Is technology hurrying us along?
June 6, 2011
It amazes me that Davies penned Leisure in his time. If he noticed a lack of leisure back then, what would he have had to say now? We seem to be hurrying along like never before. Office hours are no longer fixed. Company executives routinely say that don’t want people looking for a mere 40 hour week. People expect replies to email within hours, if not minutes. We expect goods to be shipped to us in days, not weeks.
What is going on? Surely, the earth is not spinning any faster than it did before. Why are we spinning faster and faster in our little worlds? Is it the competition? Is it the relentless march (gallop?) of progress? Is it globalization? Or Capitalism?
Isn’t it a bit of all the above? A business can’t afford to go slow for fear of competition. Global workforces have no option but to collaborate across timezones. We carry our office whereever we go in the form of a laptop and a phone. This despite the notion that no one ever said on his deathbed, “wish I spent more time in office”.
We also feel hurried because we are spending more time communicating, commuting and travelling than ever before. More communication than actual work. This, coupled with a loss of individual agency (Crawford) results in constant unease. (and later disease). But all this isn’t necessarily the way it should be.
A lot of better technology is about improved effeciency. More output for the same input. Or, less input for the same output. Unfortunately, the logic of captialism and consumption-driven economies is based on the premise of never ending growth. This means, business owners and economists always choose the option of increasing output over that of reducing input. Labour is one such input. We could ask people to work less and still get the same output because of better technology. Instead we ask less people to work! This is dictated by the logic of improving efficiency/productivity.
As a typical private business owner, I’d want to reduce the cost and hassle of employing labour by employing better technology. I’d want to recover the captial expenditure as soon as possible by increased production/sales. So I won’t think of keeping output the same. But a state could behave this way. It can transfer the gains from increased technology into the hands of the workforce by handing it more leisure. Seldom does this happen.
What is more common is better technology leading to greater productivity and produce leading to a fall in prices leading to greater consumption leading to a bigger market, more players, competition, research, better technology and the cycle repeats. This is referred to as Jevon’s paradox.
While we may be limited in what we do about the big picture, we could very well try to extricate ourselves out of this loop. Typically we earn our as our career progresses and we consume more calling it the enjoyment of the fruit of our labour. But then we are now hooked to a certain level of consumption and condemned to circle the loop of higher income -> greater consumption -> greater need for income growth. Instead, if we limit consumption, we may have the opportunity to work less and enjoy greater leisure. note: greater leisure does not mean greater consumption although modern society would have us behave so. So yes there is an implicit assumption in all this talk of leisure. Namely, that we know how to enjoy leisure without necessarily ending up consuming more. (topic for a later post)
Could it just be that we are falsely alarmed? That it just feels like we have less leisure when in fact we do have more? Take the weekend trip for example. Thanks to aviation, faster cars, better roads etc, we take less time to reach there and get more time to enjoy. Better supporting infrastructure means that we are able to pack in more leisure activitities within the same amount of time. Catch a movie if you have a couple of free hours, read a book while in transit.
We have also shortened some activities that seem boring in their old long form. The leisurely 5-day test match gave way to the one dayer and now to 20-20. Traditional 4-day Indian weddings are now mostly a one and half day affair (is that bad?)
We also seem to be indulging in a greater variety of leisure activities than our ancestors. Just think of the various options under travel, sport, arts, infotainment and shopping.
We also perform a greater variety of chores. Pay so many sorts of bills unheard of before: internet, mobile phone, cable TV, credit card, loan repayments, other subscriptions etc. Does the mind suffer fatigue from having to keep track of all these commitments? Is our leisure punctuated by little alarms of “Have I taken care of this or that?”
Modern life can only afford us quantum leisure, two day weekends and annual two week vacations. Unless we are careful, even this can waste away in chores and worry.
