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?

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.

Yet, thepromise of social control affordedby information and communication technologies belies the inadequacy ofthe dominant temporal logic.

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.

We call this prevailing temporal logic ‘circumscribed time.’ We use this label to highlight the underlying orientation to time as a resource that can, and should, be mastered. A circumscribed temporal logic infers that time should be harnessed into ‘productive’ capacity by approaching it as something that can be chunked, allocated to a single use, experienced linearly, and owned. In turn, the norms of society place the burden on individuals to manage and ‘balance’ time as a steward, optimizing this precious resource by way of control and active manipulation.

Finally,time is understood asaresource that is owned by an individual and thus needs to be managed and apportioned by that individual.Like personal income, time is a resource that the individual has both the burden and responsibility to manage well. This vision of time reflects an assumption there are ‘better’ or ‘worse’ ways to use, spend and save time and it is up to the individual to engage in practices of temporal ownership. Controlling time doesnot suggest thatan individual can speed up or slow down time, but rather,suggeststhat timecan be personally configured to meet individual aims or goals.

Thedominant temporal logicalso conceptualizestime aslinear. In other words,one chunk of time leads to another in a straight progression. While chunks of time can be manipulated and reordered in the course of a day (or week, or month), each chunk of time has a limited duration and each activity has a beginning and an end. An hour is an hour is an hour, and in the course of a day (or a lifetime) hours stack up like a vector, moving one forward in a straightforward progression.

Aligned with chunk-able time is the assumption that each chunk of time, or its particular gridded arrangement, is allocated to a single purpose.

appointment. Time chunksopen up the possibility for future-oriented temporal manipulation and valuation; they assumethat we are able to know, in advance, the duration of tasks and experiences.

The expectation that time is chunk-able is conditioned by an understanding that time exists in units (a second, a minute, a year) and that temporal units are equal–that can be swapped and exchanged with relative ease.

the nature of timethat reflect a dominant temporal logic –specifically that timeischunkable, single-purpose, linearandownable

A temporal logicoperatesat multiple levels. It is perpetuated insocialand cultural discourse; is embedded in institutional expectations and policies; drivesthe design and implementation of technologies;establishes resilient social norms; and provides a cache of normative, rational examples to draw on when individuals needtomake sense of their everyday engagements with time. When a tool like Microsoft Outlook is designed, presented, and justified in a marketing campaign it is both reflecting and perpetuating atemporal logic.

In particular, by temporal logicwe mean the socially legitimated, shared assumptions about time that areembedded in institutional and societal norms, discourses, material and technological processes, and shared ideologies. A temporal logic defines what is rational, normal and expected, andimbues a society with a definitionof what time is that directsindividuals in how they should operate in and through time.It provides an understanding of time that becomes so embedded that it seems to define reality.

What would it look like to more explicitly acknowledge power dynamics in information and communication technologies? In the tradition of critical and reflective design [50], how might CSCW scholarship think about designing technologies that ‘protect’ users from temporal obligations and render messiness and disorganization a possible way of engaging with time?

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.’

s ‘circumscribed time.’This logic, which is embedded in many popular tools, current scholarship,and especially in the discourse of time management, is characterized by assumptions that time is chunk-able(i.e. unitized and measurable), oriented to a single purpose, experiencedlinearly, and owned by individuals

temporal logic–a particular orientation to time that manifests in time-related social norms, moral judgments, daily practices, and technologies for scheduling and coordinat