On writtenkitten.net, where you are awarded with a picture of a cute kitten for each 100 words you write...
So.....I'm trying this out for the first time, but I must admit, I'm rather, uh, apprehensive. I don't get it. But I want to get my first kitten, so I'm going to keep chugging away until I have 100 words. You know what I'm interested in? Time. I think about time all the time. Probably because I have so little of it. So I'm going to write a very long paper about time. The paper is a dissertation, and I'm talking about an idea of time that I'm calling "temporal capital." See, we all have 24 hours in a day, but some people have more control or flexibility over what they do with their time than other. This is notwithstanding the need to sleep and eat and excrete waste (although there is a book about the time it takes to pee and poo).
I want another kitten. So I guess I'll keep writing. I've been working on a draft of a prospectus as of late. The quals process is supposed to come first, but I think I'm less anxious when I write.
But we should get back to temporal capital. So, while we all have the same amount of time in a day, we don't all have the same amount of temporal capital. The amount of temporal capital you have is based on your situation in life. 1) What kind of job do you have? 2) How many hours in the day do you spend at your job? 3) Does your boss breathe down your neck, or 4) can you discretely (or indiscreetly) check Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc during work hours? 5) Do you even have a personal device that you can go on social networking sites with? 6) Are you allowed to socialize during work? If the answer is yes to questions 4, 5, and 6, you have more temporal capital than someone who answers no to any of those.
But those questions only encompass your working day situation.
Then, there are some other questions that determine temporal capital, that also have to do with your activities online, especially outside of work. 7) How much free time do you have when you're not under the thumb of your boss? Like, when you are home from work? Or just, not at work? 8) Do you telecommute? If you're a telecommuter, you have pretty high temporal capital, since you can do really anything you want while you're "working" from home, like play video games in between sending out emails, or surf the net, or whatnot. You are not being physically monitored by anyone. Of course, even with telecommuting, there are times when you are interacting in real time with your boss, in which case, those are times when you are "temporally-bound." Like when you're on a telephone.
Or, how about these questions. 9) Do you spend a lot of time consuming media? 10) How about online? 11) Do you make videos that you post online? Or write fan fiction? Or do things for people in video games like Second Life or WoW? Do you dispense a lot of advice to people on forums, like how to play guitar, or how to program? Do you write guitar tabs and post them up for people to learn songs? If you said yes to any of these, you are in a pretty good position temporal capital-wise, especially if you said yes to 11. Saying yes to 11 means that you put in the time to CREATE something, and you didn't get anything out of it -- at least, not monetarily. So what DO you get out of this?
Temporal capital is important to think about, because it's your ability to exchange the time you invest into an activity for something. What are you getting out of spending time doing something? Well, obviously, if you're working, you are making money. You get money out of putting in the time to do work. How about when you spend that hour and a half having lunch with your friend? Well, in this case, you're investing time into maintaining a friendship. You're catching up with a friend, showing that her life matters to you, and ascertaining that your life matters to her, right? How about when you spend 2 hours at the MoMA, or 3-4 hours at the opera? Then you're consuming culture. You're making yourself more knowledgeable about art and music and culture. Maybe you come to appreciate a painting or an artist more than before? In any case, you have an experience that (hopefully) enriches your life. How about spending 4 years in medical school, then 4 years in residency? This is a temporal investment as well, and you need the temporal capital in order to do this, in addition to the economic capital (or, money, in simple terms - you know, money for tuition). By investing the time for education, you garner educational capital, that then can be turned around and used to get more temporal, economic, social, cultural, what have you, capital, and sometimes prestige. These are all interconnected, see?
Ok, I should read more, but that was a quick intro to temporal capital, at least, how I'm thinking about it. Part of my work now is to explicate this better, throw in people who have written about time before, make it all make sense, things like that. Oh, and come up with examples of how this plays out in the real world. Empirical evidence is always a great thing. Clearly, there is a lot more to this, and a lot more dimensions, but the kitten pictures are starting to repeat themselves, and I'm getting hungry. I might have to go in search of couscous.
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