Artificial timing mechanisms such as clocks and calendars have structured individual and social time for centuries, but computers (including AI systems) enable microsecond-level precision and can manipulate time in many ways, processing many instructions per second or artificially slowing to human timescales.
Amid mounting evidence that reliance on artificial rhythms can disrupt the body’s natural circadian cycles, the most artificial of all rhythms is numeric time, as embodied in and perpetuated by digital technologies. The clock on the face of every mobile phone is now in the hands of most adults in every country, meaning that global time standards, perpetuated by a few technology companies, pervade societies where their technologies are used, without consideration of local, individual, or natural rhythms of each culture. Research is therefore urgently needed on the impacts of digital time, resulting in recommendations for policy and industry as well as better ways to manage our time individually.
When people have problems with time, they tend to recalibrate themselves to clock time through ‘time management’ and self-discipline (Sharma 2014). Many perceive an acceleration of time, such that many people feel they cannot keep up (Wajcman 2015), with stress, overwork, and lack of sleep resulting in ‘burnout syndrome’ not to mention well-known impacts on safety and productivity. In 2019 the World Health Organisation classified shiftwork that disrupts circadian rhythms as a carcinogen. Then came Covid-19 and a questioning of working and living patterns. ‘Our temporal imaginary,’ according to Pschetz, Bastian and Bowler (2022: 261), ‘where time is seen as universal rather than infrastructural, is ripe for challenge.’
Algorithmic Cultures of Time (ACT) aims to be the first long-term, cross-cultural study of digital temporality in relation to individual and collective wellbeing, with ethnographic research into digital temporality in diverse cultures. This is then compared with the relatively monolithic culture of Silicon Valley technologists, in order to compare digital time, as embedded and perpetuated by AI and mobile technologies, with how other cultures align with, push back against, or go around digital time. This work has been conceived with with Prof Helga Schmid of FH Potsdam.
As a pilot study, I conducted 12 interviews with engineers and designers from Apple, Google, Meta and startup companies in Silicon Valley during 2023 and 2024. This pilot study has been written up for the journal Leonardo, to be published in Nov 2024 (a preprint copy can be found here).
Related work
Schmid, H. (2020), Uchronia: Designing Time, Basel: Birkhäuser.
Schmid, H. and Walker, K. (2022), ‘Algorithmic Cultures of Time’, Proc. Swiss Design Network Winter Research Summit, Zurich, 27-28 Oct 2022.
Schmid, H. and Walker, K. (2021a), ‘Anti-clockwise: Building a uchronian critical mass’, Art & the Public Sphere 9 (1+2): 39-61.
Schmid, H. and Walker, K. (2021b), ‘The atemporal event’, Journal for Artistic Research, https://doi.org/10.22501/jar.827680.
Walker, K. (In press), ‘The time machine stops’, in Majaca, A. and Pfeiffer, L. (Eds.) Incomputable Earth: Digital Technologies and the Anthropocene, London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Walker, K. (2024) ‘Giving time: Experiments outside clock time‘, Increasingly Unclear newsletter.
Walker, K. (2023) ‘Twelve Countries and Nine Earths: A visual ethnography of daily consumption practices across cultures’, Proceedings of RAI Film Festival 2023, Royal Anthropological Institute.
Walker, K. and Schmid, H. (2023) ‘Beyond runtime: Towards a postdigital temporality’, Reanimating Human-Machine Interaction, University of Antwerp, BE, 6 May 2023.
References
Pschetz, L, Bastian, M & Bowler, R 2022, ‘Revealing Social Infrastructures of Time’, in H Knox & G John (eds), Speaking for the Social: A Catalogue of Methods. Punctum Books.
Sharma, S. (2014) In the Meantime: Temporality and Cultural Politics. Duke University Press
Wajcman, J. (2015), Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism. Univ. of Chicago Press.
Photos: Kevin Walker
Project Leader
Kevin Walker
Status
Finished
Duration
05/2023 to 07/2024
Funder
Research England Development Fund
Value
€3848