Computer procrastination is a complex problem that is under-researched. After identifying a number of key characteristics of it, we survey five existing fields of research that may contribute insights into this interdisciplinary problem, and demonstrate that none of these areas can provide satisfactory insight on their own. A philosophical framework for understanding computer use is introduced, and applied to a case study to demonstrate its potential in understanding the richness of computer procrastination. We then show how this framework can reveal the ways in which each of the existing fields is limited in its ability. The result is both an understanding of why existing research has not directly addressed this issue, and suggestions for a way forward for further research into computer procrastination.

As advances are made in artificial intelligence and machine learning, the distance between the activity of the designers/programmers of the system and the behavior of the system grows. This gap, between human action and the effects and consequences of that action, is not new, but emerging computing paradigms are presenting this challenge with a new urgency, and revealing the poverty of our tools for reasoning about what human responsibility means in a world with ubiquitous artificial agents. This paper proposes a new addition to our existing collection of frameworks for considering this issue.