I propose that we think a bout temporal relations with reference to a cluster of tem­poral features, each implicated in all the others but not nec­essarily of equal importance in each instance. We might call this cluster a timescape. The notion of 'scape' is important here as it indicates, first, that time is inseparable from space and matter, and second, that context matters.

This control clusrer of the five Cs of time, I have suggested, needs to be differentiated from both time tempering and transcendence, on the one hand, and time knowledge and know-how, on the other, since only in the control cluster is time objectified, externalized and con­structed to specific design principles.

Once time is disembedded, that is, extracted from process and product, it becomes an object and as such subiect to bounding, exchange and transformation.40 It is in this form that time is colonized,, as distinct from the time embedded in events and processes, which has been subject ito cultural efforts of transcendence.

It shows thar irrespective of the diverse temporal uses of time in the political, scientific and economic spheres, a unified clock time underpins the differences in ex­pressions. All other forms of temporal relations are refracted through chis created temporal form, or at least touched by its pervasive dominance

This industrial norm, as I suggested above, is fundamen­tally rooted in clock time and underpinned by naturalized assumptions about not just the capacity but also the need to commodify, compress and control time.

There are two sides to the colonization of time: the global imposition of a particular kind of time which is colonization with time, and the social incursion into time -past and future, night-time and seasons, for example -which is the colonization of time. Colonization with time therefore refers to the export of clock and commodified time as unquestioned and unquestionable standard, colonization of time to the sci­entific, technological and economic reach into time -most usually of distant others who have no say in the matter.

'Interconnectivity', Hassan suggests, 'is what gives the network time its power within culture and society.'32 It is worth quoting him at length here. Network time does not 'kill' or render 'timeless' other tem­poralities, clock-time or otherwise. The embedded nature of the 'multiplicity' of temporalities rbat pervade culture and society, and tbe deeply intractable relationship we have with rhe clock make this unlikely. Rather, the process is one of 'displacement'. Network time constitutes a new and powerful temporality that is beginning to displace, neutralise, sublimate and otherwise upset other temporal relationships in our work, home and leisure environments

This network time transforms social time into two allied but distinct forms: simultaneity and timelessness. 29 Simultaneity refers to the globally networked immediacy of communication provided by satellite television and the internee, which makes real-time exchanges possible irrespective of the distances involved. Timelessness, the more problematic concept, refers to the lay­ering of time, the mixing of tenses, the editing of sequences, the splicing together of unrelated events. It points co the general loss of chronological order and context-dependent rhythmicity. It combines eternity with ephemeralicy, real time with contextual change. Castells designates timeless time as 'the dominant temporality of our society'

In Castells's analysis, time is not merely compressed but processed, and it is the network rather than acceleration that constitutes the discontinuity in a context of continuing compress10n.

In a systematic analysis Castells contrasts the clock time of modernity with the network time of the network society.

Virilio suggests that we can read the history of modernity as a series of innovations iu ever-increasing time compression. He argues that, through the ages, the wealth and power associated with ownership of land was equally tied to the capacity to traverse it and to the speed at which this could be achieved.

From the above we can see that Virilio understands human history in terms of a race with time, of ever-increasing speeds that transcend humans' biological capacity. To theorize culture without the dromosphere, that is, the sphere of beings in motion, he therefore sugges,ts, misses the key point of cul­tural activity and the uniqueness of the industrial way of life. Without an explicit conceptualization of the contemporary dromosphere -or in my terms timescape -it is thus difficult to fully understand the human-technology-science-economy­equity-environmenr constellation. Moreover, it becomes impossible to appreciate that people are che weakest link when the time frames of action are compressed to zero and effects expand to eternity, when transmission and transplan­tation are instantaneous but their outcomes extend into an open future, when instantaneity and eternity are combined in a discordant fusion of all times.

the potential capacity of exterrirorial beings to be everywhere at once and nowhere in particular is inescapably tied to operators that are bounded by their embodied temporal limits of terrestrial existence and sequential information processing. The actual capacity for parallel absorption of knowledge, therefore, is hugely disap­pointing. Equally, the electronic capacity to be now-here and no-where has brought the body to a standstill.

The over­load of information, for example, is becoming so extensive that taking advantage of only the tiniest fraction of it not only blows apart the principle of instantaneity and 'real-time' communication, but also slows down operators to a pomt where they lose themselves in the eternity of electronically networked information.

The intensive {elec­tronic) present, Virilio suggests, is no longer part of chrono­logical time; we have to conceptualize it instead _as chronoscopic time. Real space, he argues, is making room for decontextualized 'real-time' processes and intensity takes over from extensity.11 This in turn has consequences and, similar to the time compression in transport, the compression in transmission has led to a range of paradoxical effects.

With respect to twentieth-century transmission Virilio has in mind the wireless telegraph, telephone, radio and subse­quent developments in computer and satellite communica­tion, which have once more changed the relationship between time and movement across space. Together, these innovations in transmission replaced succession and duration with seeming simultaneity and instantaneity. Duration has been compressed to zero and the present extended spatially to encircle the globe: it became a global present.

In economic production, time compression has been achieved by a number of means: by increasing the activity within the same unit of tifYle (through machines and the inten­sification of labour), reorganizing the sequence and ordering of activities (Tay!orism and Fordism), using peaks and troughs more effective!�· (flexibilization), and by eliminating all unproductive times from the process ( the just-in-time system of production, delivery and consumption).

A third paradox is only hinted at by Vmho, when he suggests that conflict is to be expected between democracy and dromocracy, the politics that take account of time and the speed of movement across space.20 It concerns the sociopolitical and socioeconomic relations associated with advances in transport speed, which affect dif­ferent indivi�uals, groups and classes of society in uneven ways.

Rifkin and Howard point out, 'the faster we speed up, the faster we degrade

In the light of this evidence, which is fully supported by transport research, 17 Virilio formulated the �romological law, which states that increase in speed mcreases the potential for gridlock.

the relations of time and their socio-environmental impacts, underlying assumptions and their material expres­sions, institutional processes and recipients' experiences, hidden agendas and power relations, unquestioned time pol­itics and 'othering' practices.9

While interest and credit had been known and documented since 3000 BC in Babylonia, it was not until the late Middle Ages that the Christian Church slowly and almost surrepti­tiously changed its position on usury,6 which set time free for trade to be allocated, sold and controlled. It is against this back�round that we have to read the extr�cts from Benjar1_1in Franklin's text of 1736, quoted at length m chapter 2, which contains the famous phrases 'Remember, that time is money ... Remember that money begets money.'7 Clock time, the created time to human design, was a precondition for this change in value and practice and formed the perfect partner to abstract, decontextualized money. From the Middle Ages, trade fairs existed where the trade in time became commonplace and calculations about future prices an integral part of commerce. In addition, internatio�al trade by sea required complex calculations about pote�ual profit and loss over long periods, given that trade ships might be away for as long as three years at a time. The time economy of interest and credit, moreover, fed directly into the monetary value of labour time, that is, paid employme�t as an integral part of the production of goo?s and serv_1ce�. However it was not until the French Revolunon that the md1-vidual (�eaning male) ownership of time became enshrined as a legal right

The task for social theory, therefore, is to render the invisible visible, show relations and intercon­nections, begin tbe process of questioning the unquestioned. Before we can identify some of these economic relations of temporal inequity, however, we first need to understand in what way the sin of usury was a barrier to the develop­ment of economic life as we know it today in industrial societies.

Marx's princi­pal point regarding the commodification of time was that an empty, abstract, quantifiable time that was applicable any­where, any time was a precondition for its use as an abstract exchange value on the one hand and for the commodification of labour and nature on the other. Only on the basis of this neutral measure could time take such a pivotal position in all economic exchange.

Clock time, the human creation, as I have shown, operates accord­ing to fundamentally different principles from rhe ones ��der­pinning the times of tbe cosmos, �ature and the spmt�al realm of eternity. It is a decontextuahzed empty ume that nes the measurement of motion to expression by number. Not change, creativity and process, but static states are given a number value in the temporal frames of calendars and clocks. The artifice rather than the processes of cosmos, nature and spirit, we need to appreciate, came to be the object of trade, control and colonization.

The creation of time to human design m an atemporal, decontextualized form, as outlined in chapter 5, was a nec­essary techno-material condition for the use of time by indus­trial societies as an abstract exchange value and for the acceleration, control and global imposition of time.

This is so because all cultures, ancient and modern, have established collective ways of relat­ing to the past and future, of synchronizing their activities, of coming to terms with finitude. How we extend ourselves into the past and future, how we pursue immortality and how we temporally manage, organize and regulate our social affairs, however, has been culturally, historically and contex­tually distinct. Each htstorical epoch with its new forms of socioeconomic expression is simultaneously restructuring its social relations of time.

the Reformation had a major role to play in the metamor­phosis of time from God's gift to commodified, comp�essed, colonized and controlled resource. These four Cs of mdus­trial time -comrnodification, compression, colonization and control -will be the focus in these pages, the fifth C of the creation of clock time having been discussed already in the previous chapter. I show their interdependence and id�ntify some of the socio-environmental impacts of those parttcular temporal relations.

The Quest for Time Control

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?

Leshed and Sengers’s research reminds us that calendars are not just tools for the management of time, but are also sites of identity work where people can project to themselves and others the density of their days and apparent ‘success’ at doing it all[26]. These seemingly innocuous artifacts can thus perpetuate deeper normative logics a

. When creating tools for schedulingandcoordination, it is crucial to provide ways for people to take into account not just the multiplicity of (potentially dissonant) rhythms [22, 46], but also the differential affective experiencesof time rendered by such rhythms.

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.

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

A close look at the ways that people continually navigate the expectations and rhythms of those around them reveals how much the rhetoric of time management and control, built on the assumption that one is a solo temporal agent,is a fiction.To be considered a success in various social arenas (either via internal assessment or external validation) means that individualsoften cannot choose whether or not to attend to certain temporal obligations.

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.

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.

According to Egger and Wagner, this orientation, which we refer to as circumscribed time,holds that”time is homogeneous, objective, measurable, and infinitely divisible” [11:249].It is this conceptualization of time—and its implications—that we analyze, critique, and try to reframein this paper

In previous temporalities research,scholars have drawn productively on Zerubavel’s similar concept of a sociotemporal order–an orientation to time that is shared amongst a social group and thusly produces coordinated rhythms and temporal alignments [15, 53]

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.

While some of this research has been aimed at building technologies to better support multi-tasking, other research has been critical, pointing out the negative consequences of distraction and task-switching [29]. A parallel line of thinking, called ‘presence bleed’ [16], articulates the way that multi-tasking and extended temporal boundaries blur individuals’ professional and personal identities as work bleeds into and throughout multiple spheres

CSCW has been investigating the relationship of time and work practically from its inception as a scholarly fiel

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

Cooperation and collaboration, both core activities within this domain, require attention to temporal patterns almost by definition, whether it be in the sequential ordering of interdependent tasks or the particular rhythms of subgroups. Despite this core focus, Steinhardt and Jackson [53] suggest that time continues tobe a fertile topic to explore within the field of CSCW. A richer understanding of the ways that time animates the multiple overlapping domains of contemporary professional and social—and now highly mobile—lives is needed. We respond to this call by returning to our field’s legacy of interrogating the design, use and resistance to temporal technologies such as calendars and scheduling softwareto showcase how certain logics of time pervade everyday sociotechnical practices, both inside the office and out.

One of the foremost contributions of Saussure to semiology was his claim that indi- vidual signs are always part of larger systemic wholes and that the meaning of any particular sign is essentially a function of the way in which it is related to other signs within the same system of signification. Finding out the meaning of any particular sign thus is possible only within the context of the entire symbolic system within which it is anchored, since it is necessary to first examine its relations to other signs wit

Along similar lines, while the sequential order in which we arrange items is usually indicative of their relative priority to us, the essence of such a symbolic relationship is by no means unproblematic

The degree of rigidity with which we schedule events is also indicative of their relative importance

The degree of firmness and finality with which we schedule events is usually also indicative of their relative i

Given the association of access to private time with intimacy, consider also the symbolic implications of ever-availability (Zerubavel 1981, p. 146). Admittedly becom- ing increasingly anachronistic with bureaucratization (Zerubavel 1981, pp. 153-166), the quality of being always accessible nevertheless remains a powerful symbol of a rapidly dying traditional social order and is still strongly cherished and admired within traditional domains of social life such a

venings and weekends. Given our association of exclusivity with intimacy (Simmel 1950, pp. 126-132; Zerubavel 1982b, pp. 100-102), we usually attach particular significance to contacts that take place at times that are socially defined as more private. Since people are generally expected to be less accessi- ble during such time periods, contacts that do occur within them tend to acquire a special meaning (Zerubavel 1

The negative connotations of long stretches of waiting time also become apparent once we examine the symbolic implications of the frequency at which social contacts occu

Shorter waiting time entails greater speed, the symbolic implications of which become quite apparent when one considers urgency a

Consider also the symbolic dimension of lead time (Hall 1959, p. 17). Essentially defining themselves as less accessible, the powerful and eminent usually also demand longer advance notice when being approached, occasionally making others wait longer before they can reach them for the mere sake of displaying the r

ard them. Being on time, on the other hand, is symboli- cally indicative of the respect we feel toward others, the extreme form of "ritual wait- ing" being an explicit symbolic display

cance. Waiting, for example (which, given the modern utilitarian approach to time [Zerubavel 1981, pp. 54-59], is generally regarded as an ordeal), is normally associated with worthlessness, and making others wait is often regarded as a symbolic display of deg

The amount of time we are willing to devote to the various relations in which we are involved and organizations to which we belong clearly reflects the level of our commit- ment to each of them

While only few of us may have been formally sensitized to it, we all seem to be tacitly aware of the way in which the amount of time we allow an event or activity to last is symbolically associated with the degree of significance we attach

Timing as a

article, time clearly constitutes a quasi-linguistic nonverbal system of signification that deserves the full attention of students of symbolic communication. As we have seen, both individuals and societies use this "language" in their "speech," essentially manipulating various dimensions of temporality as virtual semiotic codes through which they manage to convey critical social messages without ha

In short, the "language of time" identified here is by no means a merely intellectual phenomenon invented by sociology. Not only are we all aware of its existence, we also use it quite actively in our own "speech."7 The manipulative use of temporality is quite evident not only at the macrosocial level of societal politics, but also at the microsocial level of interpersonal relations. We employ the language of time quite strategically in our every- day "speech" and, quite often, what appears on the surface as entirely spontaneous behavior may actually involve a deliberate manipulation of temporal circu

Temporal contrasts can be used not only to substantiate abstract conceptual contrasts but also to help accentuate actual social and political ones (Zerubavel 1985, pp. 47, 71-7

It was Bergson (1960, pp. 98-128, 226-240) who first sensitized us to the qualitative dimension of time by noting how we often experience mathematically identical dura- tions as having quite different feeling tones. Ho

implies the virtual inseparability of semantics from syntactics, and, indeed, Saussure's followers are often quite appropriately called structuralists, as they view signs not so much in terms of their substantive "content" as in terms of the ways in which they are formally related to other signs (i.e., in terms of the structure of the symbolic system to which they belong). More specifically, they tend to focus particularly on the formal relation of opposition or contrast, because, "in any semiological system, whatever distin- guishes one sign from the oth

Given our tendency to reify social reality (Berger and Luckmann 1967, pp. 89-92, 134-136), we often regard the association of particular "signifiers" with particular "signifieds" (Saussure 1959, p. 67) as inevitable. Such symbolic relations, however, are essentially conventional and, quite often, arbitrary (Durkheim 1965, pp. 261-265; Mead 1934, pp. 117-125; Peirce 1932, Vol. 2, pp. 165-169; Saussure 1959, pp. 67

Culture, according to semiotics, is a communicational system consisting of various messages conveyed by and to members through the use of certain codes (Leach 1976; Lvi-Strauss 196

ticulate them verbally. Examining the symbolic relations between the temporal and the social within the contexts of both interpersonal relations and societal politics will reveal an intricate semiotic system that seems to operate at both the microsocial and m

Extending such endeavors to the domain of temporality, the present article attempts to develop a distinctively semiotic perspective on time. Aiming at laying out the rudi- mentary foundations of a semiotics of temporality, I shall examine the way people practically manipulate time as a virtual code through which they manage to convey many important social messages without having to a

Re-cent work by Reinecke et al. [39] is one example of how culture affects the ways in which people organise them-selves around time, and Adam [1] provides a useful account of different cultural metaphors of time, contrasting, for in-stance, timelines, which emphasise linear, directional movement, with cyclic representations, which represent rhythm and stability.

There is a long history of work within CSCW that might be adapted to this problem, ranging from an un-derstanding of how to support awareness [e.g. 41] to com-munity [e.g. 8] to communication across time zones [e.g. 49].

This point ties into the conceptualisation of time as collec-tive [29] and entangled [43]. The infrastructure that sup-ports a 24/7 society is one that relies on people as well as technologies, the conventional nine-to-five work rhythm, for example, being underpinned by people working shifts outside of these hours.

Notably, a practice-oriented treatment of digital time does open up avenues for research and design, one that resonates with Kuutti and Bannon’s [23] recent account of a practice perspective forming a new paradigm for HCI. They propose that a central issue in a practice-based research agenda is the need to develop the capability to transform practices through technology. Essential to this is understanding the role of computer artefacts in the emergence and transfor-mation of practices, and the possibilities for influencing these by changing the artefacts themselves.

Consequently, efforts to design for temporal experience must do more than simply build desirable temporal models into technologies.

How can we design for time as collective and interdependent, rather than individualised on the one hand, or explicitly scheduled on the other? What does it mean to position collective time not as something that is achieved when people come together, but as a set of relationships through which they are connected? Both Sharma and Mazmanian and Erickson raise this challenge while highlighting the difficulty in addressing it; neither offer a solution.

A shared context is im-plicit here, but the ways in which rhythms that bind people are shaped has been pulled into sharper focus by Jackson et al. [21]. Picking up on Orlikowski and Yates’ position, theyargue that “distributed collective practices not only have rhythms, but in some fundamental sense are rhythms” [p. 247]. Rhythms shape collective action but are also shaped by it, and efforts to build them and to bring them into alignment are an essential part of collaborative work.

Wilk [57] has considered how routines come to be cultivated, observing that every day we are presented with opportuni-ties to “naturalize something new”, and turn events into the “precedents” of new routines [p. 151]. He argues that the decisions that surround the adoption of these routines are part of the process of their cultivation, in which uncon-scious habits are brought forward into consciousness, re-flection and discourse. Cultivation can be active or passive (routines may be actively initiated, or forced upon us), and is governed by “tacit rules” that reveal “how often things must be discussed before they can be done without discus-sion, how often things have to be repeated by agreement or with supervision before they can become an accepted part of shared daily routine” [p. 151].

In their view, time is both independent of and dependent on behaviour: temporal structures are produced and reproduced through everyday action, and these in turn shape the rhythm and form of ongoing practices. Existing temporal structures become taken for granted and appear to be unbending, but time is also treated as malleable in that temporal structures can be changed and new ones estab-lished. The objective/subjective dichotomy is not inherent to the nature of time, but is a property of the particular tem-poral structures being enacted at a particular moment. They call for a focus on examining how temporal structures be-come established for a particular activity, and how they are sustained, reinforced or modified in practice.

Orlikowski and Yates [34], working in the field of organization studies, build on this point. They argue that time is plural; it can be experienced as objective, quantitative and independent of humankind, but also as subjective, situated and socially constructed.

Designing for an alternative temporal experience means understanding the ways in which multiple temporali-ties intersect, whether these frame a person’s working day, or allow a family to spend time together. While scheduling technologies do of course have a role to play here [see e.g. 31], many of the temporal structures that frame everyday life are not so much scheduled as unfold in a way that isunremarkable [54], or are so firmly established that they are no longer seen as alterable.

As noted by Zerubavel, “[t]ime is definitely one of the principles that can best allow us to establish and organ-ise priority in our lives as well as to symbolically display it” [59, p. 53].

In his analysis of the concept, Southerton [45] identifies quality time as a contemporary concern, and uses it alongside an analysis of diaries written in 1937 and 2000 to examine the impression that everyday life is speeding up. His findings lead him to argue that the feeling of time pressure that seems inherent to modern life is due to difficulties in coor-dinating practices, rather than the sheer density of events that need to be accomplished.

Trajectories and rhythms frame temporal horizons, de-scribed as knowledge of likely future activities that are drawn upon in the organization of current work. The three together bring orderliness to the working day, with the na-ture of temporal horizons dictating how flexibly work can be organised, and the urgency with which it needs to be carried out.

Yet, Grosse-Hering et al.’s findings make clear the need to ad-dress multiple temporalities, and prior research in CSCW has emphasised how understanding the ways in which dif-ferent temporal structures intersect is essential to designing for the felt experience of time.

The slow technology design agenda, first presented by Hallnäs and Redström [15], builds on the idea that as tech-nologies become more ubiquitous they must do more than prioritise the efficiency and productivity associated with task-completion. In contrast to fast technologies that savetime, the aim with slow technologies is to produce time, by serving as an incitement for reflection.

In these analyses of plasticity we see how, like clock time, digital time is not simply a property of technologies, nor does it straightforwardly emerge as a sociotechnical con-vention associated with their use. Rather, it has coevolved with broader shifts in the temporality of everyday life, such as the emergence of fractured rhythms, and the associated need to fill the gaps between them.

While Rattenbury et al. highlight web browsing as the per-fect plastic activity, the concept has also been applied to television watching by Irani et al. [20].

Plastic time is described as unanticipated, un-reflexive and fluid, as the “experience of temporal ‘scraps’, of gapsin the schedule”, and as “the negative space of busyness”[p. 233]. Plastic time flies under the radar, being unplanned and non-immersive, and associated with neither productivi-ty nor leisure. It is interruptible, but can also expand until some other activity presents itself.

Accord-ingly, and in the interests of exploring how broader shifts in time use have may coevolved with digital technologies, we now look to work by Rattenbury et al. [37], which relates the always-on quality of digital technologies to more gen-eral shifts in the organization of everyday life. These are changes that have resulted in a temporal experience that they describe as plastic, a temporal experience that is both shaped by and shapes the use of digital technologies.

The temporal experience is as much a product of the ways in which the technologies are used as it is a feature of their design. This points to how, just as has been argued for the case of clocks, digital technologies and practices have coevolved to underpin particular experiences of time.

hey create what Adam [1] calls the ‘expanded present’, by creating a relevant past and future that serves to enrich the moment.

Furthermore, and differentiating digital time from clock time, he suggests that a lack of adherence to chronological time is compounded by the fact that digital technologies connect with a flow of information that is al-ways and instantly available. He argues that continual change, which is bound up with web services such as social network sites, blogs and the news, is central to the experi-enced need for constant connectivity.

Research in HCI has illustrated how this notion of immedi-acy is upheld through the social conventions associated with technologies, as well as through their design. For ex-ample, Harper et al. [16] have described the lived experi-ence (or durée, following Bergson [6]) of Facebook as be-ing located firmly in the now, and have noted that this ne-cessitates a particular approach to the performance of iden-tity on the site by its users. They observe that interactions privilege the present and underpin an impression of events unfolding as they happen (even if this is not the case in terms of spatial time, or Bergson’s temps). Because of this, the performance of identity is one of the moment: users reported feeling it inappropriate to post old content, and were similarly aggrieved when others uploaded photos that surfaced ‘out of time’.

Research by narrative theorist Ruth Page [35] (a co-author on the above paper) considers fur-ther how Facebook users learn to interpret social media posts when reading the newsfeed. While the series of snip-pets of ‘breaking news’ posted by a variety of members of one’s social network do not offer a typical narrative, readers nevertheless draw their own story-like experience, using their knowledge of those posting content to build a backsto-ry, whilst imagining what may happen next.

A related, but richer, argument is made by the sociologist John Tomlinson [55], in his account of the ‘condition of immediacy’. Tomlinson argues that speed is central to modern cultural practices, experiences and values, and he focuses on immediacy in particular because it has three connotations.

Instead, technologies and the uses made of them are positioned as coevolving, with new temporal knowledges being gradually accumulated and integrated into the practices of everyday life.

Similarly, E. P. Thompson [53], in his paper on time disci-pline and industrial capitalism, suggests that a view of time as an interchangeable commodity came to replace what had been a more task-oriented approach to time use. Glennie and Thrift argue against this conceptualisation of clock time. They acknowledge that people’s consciousness of time was disrupted by the clock, but disagree with a notion of clock time that is “inauthentic, unnatural, omnipotent” [p. 50], that follows the metaphor of the production line, or that adopts a narrative of a world that is intensifying and speeding up.

For example, in his classic analysis of the his-tory of the machine, Lewis Mumford [30] notes that, “Abstract time became the new medium of existence. Or-ganic functions themselves were regulated by it: one ate, not upon feeling hungry, but when prompted by the clock: one slept, not when one was tired, but when the clock sanc-tioned it.” [p. 17]

For them, clock time is best understood as sets of practices, which are bound up with time-reckoning and time-keeping technologies, butwhich vary and are shaped by different times, places and communities. This view of clock time is quite different to that often de-picted in the literature, where it is positioned as abstract and mechanistic.

We then detail a position outlined by Glennie and Thrift [12], in which clock time is described as a series of practices rather than a concept created by new timekeep-ing technologies.

This leads us to argue that ‘redesigning’ the experience of time as me-diated by technologies necessitates a broader way of deal-ing with the rhythms and routines that frame their use. We consider what role technology might play in this, through shaping temporal infrastructures and shifting reified tem-poral patterns. We conclude by noting the considerable challenges that this entails, especially in view of recent ac-counts that position time as collective and entangled.

The motivation in writing this paper is to examine some of these ideas about time and technology. The notion that digi-tal technologies in themselves have a temporal quality that is problematic is questionable.

sregarded. Temporal Design attempts to counteract these effects by drawing attention to social practices of time. Time is a social process, tacitly defined through everyday practices. It is rehearsed, learned, designed, created, storied, and made. This aspect however is often overlooked not only by designers, but also by society in general. Designers can have a key role in unlocking the hegemonic narratives that restrict cultural understandings of time and in opening up new ways of making, living and thinking

As the original visions for Slow Design and Slow Technology suggest, the world is comprised of multiple temporal expressions, which play important roles in our lives, even if disregarded within dominant accounts of what ti

The documentation of routines invited the students to reflect on the multiplicity of practices that shape temporality inside the school community, making the social layering of time more perceptible. Far from being restricted to timetables, buzzers and timed tasks, school time is a fusion of personal times, rhythms and temporal force

While the Printer Clock focused on emphasising the embodied and situated nature of time, pointing to the mesh of activities and characters that come together to create time, the TimeBots drew attention to personal rhythms and how they played out within the context of the classroom

e students. The TimeBots interacted with each other on a different level, revealing the subjective timescap

4.3.3 TimeBotsWhile the Printer Clock focused on emphasising the embodied and situated nature of time, pointing to the mesh of activities and characters that come together to create time, the TimeBots drew attention to personal rhythms and how they played out within the context of the classroom. The aim was to challenge the idea that the world is in a state of constant acceleration by inviting children to reflect on the multiple speeds of their day. In contrast to the slow movement, which assumes acceleration as a universalised condition and attempts to counteract this condition by promoting opportunities to slow down, the intention here was to invite the students to explore the variant speeds at which they l

ast. Moving from a quantitative time to a qualitative one, the Printer Clock tells time through the activities of others and the variety of pictures reveals the multiplicity of rhythms within that

Temporal Design could thereforeinvolve:•Identifying dominant narratives, including the forces and infrastructures that sustain them or which they help to support;•Challenging these narratives, e.g. by revealing more nuanced expressions of time;•Drawing attention to alternative temporalities, their dynamics and significance;•Exposing networks of temporalities, so as to illustrate multiplicity and variety.The approach would bring several benefits:•Acknowledging that slow and fast rhythms co-occur and are often interdependent would challenge the assumption of universal acceleration,•Acknowledging that the times of some are more invested in than others, would enable challenges to temporal inequalities.•Acknowledging that the natural world has multiple rhythms would change the assumption that ittherefore provides a stable background for human-made ‘progress’(McKibben, 2008

LARISSA PSCHETZ, MICHELLE BASTIAN, CHRIS SPEED 6With this in mind we propose Temporal Design as a shift within design towards a pluralist perspectiveon time. Temporal Design attempts to identify and challenge expressions of dominant narratives of time, as it recognises that everyday rhythms are composed of multiple temporalities, whichare defined by both direct and indirect factors. It also seeks to empower alternative notions that are neglected by these narratives. It suggests that designers should start looking at time as something that emerges in relation to a complexity of cultural, social, economicand political forces.Temporal designers wouldtherefore observe time in the social context, investigating beyond narratives of a universal time and linear progression, and beyond simple dichotomies of fast and slow. This is not to simply negate dominant notions but acknowledging that they co-exist with several other expressions in all aspects of life. There is a multiplicity of temporalities latent in the world. Designers can help to create tools that disclose them, also revealing the intricacies of temporal relationships and negotiations that take place across individuals, groups, and institutions. They would then consider a network of times that accommodates the multiplicity of temporalities in the everyday, the natural world, and in intersections between these re

Despite a clear social motivation, the alternative approaches to time in design described above have been constrained by dominant narratives of time. Further they have often only considered time in terms of pace, direction and flow rather than the more complex ways that it is involved in social life (e.g. Gre

Thus in developing a theoretical framework which could support an understanding of time as multiple, heterogeneous and deeply entangled within various social formations (which may be discrete or overlapping), work in the social sciences, particularly anthropology and sociology, has proven to be more useful. Such approaches enable us to ask different questions about what time is and how it works. Rather than seeing time as a flow between past, present and future (whether this be linear or nonlinear), it becomes possible to ask how time operates as a system for social collaboration (Sorokin and Merton 1937), how it legitimates some and ‘manages’ others (Greenhouse 1996), or how it works within systems of exclusion (Fabian 1983). We thus move from time as flow to time as s

tries (Prado 2013). Here again, instead of looking at the present as a heterogeneous context, the present isconsidered as uniform and following a linear trajectory toward

(Dunne, 1999). The call has influenced movements such as Critical Design (Dunne and Raby, 2001), Design Fictions (Bleecker, 2009) and Design for Debate (Dunne and Raby, 200

Design has also taken a critical approach to time in its attempt to anticipate the impacts of present actions in the future, particularly those concerning the introduction of new technologies. This attitude may be generally identified in particular design projects but is most evident in speculative design movements such as Design Fictions, Critical Design and Design for Debate.Since design is often focused on yet-to-exist interventions in a given context, it is often said to be invariably future-oriented (e.g. in Dunne & Rab

evices. Similarly, Phoebe Sengers (2011) reflects on the way slower attitudes could be promoted by ‘‘making fewer choices, accessing less information, making productivity less central, keeping our lives less under formal control’’; she further considers how this attitude could be reflected in the design of communication technologies. Instead of reinforcing dichotomies, Fullerton (2010) and Sengers (2011) draw attention to practices that emphasise alternative expressions

The association of alternative approaches to time with a rejection of technology reinforces dichotomies that do not reflect the way people relate to artefacts and systems (Wajcman 2015). As a result, these proposals not only risk being interpreted as nostalgic or backward looking, but also leave little space for integrating more complex accounts of time (particularly those arising in the social sciences) or for discussing more nuanced rhythms, as well as more complex forces and consequences related to temporal decisions. As a result, instead of challenging dominant accounts of time, these proposals arguably reinforce the overarching narrative of universalised acceler

gs done. Accepting an invitation for reflection inherent in the design means on the other hand that time willappear, i.e. we open up for time presence” (Hallnas & Redstrom 2001). A slow technology would not disappear, but would make its

In Slow Technology, Hallnas & Redstrom (2001) advance the need for a form of design that emphasises reflection, the amplification of environments, and the use of technologies that a) amplify the presence of time; b) stretch time and extend processes; and c) reveal an expression of presenttime as slow-paced. Important here is the concept of “time presence”: “when we use a thing as an efficient tool, time disappears, i.e. we get things done. Accepting an invitation for reflection inherent in the design means on the other hand that time willappear, i.e. we open up for time presence” (Hallnas & Redstrom 2001). A slow technology would not disappear, but would make its

5.2.AWARENESS

Bypresenting information in a temporal context – in terms of, for example,trajectories, rhythms, and horizons, although potentially too according toother metaphors such as timelines – we can provide tools for more effectivelymaking sense of information and its consequences (Reddy et al., 2001)

Temporal horizons allow people to situate their work with respect to otheranticipated needs and activities. So, for instance, the proximity (immediacy)of the next activity affects the work currently being done (e.g., increases thesense of urgency). We characterize a temporal horizon ascloseordistantwhen describing a situation where people use their knowledge of what’scoming up – through their understanding of rhythms – to determine howquickly they must work to finish their current activities.

We characterize a temporal horizon asflexibleorinflexiblewhen describing an individual’s flexibility on when shehas to get her work done. A situation in which an individual has flexibilityconcerning when an activity has to be finished, we describe as a flexibletemporal horizon. If the person does not have much flexibility on when thework needs to done, we describe as an inflexible temporal horizon. Individ-uals who have less flexibility have to follow the actual ‘‘scheduling’’ of thework much more closely than individuals who have greater flexibility.

We characterize the manifesta-tions of rhythms in work practice as an emergence of a set oftemporalhorizons. People, in the course of their daily work, use their knowledge oflikely future activities to organize their current activities.

Temporal horizons reflect this broad temporal structure to theperson’s day. Some of the activities have fixed deadlines such as teachingclass at 10:00 am while others such as meeting students early in the after-noon are more vague. Temporal horizons point to how an individual’spersonnel view of her activities is temporally organized. Second, an indi-vidual doing her work often has to deal with multiple temporal horizons.Rarely, will she have only one activity to focus on.

The broad pattern of work in the unit is governed by sets of large-scale andfiner-grained rhythms

An analytical approach that highlights a temporalcharacteristic of work at a collective level is the concept oftemporal rhythms.The concept of rhythms directs our attention to the re-occurring patterns ofwork and how people use their knowledge of these re-occurring patternsduring their patient care and organizational activities in the unit.

There are major differences between the rhythms of the day shift and nightshift nurses (Zerubavel, 1979

The first period of intense activity is at the beginning of the shift.The nurse going off duty ‘‘gives report’’ to the incoming nurse taking over forher. During this information exchange, which usually lasts for 30 minutes,the incoming nurse must rapidly assimilate all the information about thepatient and the daily plan of care for the patient. Immediately after shiftreport, the nurse ensures that all the medications are available and checks onthe patient. The next intense period of activities follows the SICU teammorning rounds; the nurse implements or helps the physicians implement theplan of care decisions made during the rounds. The final intense period ofactivity occurs at the end of the shift.

The information contained in the information system is notsufficient in itself; the temporal context within which it can be placed,organized according to the trajectory, helps makes sense of it.

Sonnenwald, D.H. and L.G. Pierce (2000): Information Behavior in Dynamic Group WorkContexts: Interwoven Situational Awareness, Dense Social Networks and ContestedCollaboration in Command and Control.Information Processing and Management, vol. 36,pp. 461–479.

structured ‘‘timeline’’of activities, events, and occurrences – atemporal trajectory. We use this termto focus on the fact that illness trajectories have not only a spatial but also atemporal logic by which they proceed. The temporal aspect of a trajectoryconcerns the way in which it unfolds and the forces that move it to com-pletion.

Like Orlikowski and Yates, we are particularly concerned with the rela-tionship between temporality and practice, with the ways in which a nego-tiated temporal order arises within, and lends meaning to, individualactivities coordinated in concert. We believe that a detailed understanding ofthe relationship between temporality and practice provides a basis for both amore detailed analytic understanding of the temporality of collaboration, butalso for technological and representational advances in support of cooper-ative activity.

Dervin (1999) describes information as aninteractionally created artifact, encouraging us to turn our analytic attentionaway from problems of ‘‘access’’ and towards the ways in which informationis created in the course of collaborative work. An aspect of work that playsan important role in the creation and use of information is temporality.

Traditional approaches to information processing present ‘‘information’’as given, well-defined and stable.

One of the largest-scalestudies exploring this problem was undertaken at the University of Wash-ington (Fidel et al., 2000), where researchers investigated the information-seeking behavior of teams from two different companies, Boeing andMicrosoft (Poltrock et al., 2003). They found that each team had differentcommunication and information-seeking practices, and that current infor-mation systems are oriented toward individual rather than collaborativeinformation-seeking activities. In practice, though, information seeking isoften embedded in collaboration

In the SICU, we have been examining the experience oftemporality in the context of workers’ searching for, managing, and pro-viding information.

Attempts toincorporate a notion of temporality into the construction of collaborativetechnologies must, accordingly, provide for the social nature of the temporaltexture of everyday activity, and focus not simply on how activities are or-ganized in time, but how they are experienced in time.

When looking at collaborative settings, it is critical to recognize that theexperience of time also has a social component. Sorokin and Merton (1937)explore the notion of ‘‘social time,’’ observing that, while time proceedsunremittingly and uniformly, our experience of time reflects cultural and so-cial patterns that give it meaning.

The latter belongs to a more philosophical approach, where thefocus is on the experience of time, mostly through the observation that changes, such as aging or processing, occur.