Time, Technics and Society

What Should Time Be?

“…Time estimation decreases with the content of the activity, for example the estimation of queuing time, a disliked and empty activity; was found to exceed measured time in twothirds of cases [28]. However, when reflecting on an activity, time that was enjoyed is overestimated, whereas time that was seen as wasted is underestimated [74]. While such observations are used to place doubt on the accuracy of estimations of time duration when using the time diary method [18], more fundamental issues for marketing time-consuming activities arise.…”

Vehicular Homicide in France in the Equine Era

“…Similarly, Mukerjee (1943) points out that “the vast, intricate and elaborate division of labor” that characterizes industrialism “demands a meticulous coordination of activities according to anticipated and scheduled time-intervals” (p. 259). With urbanization and industrialization, he maintains, time is increasingly reckoned in seconds and spit seconds, and “the least delay or deviation from the scheduled time throws the system of transportation and technology out of gear.” Indeed, Mukerjee (1943) argues that an emphasis on speed and “meticulous punctuality” is “the backbone of industrialism.” In a treatment of the survival value of speed and punctuality, Mukerjee (1943) argues that a “change of habits is as much necessary for the urban individual’s survival as for the efficiency of the mechanized urban-industrial society” (p. 259-260). Nonetheless, he points to such unanticipated consequences of rigid scheduling and the increased tempo of urban-industrial life as misunderstandings, accidents, and even disasters that Elias would regard as decivilizing.…”

Fashionably late: Differentially costly signaling of sociometric status through a subtle act of being late

“…For example, a crowdsourced experiment that gathered data points from 803 people attending 26 social gatherings (from book clubs to dinner parties in Europe, the United States, and Canada) suggests that the majority of attendees arrive approximately one hour after the start of a party, and a quarter of the guests do not show up until an hour and a half after the party starts (Hickey, 2014). If punctuality is the normative behavior, as discussed in previous works (Durkheim, [1915] 1965; Mukerjee, 1943;Sorokin, 1943;Zerubavel, 1982), why do so many people engage in such nonconforming behavior when attending social events? Unlike what low punctuality suggests at the societal level (i.e., low educational attainment and economic output), low punctuality of people, as exhibited in their arrival time to social gatherings in particular, seems to suggest something positive.…”