This weeks reading was focused around the idea of time, work and how technology plays into the whole equation. It highlights the way the innovators of the time thought that technology would take off and predict the way it would be like in todays age. They also believed that we as humans would use technology in a way that made our lives easier and allowed us more of a work life balance by reducing the hours that we worked. However, Wajcman goes into great detail of how technology has in fact done the opposite of what we thought it may have.

The writer highlights how technology has sped up the way of life due to its accessibility, convenience and unrestricted time constraints. Upon completing this reading I can understand where the writer is coming from. The fact that technology was invented to make our lives easier which in a way it has as we have the ability to do so much more and enables us to multitask with precision but on the flip side it has blurred the lines between work and life time. We are now consuming and working with media in a supposed ‘down time’. Although we have not reduced in work hours we have allowed it to filter into our personal lives but this did raise a question in my own mind. Has the description of personal life changed? Although we consume media in our downtime a lot of it is aimed at social and easily/relaxed consumption such as Facebook and online shopping. This differs from the email which includes actual work. Overall, I enjoyed the reading but thought it did focus on the way we use technology for work and didn’t include enough the type of activites we consume.

Judy Wajcman, 2015, ‘Finding Time in a Digital Age’ in Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism, ch.7.