Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia

It is said that the ontology of data resists slowness and also that the digital revolution promised a levelling of the playing field. Both theories are examined in this timely collection of chapters looking at time in the digital world. Since data has assumed such a paramount place in the modern neoliberal world, contemporary concepts of time have undergone radical transformation. By critically assessing the emerging initiatives of slowing down in the digital age, this book assesses the role of the digital in ultimately reinforcing neo-liberal temporalities. It shows that both speed-up and slow down imperatives often function as a form of biopolitical social control necessary to contemporary global capitalism. Problematic paradoxes emerge where a successful slow down and digital detox ultimately are only successful if the individual returns to the world as a more productive, labouring neoliberal subject. Is there another way? The chapters in this collection, broken up into three parts, ask that question.

By critically assessing the emerging initiatives of ‘slowing down’ in the digital age, we assess the role of the digital in ultimately reinforcing neoliberal temporalities. The book approaches the idea of digital refusal as a practice of resistance against the political and the corporate logic of compulsory digitazation.