Never Enough Time: Communication and the Construction of Time in an Attention Economy

Never Enough Time discusses the directional and irreversible nature of time, its relationship to information and entropy, the deep time history of communication from the genesis of language to today, and the extent to which we occupy time through our communication. Drawing together studies from a wide variety of disciplines and topics that provide quantitative estimates of how much daily time is expended communicating and relating to others, the author demonstrates that in an increasingly accelerating, mediated, and information-overloaded ecosystem, we spend most of our time, both socially and occupationally, engaged in various forms of communication. He examines the nature of time in the context of our increasingly overloaded and mediated information and communication ecosystem, the extent to which our increasing screen time displaces face-to-face interaction, and the implications this trend has for our quality and quantity of life, particularly for younger populations. In addition, a case is made for the importance of developing standardized measures of time, made all the more feasible with digital technologies already available for quantifying behavior at population scales. This book will appeal to graduate students, scholars, and researchers interested in time, communication theory, new media and media studies, and communication and personal relationships.