I’ve
been thinking about time lately. Especially about how it stretches and
collapses depending on the context. For the past several weeks, for instance, I’ve
been preoccupied with some (exciting) tasks related to my role as the novice “organizing
maven” with Resonance Women’s Chorus. So preoccupied that I’ve seemed unable to
muster any creative energy for anything else—like thinking up radio shows or
writing a blog. Even when I've had time, it's seemed like I haven't had any
energy. Like I’m out of neuron juice.
So,
it was against this background—thinking about how time is such a fluid,
non-concrete thing—that I came across this Smithsonian article about technologies and how they shape our lives. The article is actually about
"wearables"—that class of gadgets that put up-scale, cutting edge
technology in our clothing and wrist wear and eyeglasses. Like google glasses,
a wearable that takes the form of a small computer on your face. Or smart
watches, smaller versions of your smartphone that you wear on your wrist, so
you can check email or text your pals without that awkwardly rude habit of
pulling out your phone. And those discrete wristbands that track all manner of
physiological and exercise data as folks go about their daily lives.
Not
surprisingly, these wearable gadgets have their detractors. Do we really need
to check our email, texts, or tweets so often that we wear the screen on our
wrists? Can't it wait?! Or what does
this do to face-to-face social interaction? What about the people you're with? And just how far will we go in letting
technology rule our lives and consume our attention?
The
Smithsonian article points out that
this is actually an old debate. The first "wearable" technology to
elicit this sort of backlash was, it turns out, that lowly personal adornment,
the watch. Clocks of the larger sort had been around for centuries, announcing time
via church bells and town criers, before watches arrived. But time—that is,
clock time—didn't actually become so central to our lives until we could carry
it with us. Then, starting in the mid-19th century, the astonishing
convenience offered by watches—the ability to coordinate business transactions,
deliveries, or social activities—made them first handy, then important, then
essential. It’s not that time itself changed, but how we understood and used it
did. Because of this thing, this technology.
Changing
how we understand and use time matters.
So, not surprisingly, watches stirred a serious debate. Some folks argued that
we had become beholden to our technology, more concerned about being on time than about spending our time
well. Humanists suggested that, although watches may have made us more
efficient, to quote the Smithsonian
article, "perhaps total efficiency is a creepy goal for everyday life"—a
fairly common assessment among certain sub-cultures in our own society.
So,
as I was reading this article and thinking about time, into this mix came two
conversations with friends. One was with a friend who's working with me on
building the new Resonance website (one of the aforementioned tasks). We were
waiting for something to download, bemoaning how long it took. And then she
reminded us both (or maybe just me) how we used to wait for minutes for a
dial-up internet connection and then wait for minutes more before we could
actually do anything online. And now, if it takes seconds to download a complex
file, we feel like we're wasting time.
In
the second conversation, another friend and I were talking about the pleasure
of being in the wilderness (difficult as that is to find these days), away from
the usual markers of time, other than the cycles of the days and the rhythms of
our bodies. Our discussion brought to mind a story I once heard about how
differently time is understood by the Inupiat in northern Alaska, who spend
months without real darkness and months without notable sunlight. Time, for
them, isn't measured by day and night, as it is for those of us who distinguish
between daytime and nighttime activities. For the Inupiat, "time"
resides in the needs of the moment and of the season, not in a clock face,
which is indifferent to the sunlight and darkness, the frozen tundra and thawing
rivers that shape their lives.
So,
I thought, maybe there's a lesson here in watches and google glasses and the
relativity of time. Maybe the problem is that I’m thinking of time “spent” or
“lost” too much in terms of the technology of clocks and calendars and too
little in terms of the flow of my life. Maybe I’ve become so attached to the things that inform me of time’s passing
and have lost touch with the experience
of time flowing, as it does for the Inupiat. Wristwatches and smart phones are
just things. They may display time or social connection, but “time” doesn't
live on a watch face, and "social connection" doesn't live on a
smartphone screen.
So
maybe, I thought, this carries a lesson about my recent problem with time—i.e.,
the trouble I’ve had finding time and energy to do things that I really love doing—like
blogging and conjuring up radio shows. Because maybe it's not really about time
but about framing and relativity and multiple, shifting realities.
In
truth, the time available to me hasn't changed a lot. Yes, I have taken on a
new set of tasks. But I've taken on new and demanding roles before and not
dropped out of the blogosphere. Maybe the change isn’t in time but in the
context of time, its framing. Now, it's true that no newly minted hours have dropped
from the sky marked "Blog now!" But neither have I sought out the
time, created it, carved it from other things because I wanted to do this more
than that. Maybe I've been confusing finding
time to blog with making time to
blog. Which is simply the difference between asking whether I have time and
asking how I want to use my time.
Seen
in this light, the fact that I've been so busy on another task—which I'm
loving—isn't an obstacle to blogging. Instead, it's another expression of the
reasons that I blog—to stay engaged, to stay relevant, to keep my mind and my
voice alive. A temporary decline in blogging doesn't mean my space in the
blogosphere has spun off into a different universe. It'll still be around whenever
I create time to visit. And apparently, if this particular blog is any
indication, I can visit at will. This is actually a huge relief, because I love
doing this and was starting to worry about my extended absence.
It’s
a good reminder for me, this business about time and choice. Time is flexible,
relative, contextual—and very much a matter of perspective. A mind trip to northern
Alaska is a useful reminder of that.
© Janis
Bohan, 2010-2014. Use of this content is welcome with attribution and a link to
the post.
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