Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 3: two in our series on Future Shock, an example of
Speaker 3: that most interesting class of artifacts. A book of predictions
Speaker 3: about the future written more than fifty years ago, which
Speaker 3: is always fun. So if you haven't listened to part
Speaker 3: one yet, you should go back check that out first,
Speaker 3: but to briefly refresh here, Future Shock was an extremely influential,
Speaker 3: best selling futurology book published in the year nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: by an author named Alvin Toffler, and though only Alvin's
Speaker 3: name appears on the copy that I read, a lot
Speaker 3: of retrospective sources attribute these works to Alvin and Heidi Toffler.
Speaker 3: Alvin was Heidi's husband, and they were apparently major collaborators
Speaker 3: in developing ideas for the book, so a lot of
Speaker 3: retrospective looks at it credit both Alfin and Heidi, so
Speaker 3: we might say Toaffler or the Toafflers. Like most futurology books,
Speaker 3: Future Shock contains a lot of predictions about the future,
Speaker 3: some quite prescient, others that sound absolutely absurd with hindsight.
Speaker 3: But the real core of the book is not its
Speaker 3: specific predictions about what's going to happen twenty or thirty
Speaker 3: years down the road, but in its description of a
Speaker 3: mass psychological condition that the authors say is already evident
Speaker 3: at the time of the book's writing, brought on by
Speaker 3: the technological environment of what the Tafflers call super industrial society,
Speaker 3: and this would be the next technological leap forward after
Speaker 3: the Industrial Revolution. This is the technology environment beginning in
Speaker 3: roughly the mid twentieth century, and we got into more
Speaker 3: detail about this last time. But basically, according to the Tofflers,
Speaker 3: future shock is a way of experiencing a world in
Speaker 3: which technology, and downstream from that, economics and culture are
Speaker 3: all themselves changing and changing the world at an ever
Speaker 3: accelerating rate, and this leads to a variety of mass
Speaker 3: psychological distress similar to what has been called culture shock.
Speaker 3: Culture shock is when a person is plunged into a
Speaker 3: foreign culture and they don't understand the customs, don't know
Speaker 3: how to communicate, don't know how to interact with or
Speaker 3: make sense of the world around them, and suffer increased
Speaker 3: anxiety and other symptoms of psychological distress until they either
Speaker 3: become acclimated to the culture and figure out how to
Speaker 3: interact with it, or go home. Future Shock is like that,
Speaker 3: but it's for one's own culture and the way it
Speaker 3: is changed around us by technology. Except with the future Shock,
Speaker 3: you can't fix it by going home. The past is
Speaker 3: gone and the world is just going to keep changing,
Speaker 3: and it's just going to keep changing faster and faster.
Speaker 3: And this leads to, according to them, this feeling of
Speaker 3: widespread distress. People feel that there's something wrong about modern life.
Speaker 3: It's everything's too hurried. Something is just like something about
Speaker 3: the world is just bugging and harassing me, and I
Speaker 3: never feel safe for at home or like I can
Speaker 3: figure out what's going on. And of course, they say,
Speaker 3: of course, if this were true, it would have negative
Speaker 3: downstream effects on physical and mental health, which they talk
Speaker 3: about by creating this state of heightened stress and the
Speaker 3: other symptoms brought on by future shock. So we wanted
Speaker 3: to revisit this book and give it a look fifty
Speaker 3: years on. What do we think they were right about?
Speaker 3: What do we think they were wrong about? What are
Speaker 3: some of the interesting insights in the book. What are
Speaker 3: some of the funny things about the book. Last time
Speaker 3: I think we ended up. Do we get into the
Speaker 3: predictions about how children are going to have to learn
Speaker 3: how to pilot submarines in school?
Speaker 2: No, I don't think you brought up the submarines. This
Speaker 2: was definitely something that had been jettison from my brain
Speaker 2: since my my original reading of the book. Tell us
Speaker 2: about the submarines, Joe, I don't.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's just a bit. One of the big
Speaker 3: predictions for the future is that more and more of
Speaker 3: human life is going to take place on and underneath
Speaker 3: the ocean because there are a lot of natural resources
Speaker 3: to harvest there, which in a way is true. There
Speaker 3: there are a lot of natural resources there, but we
Speaker 3: haven't really shifted to ocean based cultures the way the
Speaker 3: book predicts. And in the chapter about education, I do
Speaker 3: recall there's a paragraph where it says something about how,
Speaker 3: you know, obviously children in the future it might be
Speaker 3: more advantageous for them to learn the skills of navigating
Speaker 3: a submarine environment and maybe maybe like piloting submarines and stuff.
Speaker 3: Then it will be to learn the learn the you know,
Speaker 3: the dead languages of the past or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it turns out the Sea Lab future hasn't
Speaker 2: really caught on like they thought it might.
Speaker 3: But like we said, there are other parts of the
Speaker 3: book where they offer insights that at least I thought
Speaker 3: we're pretty on target and do describe things that have
Speaker 3: happened in the last fifty years quite well. So maybe
Speaker 3: today we're going to start off by getting into some
Speaker 3: of the features of this future shock world that they
Speaker 3: describe and predict. And so the Toplers identify three big
Speaker 3: characteristics of super industrial society that they think will play
Speaker 3: a major role in inducing this state of future shock.
Speaker 3: Those elements are transience, novelty, and diversity. Basically, the world
Speaker 3: brought on by these changes in technology is going to
Speaker 3: be a world in which things just kind of situations
Speaker 3: arise more quickly and fade away more quickly without giving
Speaker 3: you time to adjust to them. That's the transience also,
Speaker 3: but there's a physical transience of things around us and
Speaker 3: of relationships between people. So there's a faster coming and
Speaker 3: going of the situations of life. That's transience. There is
Speaker 3: not which is obviously just like new things that you're
Speaker 3: not used to are going to be constantly coming into being,
Speaker 3: and you will have to get used to them somehow.
Speaker 3: And this includes everything from you know, technology and consumer products,
Speaker 3: to business and economic relationships, to things in culture like
Speaker 3: the family arrangements and social groups and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And then finally diversity. There will just be more and
Speaker 3: more different kinds of things in the world for you
Speaker 3: to keep track of and select between and try to understand.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so let's let's break it down a little
Speaker 2: bit here, Yeah, because it definitely helps to sort of
Speaker 2: single in on some of the key examples they bring up,
Speaker 2: because they ultimately bring up so many different examples and
Speaker 2: illustrations of what future shock is that it's it's easy
Speaker 2: to just sort of think of it as this big
Speaker 2: amorphous thing. So one of the key concepts that the
Speaker 2: toplers bring up a lot is that of over choice quote,
Speaker 2: the point at which the advantages of diversity and individualization
Speaker 2: are canceled by the complexity of the buyer's decision making process.
Speaker 2: So in this freedom becomes unfreedom as one suffers from
Speaker 2: a kind of hyper decision fatigue. And they also offer
Speaker 2: that there may be a social variation of over choice
Speaker 2: as well, as one suffers from an inability quote to
Speaker 2: create a sensible integrated and reasonably stable personal style. Now,
Speaker 2: I don't know about that last part personally.
Speaker 3: If I understand this idea right, it's that you know,
Speaker 3: when there's just like too much freedom and variety to
Speaker 3: choose from in how to style yourself, like to decide
Speaker 3: to like, hey, am I a biker or am I
Speaker 3: a hippie or am I a whatever, that it's actually
Speaker 3: kind of paralyzing to have all these options.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean, I would be very interested to
Speaker 2: hear from listeners out there as far as personal style
Speaker 2: is concerned. Here if you've ever felt over choice or
Speaker 2: something like over choice concerning your personal style, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think of my own experience and I look around
Speaker 2: in the world around me, and it seems like people, yeah,
Speaker 2: have more choices than ever, but they still seem to
Speaker 2: figure it out. If they're paralyzed by over choice regarding
Speaker 2: whether to be a biker or not, they don't seem
Speaker 2: to express it. I was just just saw somebody's social
Speaker 2: media post the other day and they had like a
Speaker 2: picture of their boyfriend there and they like were clearly
Speaker 2: decked out like a nineteen seventies biker, and I was like, well,
Speaker 2: they chose something and they're committing to it. They don't
Speaker 2: seem to be paralyzed by choice.
Speaker 3: Here a seventies biker, So this is a were wolves
Speaker 3: on wheels biker, not like a fifties biker.
Speaker 2: Total yeah, total seventies biker. Look. And you know because
Speaker 2: even now, like if you choose biker, you do get
Speaker 2: to choose which decade. Right, there are multiple choices, but
Speaker 2: not necessarily overchoice.
Speaker 3: Do I want to be like Roger Korman biker, like
Speaker 3: a Marlon Brando biker, or do I want to be
Speaker 3: a were wolf on.
Speaker 2: Wheels exactly psychomania? You have your choice.
Speaker 3: I think one of the big differences is that the
Speaker 3: earlier bikers bathe more.
Speaker 2: They do get grevier. In the seventies, everything get a
Speaker 2: little gravier, all right, now, as far as decision fatigue goes,
Speaker 2: this being related to this concept of over choice, A
Speaker 2: lot has been written about decision fatigue over the years.
Speaker 2: I know it was particularly hot as like a buzzword,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe ten to fifteen years ago. I don't
Speaker 2: think everything has been quite worked out concerning decision fatigue.
Speaker 2: I think we all know that feeling when we have
Speaker 2: trouble making yet another decision in the day, often late
Speaker 2: in the day or laid in a shopping trip, and
Speaker 2: we often wind up making questionable purchasing decisions, or that
Speaker 2: seems to be the case. That's the argument of decision fatigue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I haven't checked in on the empirical research on
Speaker 3: decision fatigue, but I can say from personal experience it
Speaker 3: seems to be a real thing. I mean that there
Speaker 3: is an increasingly sort of taxing cumulative effect on the
Speaker 3: mind of having to make decisions over and over, and
Speaker 3: your desire to continue making decisions definitely goes down, and
Speaker 3: the more you have had to do it, and probably
Speaker 3: also your ability to use your rational faculties when making
Speaker 3: those decisions goes down as part of that cumulative effect,
Speaker 3: which may be a reason that you know, like certain
Speaker 3: sales interactions are structured a certain way that like, you know,
Speaker 3: you've already had to make a bunch of decisions about
Speaker 3: investigating these cars and stuff, and then right at the end,
Speaker 3: when you are just like weary of this process, they
Speaker 3: hit you with upsells and stuff, and you're just like
Speaker 3: trying to get this done and get out the door.
Speaker 3: And so maybe you give in, even if it doesn't
Speaker 3: make sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it does seem to either be a reality
Speaker 2: or touch on a very firm reality when it comes
Speaker 2: to sales interactions, because it has become something that that
Speaker 2: various salespeople depend on now in terms of just over
Speaker 2: choice more generally, you know, as far as my own
Speaker 2: experiences go, I guess I have felt something like over
Speaker 2: choice at times. Given, especially when you're thinking about extensive
Speaker 2: digital catalogs of movies or books. There have been plenty
Speaker 2: of times where I have my e reader device out
Speaker 2: and I'm looking for something to read, and I end up,
Speaker 2: you know, just browsing a lot, downloading some samples, and
Speaker 2: then eventually I get sleepy and go to bed and
Speaker 2: I haven't actually read anything I've In the past, I
Speaker 2: had this experience with some of the big digital catalogs
Speaker 2: of movies online where I'll go on there and I'll
Speaker 2: start looking around at interesting looking films, looking at posters,
Speaker 2: looking at who's in them, and then seeing what are
Speaker 2: some like related films, and I end up spending like,
Speaker 2: you know, an hour even looking around at films, never
Speaker 2: pick out something to watch, get sleepy, go to bed. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and even Reno reached the point where I'm just like
Speaker 2: I just can't decide, and I realize I'm not going
Speaker 2: to make a decision and I just need to do
Speaker 2: something else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is an extremely common thing with browsing movie
Speaker 3: selections on streaming services. I've also really noticed this with music,
Speaker 3: and in a way, this makes me very sad. I
Speaker 3: cannot help but conclude my connection with music has become
Speaker 3: less deep and less fulfilling. I think as a result
Speaker 3: of streaming services just having available anything I want to
Speaker 3: listen to. I know I had a deeper and more
Speaker 3: enjoyable relationship with music when I had a more limited
Speaker 3: selection of music to choose from, and it was hard
Speaker 3: to find things I wanted to listen to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely remember back when I had to buy
Speaker 2: an album, even if it was a digital album, Like,
Speaker 2: all right, i've spent my ten, twelve bucks whatever it
Speaker 2: is for the week. I can't rationally buy another album
Speaker 2: this week or maybe even this month. So this is
Speaker 2: the one I'm going to listen to, and I'm either
Speaker 2: going to like it or I'm going to find reasons
Speaker 2: to like it. I'm going to rationalize this purchase. But nowadays, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can try anything, and you and I find myself
Speaker 2: off in giving the new material just little or no
Speaker 2: time to impress me, and it's got to really impress
Speaker 2: me otherwise I just you know, it stays tagged, stays
Speaker 2: in the list, but I might not listen to it
Speaker 2: again for another year.
Speaker 3: I hate that this is true about me, but I
Speaker 3: think it is now.
Speaker 2: I will say that with movies in particular, I find
Speaker 2: it I'm encountering it less these days for a couple
Speaker 2: of reasons. First, I think the monolithic selection that was
Speaker 2: originally provided by some of these big, big box streaming platforms,
Speaker 2: there's been a you know, there's been a fracturing, there's
Speaker 2: been a contraction of their offerings. And also we've seen
Speaker 2: the resurgence of physical media. So I find myself going
Speaker 2: to like Atlanta's own videodrome more often these days, looking
Speaker 2: around there, and you know, I can feel overwhelmed by
Speaker 2: the physical selection as well, But there's something different about
Speaker 2: that physical selection and knowing that, like, Okay, in maybe
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes, I need to leave here, and I'm either
Speaker 2: leaving empty handed or I'm leaving taking a chance on something.
Speaker 3: I think it may well be that your decision to
Speaker 3: go to videodrome and get the physical media. Might be
Speaker 3: kind of like the person who chooses says I'm a
Speaker 3: biker or I'm a hippie. You know, it's part of
Speaker 3: your personal style. You are in a way a movie nerd.
Speaker 3: You're a guy who goes to videodrome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I would be interested to hear from
Speaker 2: everyone else out there on this. Do you feel over
Speaker 2: choice or something like over choice or even just doing
Speaker 2: decision fatigue in any area of your life that relates
Speaker 2: to what we're talking about here, all right, now, the
Speaker 2: next big one, this is something that, of course, you know,
Speaker 2: we could easily talk at length about. And that's the
Speaker 2: idea that it's a world of accelerating change, The idea
Speaker 2: that you know, one just feels simply overwhelmed by the
Speaker 2: rate of change in the world social, technological et cetera,
Speaker 2: with of course, all the additional avenues of change brought
Speaker 2: on by both. So the rate of change outstrips our
Speaker 2: ability to adapt. And meanwhile, the book argues, old stabilizing
Speaker 2: institutions fall away or become less important, so the guide
Speaker 2: rail you've been following through this storm of change might
Speaker 2: suddenly just not be there. Anymore or it gets shakier.
Speaker 2: And and you know what am I supposed to do now?
Speaker 2: Because I've been depending upon this system to get me
Speaker 2: here Now, they write that humans are famously grad at adapting, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, that's like humanity's thing. We can adapt to
Speaker 2: all sorts of situations and events in life, and we've
Speaker 2: adapted a great deal as humans have have have taken
Speaker 2: over the world. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: they say, we're still organisms. We're still quote unquote biosystems,
Speaker 2: and quote all such systems operate within inexorable limits, they write,
Speaker 2: quote we might We may define future shock as the distress,
Speaker 2: both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of
Speaker 2: the human organism's physical adaptive system and it's decision making processes.
Speaker 2: Put more simply, future shock is the human response to
Speaker 2: over stimulation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and in some ways I see this as overlapping
Speaker 3: with what we were just talking about. So in a
Speaker 3: world where there is so much diversity of things to
Speaker 3: choose between, and so many decisions you can or have
Speaker 3: to make, that of course is a type of stress.
Speaker 3: But also increasingly accelerating changes in the culture around you
Speaker 3: force you to make new choices because they are they're
Speaker 3: essentially they're obliterating the stable habits that you establish for
Speaker 3: yourself that allow you to go through life without having
Speaker 3: to make too many choices. Habits in a way are
Speaker 3: just a way of alleviating choice stress, you know, like
Speaker 3: I don't have to think about what I'm going to
Speaker 3: do now I know what comes next. And we do
Speaker 3: this with all kinds of things in our lives. When
Speaker 3: the world around you is just changing faster and faster,
Speaker 3: it's harder for you to stick to habits, and thus
Speaker 3: it's just forcing new decision stresses onto you all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean even you know with technology obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: in user interfaces, even as they make changes with various
Speaker 2: interfaces to make it easier or supposedly make it easier,
Speaker 2: like you still then have to adapt to it. And
Speaker 2: I think we all encounter this all the time, like,
Speaker 2: oh now my phone screen is different. Now this interface
Speaker 2: is different, and maybe it's actually going to be better,
Speaker 2: but I still have to learn it all again, and
Speaker 2: there's no telling when this will happen again, and then
Speaker 2: I have to relearn it once more. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And one of the examples they talk about in the book.
Speaker 3: This kind of relates to their discussion of planned obsolescence,
Speaker 3: the fact that there are all kinds of consumer choices
Speaker 3: people are forced to make, essentially because the you know,
Speaker 3: manufacturers want to find a way to sell the new thing,
Speaker 3: even if the new thing isn't actually all that better.
Speaker 3: They've just they're trying to find ways to keep the
Speaker 3: economic activity churning, which is still forcing you to learn
Speaker 3: something new and make new decisions. Maybe maybe they can
Speaker 3: convince you that, oh no, this, actually this new thing
Speaker 3: is actually better. I do want the new thing, but
Speaker 3: is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it seems so rare these days. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is where this aligns up with a lot of truth.
Speaker 2: It's so rare these days where you find a product
Speaker 2: where it's like, oh, this works really well and I
Speaker 2: don't think I'll ever have to replace it. There's no
Speaker 2: way they could improve upon it. It seems almost bad
Speaker 2: for business when that's the case. You know, Like I
Speaker 2: have a coffee making device that I use all the time,
Speaker 2: and I did manage to break it once whilst bringing
Speaker 2: in on a flight, but otherwise it's simple, it doesn't break.
Speaker 2: There's nothing really new you get for it, except for filters,
Speaker 2: you know, or if you do lose or break apart.
Speaker 2: And at times I'll wonder, it's like, wow, what's the
Speaker 2: plan with this company? Like how can they you can
Speaker 2: only like expand usage of this so much? How are
Speaker 2: you going to sell additional ones to people who use
Speaker 2: the product?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well this ties into one of the next things
Speaker 3: that they talk about, which is which is transience and
Speaker 3: the economic or connsumer. One of the big economic or
Speaker 3: consumer manifestations of transience is just everything around you being
Speaker 3: more and more disposable, physically coming into your life for
Speaker 3: a shorter and shorter period of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so they talk about this at length in
Speaker 2: terms of products certainly, and you know, we've always heard
Speaker 2: bits of this like oh, the furniture of these days,
Speaker 2: this is not meant to last old days. We had the
Speaker 2: same furniture our whole lives and that was passed down
Speaker 2: to us from our grandparents, that sort of thing. But
Speaker 2: in the book they also apply it to things beyond products,
Speaker 2: like relationships, jobs, cultural institutions, and more. And I think
Speaker 2: a lot of these examples do ring with a certain
Speaker 2: amount of truth. For instance, people having to reskill, you know,
Speaker 2: to keep pace with changes in technology, you know, people
Speaker 2: having to change careers multiple times during the course of
Speaker 2: a lifetime and so forth.
Speaker 3: There was one part in this section of the book
Speaker 3: that I actually found quite interesting where it made me
Speaker 3: think about how there are different types of materialism of
Speaker 3: you know, one material goods, whereas you know, usually when
Speaker 3: you think about materialism, that's just like, oh, I want
Speaker 3: to buy something, I want to own something and have it.
Speaker 3: But there is a big difference. There's a big emotional
Speaker 3: and psychological difference between wanting to buy something that you
Speaker 3: will keep and form a relationship with versus wanting to
Speaker 3: buy something that you will use and then discard and
Speaker 3: get a different thing that feels different. And they use
Speaker 3: the example of dolls that like, traditionally, you know, a
Speaker 3: child might form a strong emotional connection with one doll
Speaker 3: and then keep that one doll over many, many years.
Speaker 3: And then they talk about the idea of toy companies
Speaker 3: trying to introduce new models of relationships with dolls where
Speaker 3: you would like, trade in your old doll, maybe trade
Speaker 3: in your old barbie to get a new one, to
Speaker 3: introduce this idea that you don't just have one doll
Speaker 3: and have a relationship with it for years, but you're
Speaker 3: always getting newer, better dolls.
Speaker 2: In a way, it's almost hard to process that because
Speaker 2: it's just how everything is now, you know. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's like, except for maybe the trade in factor, that
Speaker 2: actually sounds more sustainable than just having a drawer of
Speaker 2: old barbies with like their hair all missed up and
Speaker 2: no clothing on anymore.
Speaker 3: Well, I think, yeah, I think that the old barbie
Speaker 3: is what you do with them now is you make
Speaker 3: them look weird, right, you like cut their hair in
Speaker 3: strange ways and like draw on them and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sort of thing. But yeah, like I actually
Speaker 2: kind of like the idea of, oh, when you're done
Speaker 2: with this doll, with this toy, whatever the thing happens
Speaker 2: to be, let's trade that in, let's pass that on.
Speaker 2: I don't know, I become more of a minimalist with
Speaker 2: the sort of thing.
Speaker 3: So I guess while we're discussing things that I think
Speaker 3: the book does get largely right. One of the most
Speaker 3: interesting and persuasive sections of Future Shock, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: was the Toffler's discussion of how people use and understand
Speaker 3: their time and how that's changing due to the technological environment.
Speaker 3: For example, I thought there was a really interesting observation
Speaker 3: about how fundamental duration expectation is to the character of
Speaker 3: our lives. We are creatures that we have no choice
Speaker 3: but to live in time, and most situations that we
Speaker 3: are involved in or affected by, come with an unspoken
Speaker 3: expectation of a certain duration in time. We expect it
Speaker 3: to take a certain amount of time to make dinner,
Speaker 3: a certain amount of time to complete the workday, a
Speaker 3: certain amount of time to travel here or there. And
Speaker 3: also for longer situations. There are duration expectations for business
Speaker 3: and employment relationships, length of time at a particular residence,
Speaker 3: length of a friendship or another type of social relationship,
Speaker 3: length of a marriage, and sometimes we get these expectations wrong.
Speaker 3: You know, you can't always predict, but we have to
Speaker 3: be able to predict the duration of most of these
Speaker 3: situations with some reasonable degree of accuracy, or we cannot
Speaker 3: navigate our lives. Everything feels totally out of control. And
Speaker 3: I think the Tofflers advance a pretty convincing case that
Speaker 3: in general, in the twentieth century, especially the later twentieth
Speaker 3: century and superindustrial society, most situations in life are evolving
Speaker 3: to become shorter and change faster, and this acceleration is
Speaker 3: too fast for people to adjust their duration expectations accordingly,
Speaker 3: and this contributes to a widespread feeling that life is
Speaker 3: overwhelming and out of control and causes people to feel
Speaker 3: helpless and confused and alienated. And for the most part,
Speaker 3: I think this diagnosis is largely insightful and correct.
Speaker 2: This is fascinating. Yeah, getting into how we think about
Speaker 2: our time, how we estimate the time duration of things
Speaker 2: we are going to be involved in, and then yeah,
Speaker 2: I think we can all think of time just in
Speaker 2: our regular day to day where you get something wrong
Speaker 2: and yeah, before long, you maybe you don't feel just
Speaker 2: like overwhelming anxiety, but you do feel that feeling of well,
Speaker 2: there's a sense of narrowing, there's a sense of things
Speaker 2: slipping a little out of your control, moving faster than
Speaker 2: they should.
Speaker 3: So, because their comments on time use were one of
Speaker 3: the most interesting things about the book to me, I
Speaker 3: was wondering, Okay, has anybody looked at this empirically. Do
Speaker 3: we have like a retrospective that has tried to evaluate
Speaker 3: their claims and said how do they stack up? I
Speaker 3: actually did find a paper on this subject. So there
Speaker 3: was a paper published in the year twenty ten in
Speaker 3: the Journal of Future Studies by an author named Mika Pantsar,
Speaker 3: and it's called Future Shock, discussing the changing temporal architecture
Speaker 3: of daily Life. So, Mika Pantsar is an economist based
Speaker 3: at the University of Helsinki in Finland. And so this
Speaker 3: article assesses some of the claim that are put forward
Speaker 3: in Future Shock that feel correct, but are kind of
Speaker 3: presented in the book without rigorous empirical backing. They're just
Speaker 3: sort of asserted, specifically, claims about changes to the rhythms
Speaker 3: of everyday life. Pants Are writes quote. The main purpose
Speaker 3: of this article is to examine, in the light of
Speaker 3: time use research, to what extent and in what ways
Speaker 3: Tofler's claims about the quickening of life rhythms have come true.
Speaker 3: And pants Are begins by noting a seeming paradox in
Speaker 3: the research on time use. Since the time Future Shock
Speaker 3: was published in nineteen seventy, studies in Western countries have
Speaker 3: shown that, on average, the amount of leisure time in
Speaker 3: people's lives has slowly but steadily increased. I think it's
Speaker 3: not a huge difference, but there's been a gradual increase
Speaker 3: of a little bit with the exceptions of the United
Speaker 3: States in Great Britain, where it seems leisure time has
Speaker 3: actually somewhat decreased in the same period, at least up
Speaker 3: to the point of the studies pants are sites which
Speaker 3: are from nineteen ninety two in two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: can't be sure if the trend continues after that. But
Speaker 3: even in the rest of the Western countries where people
Speaker 3: have on average had a little bit more free time,
Speaker 3: surveys have found people report consistently increased feelings of hurriedness
Speaker 3: in their lives. So of course it makes sense why
Speaker 3: people would be feeling more hurried and stressed out in
Speaker 3: the US and Great Britain on average if people actually
Speaker 3: have a little bit less free time, But why would
Speaker 3: they be feeling that in countries where they have more
Speaker 3: free time than they did a generation ago? And the
Speaker 3: author argues that quote, the paradox of increased leisure time
Speaker 3: and feelings of hurriedness become understandable when the focus is
Speaker 3: shifted from the total amount of free time and duration
Speaker 3: of activities to qualitative changes in rhythms resulting from various
Speaker 3: interdependencies between mundane activities. So it may be not so
Speaker 3: much how much time we have, but how time is
Speaker 3: structured in our lives. So, first of all, just to
Speaker 3: review a few interesting empirical findings on people's time use
Speaker 3: in general. And again remember this was published in twenty ten,
Speaker 3: so findings coming in after that could change the picture somewhat.
Speaker 3: But first of all, as a note, it should be
Speaker 3: said that accounting for people's time use has presented more
Speaker 3: methodological difficulties than you might at first imagine. So time
Speaker 3: youse studies are often structured so that you sort your
Speaker 3: time use into episodes of activity that fit into various
Speaker 3: categories like paid work or housework or rest or free time.
Speaker 3: But studies found that there were some uses of time
Speaker 3: that were kind of difficult to sort into categories, and
Speaker 3: some events recognized as episodes by the subjects that researchers
Speaker 3: didn't anticipate, such as Swedish researchers in the nineties discovering
Speaker 3: that lots of people regard quote coming home as a
Speaker 3: unique time use episode in the day. Where does that
Speaker 3: fit in? You know, the time you're arriving at your
Speaker 3: house and getting settled. So this kind of research isn't
Speaker 3: as easy as it might sound. Still, there were a
Speaker 3: selection of interesting findings I wanted to mention. One was
Speaker 3: that international comparative studies in the seventies and early eighties
Speaker 3: found that time use varied a lot more based on
Speaker 3: the level of economic development than on the economic system.
Speaker 3: So people might have imagined, going, you know, your hypothesis
Speaker 3: might be that time use is very different on different
Speaker 3: sides of the Iron Curtain. But instead they found that
Speaker 3: superpower countries both communists and capitalists, had similar patterns of
Speaker 3: time use. People used their time much the same way
Speaker 3: as in the United States and the Soviet Union, but
Speaker 3: these patterns were much different than how people spent their
Speaker 3: time in less developed economies on both sides of the
Speaker 3: Cold War divide. And I think that would kind of
Speaker 3: stack up with the future shock claim that changes in
Speaker 3: technology filter down to changes in the rest of culture
Speaker 3: and in work and in family life, and this is
Speaker 3: largely what's guiding changes in how people experience time. Okay,
Speaker 3: there's also some research indicating that in Western countries time
Speaker 3: use is converging on more uniformity across different demographic categories.
Speaker 3: So like it used to be that men and women
Speaker 3: spend their time in more different ways, some studies apparently
Speaker 3: find that their patterns are coming closer together, though, and
Speaker 3: the same would be true of differences between social classes.
Speaker 3: Though even though there might be a trend in the
Speaker 3: direction of more similarity over time, differences remain and Pantsar
Speaker 3: also cites research finding that on average, men still had
Speaker 3: more free time than women, and the rich still had
Speaker 3: more than the poor, But overall time use studies of
Speaker 3: this sort revealed that changes between nineteen seventy and this
Speaker 3: paper in twenty ten are fairly modest in terms of
Speaker 3: overall time use, with one major exception one big change,
Speaker 3: which is TV. One of the biggest changes that can
Speaker 3: be tracked since the time of Future Shock is the
Speaker 3: average change in the amount of time daily spent watching television.
Speaker 3: People on average across all Western countries spend a lot
Speaker 3: of their free time watching TV. Quote in almost all
Speaker 3: Western countries, the share of television from the roughly six
Speaker 3: hours of daily free time is nowadays about a third,
Speaker 3: that is over two hours. Increasingly, TV watching serves as
Speaker 3: a kind of indicator of the flexibility of daily schedules,
Speaker 3: So when there is more free time, TV watching sort
Speaker 3: of expands to absorb that time, and when people have
Speaker 3: more things to do and they have less free time.
Speaker 3: TV watching is cut to make the time.
Speaker 2: I mean we do, or at least we have been
Speaker 2: living in an age of prestige television though, I mean
Speaker 2: the golden age of television with so many great shows.
Speaker 3: Surely that is what we're all spending our time on.
Speaker 3: We're watching the great shows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you get Yeah, you gotta make fun make time
Speaker 2: for the fun shows too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. But Pantzer also says that the inner, of course,
Speaker 3: is changing these patterns. Again, this was twenty ten, so
Speaker 3: it seems very likely that the Internet is increasingly filling
Speaker 3: time that used.
Speaker 2: To be devoted to TV.
Speaker 3: So maybe today people spend a lot of the time
Speaker 3: that used to be devoted to TV scrolling social media instead.
Speaker 2: Step up. I don't think so.
Speaker 3: However, these types of studies have real limits because, for example,
Speaker 3: they give an oversimplified picture of what each of these
Speaker 3: classes of activities really means. What about when you are
Speaker 3: doing work, like your paid job work on a laptop
Speaker 3: and you're texting with a friend and watching TV at
Speaker 3: the same time. What about when you're watching TV while
Speaker 3: you're cooking dinner for your family. What about while when
Speaker 3: you're like trying to relax and so you're trying to
Speaker 3: have rest or free time, but you're constantly being interrupted
Speaker 3: every few minutes by pings from work, email, or a
Speaker 3: crying baby that needs to be soothed back to sleep.
Speaker 3: How do you measure or categorize these types of time
Speaker 3: use and and understand their qualitative effect on life? So
Speaker 3: Pantsar says it's probably more important to look at quote
Speaker 3: the quality of time spent, and especially the inner structure
Speaker 3: of time use or the architecture of time. So the
Speaker 3: author here says that there are a lot of studies
Speaker 3: indicating that when people feel stress related to their time use,
Speaker 3: a lot of it seems to come from dissatisfaction with
Speaker 3: the way time is organized, rather than like just how
Speaker 3: much free time you do or don't have. People seem
Speaker 3: to feel more stressed when their time is spent in
Speaker 3: a way that is quote externally directed, being largely reactive
Speaker 3: to continual surprises. So I'm imagining you know when your
Speaker 3: time is spent in a way that you did not
Speaker 3: deliberately and autonomously choose, it's taken up by a bunch
Speaker 3: of unpredictable stimuli or tasks or bids for your attention,
Speaker 3: that you feel like you are obligated to react to
Speaker 3: and don't know what they're going to be ahead of
Speaker 3: time or when they're going to come in. This can
Speaker 3: of course be true of the work life, especially for
Speaker 3: certain professions, but also true of home life, especially for
Speaker 3: people responsible for home and childcare and time use. Organize
Speaker 3: this way creates a sense of urgency and sometimes a
Speaker 3: lack of autonomy, leading to feelings of hurriedness and stress.
Speaker 3: You know, for a hyper streamlined version of this, I
Speaker 3: know my own brain reacts exactly this way. It work
Speaker 3: like My sense of stress with work is almost perfectly
Speaker 3: correlated to like how many unexpected emails and extra kinds
Speaker 3: of tasks are coming in asking me to focus on
Speaker 3: something other than like my main work. And likewise at home,
Speaker 3: I feel a lot less stress about one big housework
Speaker 3: project that I chose to do, versus like a bunch
Speaker 3: of problems that keep popping up without warning that I
Speaker 3: have to do something about immediately.
Speaker 2: That's a problem about about home ownership. Though. All you
Speaker 2: do is you get all those little pop up problems
Speaker 2: one after the other in addition to the big ones
Speaker 2: that you know are coming.
Speaker 3: So Pantser calls this the number of quote action episodes
Speaker 3: that our daily time use is broken up into, and
Speaker 3: that the number of action episodes is likely to just
Speaker 3: keep increasing. The differences in these numbers already correlate with
Speaker 3: differences that we see in people's level of stress about
Speaker 3: time use.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: At present, women's time is divided into more pieces than men's,
Speaker 3: which perhaps explains why women are more stressed than men
Speaker 3: about their time use. This trend is strengthened by the
Speaker 3: fact that the overlapping of episodes has increased, especially with women.
Speaker 3: And so when we look at this idea about the
Speaker 3: quality or the inner structure of time use, we can
Speaker 3: find empirical research documenting several changes, and Pantser summarizes them
Speaker 3: into a table of five main trends. First of all,
Speaker 3: studies find that in the recent decades, time use is
Speaker 3: becoming more irregular. Just one example of time use becoming
Speaker 3: more irregular a shift on average from predictable established meal
Speaker 3: times to unpredictable ad hoc sessions of eating or snacking,
Speaker 3: which occur at different times and last for different amounts
Speaker 3: of time. I will say this is certainly true in
Speaker 3: my life. I think when I was younger, I ate
Speaker 3: at more predictable meal times. And I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: just that this is something personal, but certainly my eating
Speaker 3: schedule is way more irregular than it used to be.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, I don't know. I feel my mine's
Speaker 2: pretty We run a tight ship around here. Things are
Speaker 2: pretty solid. But that being said, with a child, sometimes
Speaker 2: it does take a long time to finish these meals.
Speaker 2: I don't know, they're still working out exactly why this
Speaker 2: is the case, but like, sometimes it's like a fifteen
Speaker 2: minute meal. Other times it's like, all right, we're about
Speaker 2: the inner hour two of dinner. We don't have time
Speaker 2: for this.
Speaker 3: Another example I thought of, I think people used to
Speaker 3: have more regularized news consumption sessions on average. On average,
Speaker 3: people used to have more likely like a standard time
Speaker 3: for reading the newspaper or watching the evening news. Now,
Speaker 3: following the news has become a more irregular, ad hoc
Speaker 3: activity that occurs at less predictable times throughout the day
Speaker 3: and fills in other bits of free time.
Speaker 2: Which is, for a lot, if not most, people, not
Speaker 2: a good model. I mean, sometimes your profession requires you
Speaker 2: to stay on the pulse of the news twenty four
Speaker 2: to seven. But I know for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: like one of a big bit of like therapeutic advice
Speaker 2: has been, hey, just pick a certain time to check
Speaker 2: the news, or find a way where you're getting your
Speaker 2: news via say a newsletter or something to that effect,
Speaker 2: so that it's not just you're just constantly dipping in,
Speaker 2: constantly diving into your news app feed or or worse,
Speaker 2: you know, your social media related news feed, whatever the
Speaker 2: case may be. Like setting aside a particular time and
Speaker 2: saying this is when I will get the news, and
Speaker 2: then I will get it again tomorrow.
Speaker 3: I am not a mental health professional, but I think
Speaker 3: that is really solid advice. I think confining your news
Speaker 3: consumption to regularize time periods rather than just like looking
Speaker 3: at the news in idle moments, is much better for
Speaker 3: your brain.
Speaker 2: I know in my experience, a big one has been
Speaker 2: cutting out this whole model where if I'm in the car,
Speaker 2: I'll probably have the news on and listen to the
Speaker 2: news for a bit. You know, there are a lot
Speaker 2: of great news programs on the radio and on public
Speaker 2: radio that I enjoy a lot, and I still may
Speaker 2: listen to them occasionally. But I felt myself evening out
Speaker 2: a bit when I started leaning more into like, okay,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm gonna listen to music, or I'm gonna put
Speaker 2: on an audio book. If I need something that's non musical,
Speaker 2: let's do an audiobook instead and set aside time for
Speaker 2: checking out on the news some other time.
Speaker 3: I think that's a very good strategy. Okay, so that's
Speaker 3: the first thing. Studies find time use becoming more irregular.
Speaker 3: Second empirical finding time use is becoming more fragmented. We
Speaker 3: are spending less unbroken time devoted to single activities. There
Speaker 3: is more frequent switching between different activities and intrusions of
Speaker 3: one activity on another. I think about myself, and again,
Speaker 3: it's totally possible this may have more to do with personal,
Speaker 3: individual life changes unique to me than changes in the
Speaker 3: broader culture. I don't know. But still I'm reminded of how,
Speaker 3: like ten fifteen years ago, I would really often, just
Speaker 3: frequently sit down and watch a whole movie. I would
Speaker 3: just watch it through from beginning to end, with no interruptions.
Speaker 3: And in recent year, I mean, obviously now I have
Speaker 3: a child, but even before I had a child, in
Speaker 3: recent years, I don't know, the past five years, that
Speaker 3: idea just seems ludicrous, like it's just a given, and
Speaker 3: that there will be interruptions of some sort to the
Speaker 3: movie watching experience. I'll need to break the viewing into
Speaker 3: multiple sittings. Maybe I'll need to go focus on something else.
Speaker 3: I'll get an email or text or something I need
Speaker 3: to respond to, or just something happens that prevents me
Speaker 3: from sitting down for two hours and paying attention to
Speaker 3: one thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes I found this sometimes in my own experience,
Speaker 2: And I certainly don't mind breaking up a movie watching
Speaker 2: one half one day and one half the next. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it's broken up a lot more than that. But at
Speaker 2: times where there have been times where I've watched an
Speaker 2: entire movie or the majority of a movie in one setting,
Speaker 2: And it's a notable experience when that happens, Like generally,
Speaker 2: it's a testament to how good the movie is that
Speaker 2: it was able to like suck me in enough that
Speaker 2: I was able to not get distracted by various other tasks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels. It feels significant when it happens now.
Speaker 3: And the author of this paper relates this finding about
Speaker 3: time use becoming increasingly fragmented to studies comparing something comparing
Speaker 3: a couple of concepts called casual leisure versus serious leisure,
Speaker 3: and the idea here is that they're actually different types
Speaker 3: of leisure activities. There's casual leisure, which does not require
Speaker 3: serious concentration, can be easily interrupted, broken into pieces, and
Speaker 3: there's serious leisure, which requires concentration and has some hierarchical elements.
Speaker 3: In my own case, I think of like scrolling junk
Speaker 3: on my phone as casual leisure versus playing and recording
Speaker 3: music as serious leisure. I get much much more enjoyment
Speaker 3: and fulfillment from the latter. I would really rather be
Speaker 3: spending my time doing that, but I often default to
Speaker 3: the former, to the scrolling, because I know that I
Speaker 3: only have a short amount of free time and I
Speaker 3: expect to be interrupted by something, so I really can't
Speaker 3: get into the committed concentration state necessary for music.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I also find this in my own life.
Speaker 2: Like for me, casual leisure is often something like painting
Speaker 2: a little bit on some minis, which are often on
Speaker 2: a like a tray next to my work computer. So
Speaker 2: I'll find on a good day, I may find, you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of moments to sort of switch seats and
Speaker 2: do a little bit of painting and then clean everything up,
Speaker 2: let that dry go back to what I was doing,
Speaker 2: you know, And I like that. I like having a
Speaker 2: casual leisure activity that I can dip in and out of.
Speaker 2: It certainly fits in with like a you know, busy lifestyle,
Speaker 2: but yeah, that serious leisure when you can is sometimes
Speaker 2: the kind of thing you you kind of fantasize about,
Speaker 2: like you imagine yourself locked in a room with your
Speaker 2: casual leisure activities where you can only do that one thing. Goodness.
Speaker 2: I think I think of things like, you know, reading
Speaker 2: a good book on a beach being in a way
Speaker 2: kind of a serious leisure activity where it's like, what
Speaker 2: am I doing for the next hour or two? This?
Speaker 2: This is what I'm doing.
Speaker 3: I think when we mentioned in our Weird House Cinema
Speaker 3: episode on The Never Ending Story that the thing about
Speaker 3: the movie I remember from childhood being even more exciting
Speaker 3: than any of the fantasy elements, was just the idea
Speaker 3: that this kid takes a book and he goes and
Speaker 3: hides in a room and nobody knows he's there, and
Speaker 3: he just reads the book all day and nobody comes
Speaker 3: in and tells him that he has to go do
Speaker 3: something else. And I remember at the time that just
Speaker 3: feeling magical, and it still does make me feel that way.
Speaker 2: I guess one of the problems that arises out of
Speaker 2: all this is what you're probably not dealing with just
Speaker 2: a this this division between casual leisure and serious leisure
Speaker 2: and having to pin more on casual leisure. But also
Speaker 2: it's like casual work versus serious work, right, and the
Speaker 2: day ends up getting broken into like a bunch of
Speaker 2: like short bursts of activity as opposed to like kind
Speaker 2: of like deep focus, deep research sort of work that
Speaker 2: many many jobs require in one form or another.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, but anyway, that's time is becoming more fragmented
Speaker 4: this second finding third empirical finding.
Speaker 3: Time time use is becoming more overlapped. People are increasingly
Speaker 3: trying to do multiple different things at the same time.
Speaker 3: And there may be a few exceptions, but for the
Speaker 3: most part, if you're trying to do multiple things at
Speaker 3: the same time, you're probably not doing either one of
Speaker 3: them very well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean at the same time, it's like
Speaker 2: you want to catch up on your podcast listening. I mean,
Speaker 2: what do you do You've put those earbuds in whilst
Speaker 2: you're doing other things, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, well, and that does highlight actually I mean,
Speaker 3: there are certain things that are easier to do simultaneously
Speaker 3: than others. Yeah, like listening to an audiobook or a
Speaker 3: podcast or something while you're say, cleaning up the kitchen
Speaker 3: that's something I do often, or doing other kind of chores,
Speaker 3: wrote chores around the house. I think that's a different
Speaker 3: kind of brain division, where you know, the divided attention
Speaker 3: doesn't suffer too much. I think where it really does suffer,
Speaker 3: at least in my case, is like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: trying to work on something while also paying attention to
Speaker 3: something else.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, just like you're cooking, say you're cooking at
Speaker 2: the same time while also trying to research for something
Speaker 2: you know, where you're like, okay, that has fifteen minutes
Speaker 2: put on that timer. Now I have fifteen minutes to
Speaker 2: do this other task. But you're never really completely into
Speaker 2: that other task because you know, you have the stove
Speaker 2: running that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Now, a lot of times in people's lives, it just
Speaker 3: seems like you have no choice but to multitask because
Speaker 3: you know you've got two things you've got to do
Speaker 3: and you only have a certain amount of time. So
Speaker 3: this is just something that is increasingly true about modern life.
Speaker 3: Apparently more and more tasks are taking place simultaneously. Another
Speaker 3: change that studies have found, which is that time use
Speaker 3: and everyday routines are shifting to new places. Just one
Speaker 3: example here, people are increasingly trying to do certain time
Speaker 3: use activities in the car while commuting that maybe used
Speaker 3: to take place in the home or somewhere else. And
Speaker 3: then finally last the fifth finding here is quote productivity
Speaker 3: gains and rationalization achieved by new technology does not generate
Speaker 3: free time, but rather heightens standards. So I think the
Speaker 3: illustration here as you imagine some new labor saving device
Speaker 3: that makes it easier to get your work done faster,
Speaker 3: or makes it easier to clean your home. Maybe you
Speaker 3: get a new appliance that does some kind of chore
Speaker 3: for you that you used to have to do with
Speaker 3: your hands. Does this generate more new free time in
Speaker 3: your life? The answer is generally no. Instead, it increases
Speaker 3: how much people report that they are expected to accomplish whatever,
Speaker 3: you know, whether that's like paid work or housework or whatever.
Speaker 3: So there's just sort of like an increasing standard of
Speaker 3: what you feel you have to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like the robot is cleaning the floor now,
Speaker 2: and now I owe it to the universe to work
Speaker 2: more to make up for like my laziness or something,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know, like sometimes there's kind of
Speaker 2: this weird like element of guilt associated to it, you know,
Speaker 2: like if I'm not working, if I'm not fixing something,
Speaker 2: then I'm somehow like cheating the universe somehow.
Speaker 3: So there are some other sections of this paper that
Speaker 3: are kind of interesting, but I'm not really going to
Speaker 3: get into stuff about like rhythm analysis and relationship of
Speaker 3: like biological rhythms to time use in life and stuff.
Speaker 3: But one of Panther's points here is that while the
Speaker 3: Tofflers may have gotten plenty of things wrong, their core
Speaker 3: predictions about coming changes in time use are essentially borne
Speaker 3: out by the empirical research. They were pretty good at
Speaker 3: predicting what was going to happen with time, the increasing
Speaker 3: fragmentation of our time, increasing multitasking, increasing irregularity, shortening of
Speaker 3: time intervals for doing things that this is basically what
Speaker 3: has been found by most of the research on this subject.
Speaker 3: Our time use has become more irregular, more fragmented, and
Speaker 3: more overlapped. And this it does correspond roughly with people
Speaker 3: saying that they feel more hurried and stressed out about time.
Speaker 3: And I think it's quite plausible that changes in technology,
Speaker 3: and then downstream from that, changes in the economy, downstream
Speaker 3: changes in culture, the culture of work and of home
Speaker 3: life and all that are plausibly to blame for this. Now, interestingly,
Speaker 3: here the author does point out one thing about these
Speaker 3: time you studies that they do think that the Toffler's
Speaker 3: got wrong. So Panser says, quote on one point, Toafler
Speaker 3: was clearly wrong, according to our present knowledge. He expected
Speaker 3: the society of urgency would kill human interaction and in
Speaker 3: particular lead to a weakening of the position of the family,
Speaker 3: the home, the children, and the spouse. In fact, however,
Speaker 3: and rather surprisingly, both time you studies and value studies
Speaker 3: conducted over the past few decades tell us about distinct
Speaker 3: growth of family and home centeredness in the Western world.
Speaker 3: And then a number of studies are cited here. Furthermore,
Speaker 3: the new information technology has not moved time use away
Speaker 3: from the home either. It has done the opposite. So
Speaker 3: I thought that was really interesting. The Tofflers thought that
Speaker 3: the technological environment of the super industrial age would weaken
Speaker 3: family connections and get people to spend more and more
Speaker 3: time coming and going outside the home. Empirically, people are
Speaker 3: spending more time at home than ever. Perhaps it did
Speaker 3: weaken some relationships, Like I think there might be some
Speaker 3: research indicating a weakening of friendships outside the home and
Speaker 3: maybe made people less likely to see friends in places
Speaker 3: outside the home. And maybe now people instead are spending
Speaker 3: more of their free time like at home with the
Speaker 3: internet instead of going out and seeing friends and doing
Speaker 3: things with friends. But I thought that was interesting that
Speaker 3: it didn't change, It didn't weaken the home based relationships
Speaker 3: the way they.
Speaker 2: Predicted, right right, That is interesting.
Speaker 3: But in the end of this paper, Panther says that
Speaker 3: the empirical studies on time use show that Tofler was
Speaker 3: mostly correct about our time quote. In the future, if
Speaker 3: we believe in Toafler, many of our repetitive everyday life
Speaker 3: routines will disappear as our weekly rhythm of work breaks
Speaker 3: up with the new communication technology accelerating our pace rather
Speaker 3: than relaxing it. The duration and number of episodes, their
Speaker 3: overlaps and mutual couplings, their construction and placement in time
Speaker 3: and space, and opportunities to affect the placement of activities
Speaker 3: are to the greatest extent, well being issues. So pointing
Speaker 3: out again that like this isn't just sort of like
Speaker 3: neutral information, that like studies about how we use our time,
Speaker 3: the quality of time spent, and how time relates to say,
Speaker 3: our expectations about time use. This affects our quality of
Speaker 3: life and our mental health.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are. It kind of comes back to this
Speaker 2: idea that, yeah, that we we are adaptive, but we
Speaker 2: are not so adaptive that we can change in you know,
Speaker 2: in real time to anything like there are there are
Speaker 2: hard limits in place. It would seem to just what
Speaker 2: we can roll with as as creatures.
Speaker 3: So I feel somewhat vindicated in that one of the
Speaker 3: parts of the book that felt strongest to me does
Speaker 3: seem to be in an at least large part born
Speaker 3: out by subsequent empirical research. But we could come back
Speaker 3: to the submarine schools and the organ transplant murder gangs.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, the modular temporary humans yeah, and social yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: There's a lot lot more to talk about in that vein,
Speaker 2: and and also in the next episode, I do want
Speaker 2: to talk a bit about some of the maladaptive coping
Speaker 2: strategies that they lay out in the book, which I
Speaker 2: thought we're very insightful, like talking about, well, how do
Speaker 2: we how do we find ourselves or potentially find ourselves
Speaker 2: dealing with future shock without actually dealing with it in
Speaker 2: an actual beneficial manner. So yeah, we'll be back with
Speaker 2: at least a third episode on future shock, and yeah,
Speaker 2: in the meantime, we'll look forward to hearing from anyone
Speaker 2: out there if you have thoughts on this general concept
Speaker 2: or some of these related topics we've talked about, like
Speaker 2: time usage, leisure, activity, and so forth.
Speaker 3: I agree that the section about the coping strategies is interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm excited to get into that.
Speaker 2: All right, Well we'll go ahead and close it out here,
Speaker 2: but yeah, right in, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: Just a reminder that we are primarily a science podcast
Speaker 2: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But you know,
Speaker 2: we got a lot, a lot of days to fill
Speaker 2: up with content these days, constantly working, going from one
Speaker 2: topic to the next, So we've got listener mail on Mondays,
Speaker 2: we have a short form Monster Factor artifact on Wednesdays,
Speaker 2: and on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.