Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Talk about temporal capital
...literally! Brookings Institute economist, Barry Bosworth, found a direct correlation between life expectancy and mid-career income. Absolute amount of time at one's disposal...
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Temporal capital based on medium and activity
Temporal capital may not just apply to individual's control over their time on some abstract, macro level (based on sociocultural differentiating features), but can also be isolated in the activity itself. In this case, temporal capital would apply to the individual's control, but within the context of a particular activity.
I outlined a useful example of this in the Gnovis article, between images and video/audio. This is worth repeating. You can look at the Mona Lisa for however long you wish - 3 seconds, 3 minutes, 3 hours, 3 days. The image will not change. Your understanding of the image may change, but how long you choose to consume that medium, that image, is up to you. The image yields higher levels of temporal capital in the process of its consumption. In contrast, take Beethoven's 5th symphony. The first 6 seconds yields 8 notes - G G G Eb, F F F D... From these notes, we know next to nothing about the piece itself (assuming one is hearing this very famous opening for the first time). You have no control over the experience itself -- it's controlled by the conductor, by the producer. You're along for the ride. You don't dictate when the piece ends, when this experience is over, or how long it lasts. Hence, listening to music or audio (without technologically fast-forwarding or whatnot) is an act of low temporal capital, or high temporal investment. What's key here seem to be the "revealing" of the content. With an image or a text, the content in its entirety is revealed before more detailed consumption. With the Mona Lisa, one can see the entirety of the piece even before one begins to appreciate the finer details of it. With Beethoven, however, every moment that passes reveals more of the piece to the audience. The audience does not consume the piece in its entirety in a moment, but the act of revealing the piece is quite out of the audience member's control.
Presence, and an expectation of response in communication, tends to be correlated negatively with temporal capital. On the phone and in person, the person you are having a conversation with expects a response immediately. In contrast, with email and IM and text, you don't have to respond right away, and that's ok. Moreover, the difference in medium - text (a non-temporally binding medium, like images or pictures) versus a temporally binding medium (video or audio) becomes a factor here as well. Although William Mitchell in his 1999 book E-topia, and Jack Petranker, in his article, "The Presence of Others" in a collection of articles about time both address presence as a synchronous way to be together, the different mediums that are present during these conversations are also important to think about. Of course, one can have an IM conversation, and if one goes AFK (away from keyboard), one will likely tell the conversation partner, "brb" (be right back) or something to that effect to manage expectations in the conversation. But, the micro act of reading the text will be variable between different people. Some people may read faster than others, some may read slower. With audio and video, you will invest as much time as it takes for the audio or video clip to play. No more, no less (unless artificially and technologically altered). The temporal investment in the consumption of the content is exact, unlike a text.
That's all for now. Next time, maybe we'll talk about transportation, or maybe we'll talk about temporal capital in the workplace. After all, while there are segments of time, like work, leisure, personal time, transit time, etc, it is easy to think of temporal capital as the amount of time when one is not at work, or "free" time. Well, apparently there are subcategories of "free" and leisure time, as Sebastian De Grazia and Robert Stebbins point out very eloquently. Hence, temporal capital cuts across and is applicable to all segments of time, and is variable given an individual's position in the relevant hierarchy, or an individual's circumstance.
I outlined a useful example of this in the Gnovis article, between images and video/audio. This is worth repeating. You can look at the Mona Lisa for however long you wish - 3 seconds, 3 minutes, 3 hours, 3 days. The image will not change. Your understanding of the image may change, but how long you choose to consume that medium, that image, is up to you. The image yields higher levels of temporal capital in the process of its consumption. In contrast, take Beethoven's 5th symphony. The first 6 seconds yields 8 notes - G G G Eb, F F F D... From these notes, we know next to nothing about the piece itself (assuming one is hearing this very famous opening for the first time). You have no control over the experience itself -- it's controlled by the conductor, by the producer. You're along for the ride. You don't dictate when the piece ends, when this experience is over, or how long it lasts. Hence, listening to music or audio (without technologically fast-forwarding or whatnot) is an act of low temporal capital, or high temporal investment. What's key here seem to be the "revealing" of the content. With an image or a text, the content in its entirety is revealed before more detailed consumption. With the Mona Lisa, one can see the entirety of the piece even before one begins to appreciate the finer details of it. With Beethoven, however, every moment that passes reveals more of the piece to the audience. The audience does not consume the piece in its entirety in a moment, but the act of revealing the piece is quite out of the audience member's control.
Presence, and an expectation of response in communication, tends to be correlated negatively with temporal capital. On the phone and in person, the person you are having a conversation with expects a response immediately. In contrast, with email and IM and text, you don't have to respond right away, and that's ok. Moreover, the difference in medium - text (a non-temporally binding medium, like images or pictures) versus a temporally binding medium (video or audio) becomes a factor here as well. Although William Mitchell in his 1999 book E-topia, and Jack Petranker, in his article, "The Presence of Others" in a collection of articles about time both address presence as a synchronous way to be together, the different mediums that are present during these conversations are also important to think about. Of course, one can have an IM conversation, and if one goes AFK (away from keyboard), one will likely tell the conversation partner, "brb" (be right back) or something to that effect to manage expectations in the conversation. But, the micro act of reading the text will be variable between different people. Some people may read faster than others, some may read slower. With audio and video, you will invest as much time as it takes for the audio or video clip to play. No more, no less (unless artificially and technologically altered). The temporal investment in the consumption of the content is exact, unlike a text.
That's all for now. Next time, maybe we'll talk about transportation, or maybe we'll talk about temporal capital in the workplace. After all, while there are segments of time, like work, leisure, personal time, transit time, etc, it is easy to think of temporal capital as the amount of time when one is not at work, or "free" time. Well, apparently there are subcategories of "free" and leisure time, as Sebastian De Grazia and Robert Stebbins point out very eloquently. Hence, temporal capital cuts across and is applicable to all segments of time, and is variable given an individual's position in the relevant hierarchy, or an individual's circumstance.
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