) or simply because it cannot be anticipated (i.e., creative phases).

bels. To date, we have found that our subjects have a minimal ability, and almost no language, to discuss the vagaries of time. In general, people attempt to negotiate their subjective experiences of time through the assumptions of the dominant temporal logic outlined a

In witnessing how people struggle toorient to the dominant temporal logic,we find it isinsufficient to encapsulate temporal experiences. Thus, we now theorizea set of expanded notions, an initial typology that we call ‘porous time’.

One of the ways that a temporal logic becomesvisible for analysis and critique is through the tensions that emerge when its assumptions and norms do not align with daily experience. In our collective fieldwork we have observedmultiple examples of mundane dailypractices coming into conflict withthe logic that time is, or should be, chunk-able, singular purpose, linear, and/or owned.These tensionshelp bring to the fore the extent of the dominant temporal logic and showcase the inadequacy of this narrow set of assumptions to fully describetemporal experiences.

Interrogating the temporal logic of circumscribed time raises three related sociotemporal concerns particularly relevant to CSCW: lived experience, visions of success, and power relations. We address each concernin relation to key theoretical works to showhow the insights presented here both point tothe limitations of the dominant temporal logic of circumscribed time and demandexpanding this logic to include those orientations suggested by porous time.

The temporal logic of circumscribed time falls short of describing, let alone organizing, the complex temporalities that govern American lives today. As an expansion of the dominant logic, porous time aims toprovide a more nuanced account of howtemporality shapes interactions among people, technologies, and the

We find and name an emergent set of temporal elements–spectral, mosaic,rhythmicand obligatedtime–which implicitly challenge the assumptions of the dominant logic. We call this collective set ‘porous time.’

Timing as a