September 14, 2023 • 52 mins
In the 1970 book “Future Shock,” futurist Alvin Toffler outlined a vision of post-industrial society in which rapid technological and social changes outstrip the average human’s ability to cope. More than half a century later, how does this idea hold up and are contemporary humans victims of future shock? In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe discuss how it seems to be panning out.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
two in our series on Future Shock, an example of
that most interesting class of artifacts. A book of predictions
about the future written more than fifty years ago, which
is always fun. So if you haven't listened to part
one yet, you should go back check that out first,
but to briefly refresh here, Future Shock was an extremely influential,
(00:41):
best selling futurology book published in the year nineteen seventy
by an author named Alvin Toffler, and though only Alvin's
name appears on the copy that I read, a lot
of retrospective sources attribute these works to Alvin and Heidi Toffler.
Alvin was Heidi's husband, and they were apparently major collaborators
(01:02):
in developing ideas for the book, so a lot of
retrospective looks at it credit both Alfin and Heidi, so
we might say Toaffler or the Toafflers. Like most futurology books,
Future Shock contains a lot of predictions about the future,
some quite prescient, others that sound absolutely absurd with hindsight.
(01:23):
But the real core of the book is not its
specific predictions about what's going to happen twenty or thirty
years down the road, but in its description of a
mass psychological condition that the authors say is already evident
at the time of the book's writing, brought on by
the technological environment of what the Tafflers call super industrial society,
(01:47):
and this would be the next technological leap forward after
the Industrial Revolution. This is the technology environment beginning in
roughly the mid twentieth century, and we got into more
detail about this last time. But basically, according to the Tofflers,
future shock is a way of experiencing a world in
(02:07):
which technology, and downstream from that, economics and culture are
all themselves changing and changing the world at an ever
accelerating rate, and this leads to a variety of mass
psychological distress similar to what has been called culture shock.
Culture shock is when a person is plunged into a
foreign culture and they don't understand the customs, don't know
(02:30):
how to communicate, don't know how to interact with or
make sense of the world around them, and suffer increased
anxiety and other symptoms of psychological distress until they either
become acclimated to the culture and figure out how to
interact with it, or go home. Future Shock is like that,
but it's for one's own culture and the way it
(02:51):
is changed around us by technology. Except with the future Shock,
you can't fix it by going home. The past is
gone and the world is just going to keep changing,
and it's just going to keep changing faster and faster.
And this leads to, according to them, this feeling of
widespread distress. People feel that there's something wrong about modern life.
(03:13):
It's everything's too hurried. Something is just like something about
the world is just bugging and harassing me, and I
never feel safe for at home or like I can
figure out what's going on. And of course, they say,
of course, if this were true, it would have negative
downstream effects on physical and mental health, which they talk
about by creating this state of heightened stress and the
(03:34):
other symptoms brought on by future shock. So we wanted
to revisit this book and give it a look fifty
years on. What do we think they were right about?
What do we think they were wrong about? What are
some of the interesting insights in the book. What are
some of the funny things about the book. Last time
I think we ended up. Do we get into the
predictions about how children are going to have to learn
(03:56):
how to pilot submarines in school?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
No, I don't think you brought up the submarines. This
was definitely something that had been jettison from my brain
since my my original reading of the book. Tell us
about the submarines, Joe, I don't.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I mean, there's just a bit. One of the big
predictions for the future is that more and more of
human life is going to take place on and underneath
the ocean because there are a lot of natural resources
to harvest there, which in a way is true. There
there are a lot of natural resources there, but we
haven't really shifted to ocean based cultures the way the
book predicts. And in the chapter about education, I do
(04:33):
recall there's a paragraph where it says something about how,
you know, obviously children in the future it might be
more advantageous for them to learn the skills of navigating
a submarine environment and maybe maybe like piloting submarines and stuff.
Then it will be to learn the learn the you know,
the dead languages of the past or something.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, yeah, it turns out the Sea Lab future hasn't
really caught on like they thought it might.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
But like we said, there are other parts of the
book where they offer insights that at least I thought
we're pretty on target and do describe things that have
happened in the last fifty years quite well. So maybe
today we're going to start off by getting into some
of the features of this future shock world that they
describe and predict. And so the Toplers identify three big
(05:20):
characteristics of super industrial society that they think will play
a major role in inducing this state of future shock.
Those elements are transience, novelty, and diversity. Basically, the world
brought on by these changes in technology is going to
be a world in which things just kind of situations
(05:41):
arise more quickly and fade away more quickly without giving
you time to adjust to them. That's the transience also,
but there's a physical transience of things around us and
of relationships between people. So there's a faster coming and
going of the situations of life. That's transience. There is
not which is obviously just like new things that you're
(06:02):
not used to are going to be constantly coming into being,
and you will have to get used to them somehow.
And this includes everything from you know, technology and consumer products,
to business and economic relationships, to things in culture like
the family arrangements and social groups and stuff like that.
And then finally diversity. There will just be more and
(06:22):
more different kinds of things in the world for you
to keep track of and select between and try to understand.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah. Yeah, so let's let's break it down a little
bit here, Yeah, because it definitely helps to sort of
single in on some of the key examples they bring up,
because they ultimately bring up so many different examples and
illustrations of what future shock is that it's it's easy
to just sort of think of it as this big
amorphous thing. So one of the key concepts that the
(06:53):
toplers bring up a lot is that of over choice quote,
the point at which the advantages of diversity and individualization
are canceled by the complexity of the buyer's decision making process.
So in this freedom becomes unfreedom as one suffers from
a kind of hyper decision fatigue. And they also offer
(07:16):
that there may be a social variation of over choice
as well, as one suffers from an inability quote to
create a sensible integrated and reasonably stable personal style. Now,
I don't know about that last part personally.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
If I understand this idea right, it's that you know,
when there's just like too much freedom and variety to
choose from in how to style yourself, like to decide
to like, hey, am I a biker or am I
a hippie or am I a whatever, that it's actually
kind of paralyzing to have all these options.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, And I mean, I would be very interested to
hear from listeners out there as far as personal style
is concerned. Here if you've ever felt over choice or
something like over choice concerning your personal style, I don't know.
I think of my own experience and I look around
in the world around me, and it seems like people, yeah,
have more choices than ever, but they still seem to
(08:11):
figure it out. If they're paralyzed by over choice regarding
whether to be a biker or not, they don't seem
to express it. I was just just saw somebody's social
media post the other day and they had like a
picture of their boyfriend there and they like were clearly
decked out like a nineteen seventies biker, and I was like, well,
they chose something and they're committing to it. They don't
(08:32):
seem to be paralyzed by choice.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Here a seventies biker, So this is a were wolves
on wheels biker, not like a fifties biker.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Total yeah, total seventies biker. Look. And you know because
even now, like if you choose biker, you do get
to choose which decade. Right, there are multiple choices, but
not necessarily overchoice.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Do I want to be like Roger Korman biker, like
a Marlon Brando biker, or do I want to be
a were wolf on.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Wheels exactly psychomania? You have your choice.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I think one of the big differences is that the
earlier bikers bathe more.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
They do get grevier. In the seventies, everything get a
little gravier, all right, now, as far as decision fatigue goes,
this being related to this concept of over choice, A
lot has been written about decision fatigue over the years.
I know it was particularly hot as like a buzzword,
you know, maybe ten to fifteen years ago. I don't
think everything has been quite worked out concerning decision fatigue.
(09:29):
I think we all know that feeling when we have
trouble making yet another decision in the day, often late
in the day or laid in a shopping trip, and
we often wind up making questionable purchasing decisions, or that
seems to be the case. That's the argument of decision fatigue.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah, I haven't checked in on the empirical research on
decision fatigue, but I can say from personal experience it
seems to be a real thing. I mean that there
is an increasingly sort of taxing cumulative effect on the
mind of having to make decisions over and over, and
your desire to continue making decisions definitely goes down, and
(10:08):
the more you have had to do it, and probably
also your ability to use your rational faculties when making
those decisions goes down as part of that cumulative effect,
which may be a reason that you know, like certain
sales interactions are structured a certain way that like, you know,
you've already had to make a bunch of decisions about
investigating these cars and stuff, and then right at the end,
(10:30):
when you are just like weary of this process, they
hit you with upsells and stuff, and you're just like
trying to get this done and get out the door.
And so maybe you give in, even if it doesn't
make sense.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, Yeah, it does seem to either be a reality
or touch on a very firm reality when it comes
to sales interactions, because it has become something that that
various salespeople depend on now in terms of just over
choice more generally, you know, as far as my own
experiences go, I guess I have felt something like over
(11:04):
choice at times. Given, especially when you're thinking about extensive
digital catalogs of movies or books. There have been plenty
of times where I have my e reader device out
and I'm looking for something to read, and I end up,
you know, just browsing a lot, downloading some samples, and
then eventually I get sleepy and go to bed and
(11:25):
I haven't actually read anything I've In the past, I
had this experience with some of the big digital catalogs
of movies online where I'll go on there and I'll
start looking around at interesting looking films, looking at posters,
looking at who's in them, and then seeing what are
some like related films, and I end up spending like,
you know, an hour even looking around at films, never
(11:47):
pick out something to watch, get sleepy, go to bed. Yeah,
and even Reno reached the point where I'm just like
I just can't decide, and I realize I'm not going
to make a decision and I just need to do
something else.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Yeah, this is an extremely common thing with browsing movie
selections on streaming services. I've also really noticed this with music,
and in a way, this makes me very sad. I
cannot help but conclude my connection with music has become
less deep and less fulfilling. I think as a result
of streaming services just having available anything I want to
(12:22):
listen to. I know I had a deeper and more
enjoyable relationship with music when I had a more limited
selection of music to choose from, and it was hard
to find things I wanted to listen to.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, I definitely remember back when I had to buy
an album, even if it was a digital album, Like,
all right, i've spent my ten, twelve bucks whatever it
is for the week. I can't rationally buy another album
this week or maybe even this month. So this is
the one I'm going to listen to, and I'm either
going to like it or I'm going to find reasons
to like it. I'm going to rationalize this purchase. But nowadays, yeah,
(12:56):
you can try anything, and you and I find myself
off in giving the new material just little or no
time to impress me, and it's got to really impress
me otherwise I just you know, it stays tagged, stays
in the list, but I might not listen to it
again for another year.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
I hate that this is true about me, but I
think it is now.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
I will say that with movies in particular, I find
it I'm encountering it less these days for a couple
of reasons. First, I think the monolithic selection that was
originally provided by some of these big, big box streaming platforms,
there's been a you know, there's been a fracturing, there's
been a contraction of their offerings. And also we've seen
(13:39):
the resurgence of physical media. So I find myself going
to like Atlanta's own videodrome more often these days, looking
around there, and you know, I can feel overwhelmed by
the physical selection as well, But there's something different about
that physical selection and knowing that, like, Okay, in maybe
fifteen minutes, I need to leave here, and I'm either
leaving empty handed or I'm leaving taking a chance on something.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
I think it may well be that your decision to
go to videodrome and get the physical media. Might be
kind of like the person who chooses says I'm a
biker or I'm a hippie. You know, it's part of
your personal style. You are in a way a movie nerd.
You're a guy who goes to videodrome.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah, yeah, so I would be interested to hear from
everyone else out there on this. Do you feel over
choice or something like over choice or even just doing
decision fatigue in any area of your life that relates
to what we're talking about here, all right, now, the
(14:39):
next big one, this is something that, of course, you know,
we could easily talk at length about. And that's the
idea that it's a world of accelerating change, The idea
that you know, one just feels simply overwhelmed by the
rate of change in the world social, technological et cetera,
with of course, all the additional avenues of change brought
on by both. So the rate of change outstrips our
(15:01):
ability to adapt. And meanwhile, the book argues, old stabilizing
institutions fall away or become less important, so the guide
rail you've been following through this storm of change might
suddenly just not be there. Anymore or it gets shakier.
And and you know what am I supposed to do now?
Because I've been depending upon this system to get me
(15:22):
here Now, they write that humans are famously grad at adapting, right,
I mean, that's like humanity's thing. We can adapt to
all sorts of situations and events in life, and we've
adapted a great deal as humans have have have taken
over the world. But at the end of the day,
they say, we're still organisms. We're still quote unquote biosystems,
(15:44):
and quote all such systems operate within inexorable limits, they write,
quote we might We may define future shock as the distress,
both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of
the human organism's physical adaptive system and it's decision making processes.
Put more simply, future shock is the human response to
(16:05):
over stimulation.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Yeah, and in some ways I see this as overlapping
with what we were just talking about. So in a
world where there is so much diversity of things to
choose between, and so many decisions you can or have
to make, that of course is a type of stress.
But also increasingly accelerating changes in the culture around you
(16:31):
force you to make new choices because they are they're
essentially they're obliterating the stable habits that you establish for
yourself that allow you to go through life without having
to make too many choices. Habits in a way are
just a way of alleviating choice stress, you know, like
I don't have to think about what I'm going to
(16:51):
do now I know what comes next. And we do
this with all kinds of things in our lives. When
the world around you is just changing faster and faster,
it's harder for you to stick to habits, and thus
it's just forcing new decision stresses onto you all the time.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Yeah. I mean even you know with technology obviously, you know,
in user interfaces, even as they make changes with various
interfaces to make it easier or supposedly make it easier,
like you still then have to adapt to it. And
I think we all encounter this all the time, like,
oh now my phone screen is different. Now this interface
is different, and maybe it's actually going to be better,
(17:28):
but I still have to learn it all again, and
there's no telling when this will happen again, and then
I have to relearn it once more. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
And one of the examples they talk about in the book.
This kind of relates to their discussion of planned obsolescence,
the fact that there are all kinds of consumer choices
people are forced to make, essentially because the you know,
manufacturers want to find a way to sell the new thing,
even if the new thing isn't actually all that better.
They've just they're trying to find ways to keep the
(17:56):
economic activity churning, which is still forcing you to learn
something new and make new decisions. Maybe maybe they can
convince you that, oh no, this, actually this new thing
is actually better. I do want the new thing, but
is it?
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, it's it seems so rare these days. I mean,
this is where this aligns up with a lot of truth.
It's so rare these days where you find a product
where it's like, oh, this works really well and I
don't think I'll ever have to replace it. There's no
way they could improve upon it. It seems almost bad
for business when that's the case. You know, Like I
have a coffee making device that I use all the time,
and I did manage to break it once whilst bringing
(18:31):
in on a flight, but otherwise it's simple, it doesn't break.
There's nothing really new you get for it, except for filters,
you know, or if you do lose or break apart.
And at times I'll wonder, it's like, wow, what's the
plan with this company? Like how can they you can
only like expand usage of this so much? How are
you going to sell additional ones to people who use
the product?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Yeah, well this ties into one of the next things
that they talk about, which is which is transience and
the economic or connsumer. One of the big economic or
consumer manifestations of transience is just everything around you being
more and more disposable, physically coming into your life for
a shorter and shorter period of time.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah. And so they talk about this at length in
terms of products certainly, and you know, we've always heard
bits of this like oh, the furniture of these days,
this is not meant to last old days. We had the
same furniture our whole lives and that was passed down
to us from our grandparents, that sort of thing. But
in the book they also apply it to things beyond products,
like relationships, jobs, cultural institutions, and more. And I think
(19:35):
a lot of these examples do ring with a certain
amount of truth. For instance, people having to reskill, you know,
to keep pace with changes in technology, you know, people
having to change careers multiple times during the course of
a lifetime and so forth.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
There was one part in this section of the book
that I actually found quite interesting where it made me
think about how there are different types of materialism of
you know, one material goods, whereas you know, usually when
you think about materialism, that's just like, oh, I want
to buy something, I want to own something and have it.
But there is a big difference. There's a big emotional
(20:11):
and psychological difference between wanting to buy something that you
will keep and form a relationship with versus wanting to
buy something that you will use and then discard and
get a different thing that feels different. And they use
the example of dolls that like, traditionally, you know, a
child might form a strong emotional connection with one doll
(20:34):
and then keep that one doll over many, many years.
And then they talk about the idea of toy companies
trying to introduce new models of relationships with dolls where
you would like, trade in your old doll, maybe trade
in your old barbie to get a new one, to
introduce this idea that you don't just have one doll
and have a relationship with it for years, but you're
(20:57):
always getting newer, better dolls.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
In a way, it's almost hard to process that because
it's just how everything is now, you know. I mean,
it's like, except for maybe the trade in factor, that
actually sounds more sustainable than just having a drawer of
old barbies with like their hair all missed up and
no clothing on anymore.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Well, I think, yeah, I think that the old barbie
is what you do with them now is you make
them look weird, right, you like cut their hair in
strange ways and like draw on them and stuff.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, that sort of thing. But yeah, like I actually
kind of like the idea of, oh, when you're done
with this doll, with this toy, whatever the thing happens
to be, let's trade that in, let's pass that on.
I don't know, I become more of a minimalist with
the sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
So I guess while we're discussing things that I think
the book does get largely right. One of the most
interesting and persuasive sections of Future Shock, in my opinion,
was the Toffler's discussion of how people use and understand
their time and how that's changing due to the technological environment.
(22:01):
For example, I thought there was a really interesting observation
about how fundamental duration expectation is to the character of
our lives. We are creatures that we have no choice
but to live in time, and most situations that we
are involved in or affected by, come with an unspoken
(22:22):
expectation of a certain duration in time. We expect it
to take a certain amount of time to make dinner,
a certain amount of time to complete the workday, a
certain amount of time to travel here or there. And
also for longer situations. There are duration expectations for business
and employment relationships, length of time at a particular residence,
(22:45):
length of a friendship or another type of social relationship,
length of a marriage, and sometimes we get these expectations wrong.
You know, you can't always predict, but we have to
be able to predict the duration of most of these
situations with some reasonable degree of accuracy, or we cannot
navigate our lives. Everything feels totally out of control. And
(23:08):
I think the Tofflers advance a pretty convincing case that
in general, in the twentieth century, especially the later twentieth
century and superindustrial society, most situations in life are evolving
to become shorter and change faster, and this acceleration is
(23:28):
too fast for people to adjust their duration expectations accordingly,
and this contributes to a widespread feeling that life is
overwhelming and out of control and causes people to feel
helpless and confused and alienated. And for the most part,
I think this diagnosis is largely insightful and correct.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
This is fascinating. Yeah, getting into how we think about
our time, how we estimate the time duration of things
we are going to be involved in, and then yeah,
I think we can all think of time just in
our regular day to day where you get something wrong
and yeah, before long, you maybe you don't feel just
like overwhelming anxiety, but you do feel that feeling of well,
(24:10):
there's a sense of narrowing, there's a sense of things
slipping a little out of your control, moving faster than
they should.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
So, because their comments on time use were one of
the most interesting things about the book to me, I
was wondering, Okay, has anybody looked at this empirically. Do
we have like a retrospective that has tried to evaluate
their claims and said how do they stack up? I
actually did find a paper on this subject. So there
was a paper published in the year twenty ten in
the Journal of Future Studies by an author named Mika Pantsar,
(24:43):
and it's called Future Shock, discussing the changing temporal architecture
of daily Life. So, Mika Pantsar is an economist based
at the University of Helsinki in Finland. And so this
article assesses some of the claim that are put forward
in Future Shock that feel correct, but are kind of
(25:04):
presented in the book without rigorous empirical backing. They're just
sort of asserted, specifically, claims about changes to the rhythms
of everyday life. Pants Are writes quote. The main purpose
of this article is to examine, in the light of
time use research, to what extent and in what ways
Tofler's claims about the quickening of life rhythms have come true.
(25:26):
And pants Are begins by noting a seeming paradox in
the research on time use. Since the time Future Shock
was published in nineteen seventy, studies in Western countries have
shown that, on average, the amount of leisure time in
people's lives has slowly but steadily increased. I think it's
not a huge difference, but there's been a gradual increase
(25:48):
of a little bit with the exceptions of the United
States in Great Britain, where it seems leisure time has
actually somewhat decreased in the same period, at least up
to the point of the studies pants are sites which
are from nineteen ninety two in two thousand and four,
can't be sure if the trend continues after that. But
even in the rest of the Western countries where people
have on average had a little bit more free time,
(26:12):
surveys have found people report consistently increased feelings of hurriedness
in their lives. So of course it makes sense why
people would be feeling more hurried and stressed out in
the US and Great Britain on average if people actually
have a little bit less free time, But why would
they be feeling that in countries where they have more
free time than they did a generation ago? And the
(26:34):
author argues that quote, the paradox of increased leisure time
and feelings of hurriedness become understandable when the focus is
shifted from the total amount of free time and duration
of activities to qualitative changes in rhythms resulting from various
interdependencies between mundane activities. So it may be not so
(26:55):
much how much time we have, but how time is
structured in our lives. So, first of all, just to
review a few interesting empirical findings on people's time use
in general. And again remember this was published in twenty ten,
so findings coming in after that could change the picture somewhat.
But first of all, as a note, it should be
said that accounting for people's time use has presented more
(27:19):
methodological difficulties than you might at first imagine. So time
youse studies are often structured so that you sort your
time use into episodes of activity that fit into various
categories like paid work or housework or rest or free time.
But studies found that there were some uses of time
that were kind of difficult to sort into categories, and
(27:41):
some events recognized as episodes by the subjects that researchers
didn't anticipate, such as Swedish researchers in the nineties discovering
that lots of people regard quote coming home as a
unique time use episode in the day. Where does that
fit in? You know, the time you're arriving at your
house and getting settled. So this kind of research isn't
(28:02):
as easy as it might sound. Still, there were a
selection of interesting findings I wanted to mention. One was
that international comparative studies in the seventies and early eighties
found that time use varied a lot more based on
the level of economic development than on the economic system.
So people might have imagined, going, you know, your hypothesis
(28:25):
might be that time use is very different on different
sides of the Iron Curtain. But instead they found that
superpower countries both communists and capitalists, had similar patterns of
time use. People used their time much the same way
as in the United States and the Soviet Union, but
these patterns were much different than how people spent their
time in less developed economies on both sides of the
(28:47):
Cold War divide. And I think that would kind of
stack up with the future shock claim that changes in
technology filter down to changes in the rest of culture
and in work and in family life, and this is
largely what's guiding changes in how people experience time. Okay,
there's also some research indicating that in Western countries time
(29:07):
use is converging on more uniformity across different demographic categories.
So like it used to be that men and women
spend their time in more different ways, some studies apparently
find that their patterns are coming closer together, though, and
the same would be true of differences between social classes.
Though even though there might be a trend in the
(29:28):
direction of more similarity over time, differences remain and Pantsar
also cites research finding that on average, men still had
more free time than women, and the rich still had
more than the poor, But overall time use studies of
this sort revealed that changes between nineteen seventy and this
paper in twenty ten are fairly modest in terms of
(29:50):
overall time use, with one major exception one big change,
which is TV. One of the biggest changes that can
be tracked since the time of Future Shock is the
average change in the amount of time daily spent watching television.
People on average across all Western countries spend a lot
of their free time watching TV. Quote in almost all
(30:12):
Western countries, the share of television from the roughly six
hours of daily free time is nowadays about a third,
that is over two hours. Increasingly, TV watching serves as
a kind of indicator of the flexibility of daily schedules,
So when there is more free time, TV watching sort
of expands to absorb that time, and when people have
(30:34):
more things to do and they have less free time.
TV watching is cut to make the time.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
I mean we do, or at least we have been
living in an age of prestige television though, I mean
the golden age of television with so many great shows.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Surely that is what we're all spending our time on.
We're watching the great shows.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yeah, you get Yeah, you gotta make fun make time
for the fun shows too.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah. But Pantzer also says that the inner, of course,
is changing these patterns. Again, this was twenty ten, so
it seems very likely that the Internet is increasingly filling
time that used.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
To be devoted to TV.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
So maybe today people spend a lot of the time
that used to be devoted to TV scrolling social media instead.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Step up. I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
However, these types of studies have real limits because, for example,
they give an oversimplified picture of what each of these
classes of activities really means. What about when you are
doing work, like your paid job work on a laptop
and you're texting with a friend and watching TV at
the same time. What about when you're watching TV while
(31:40):
you're cooking dinner for your family. What about while when
you're like trying to relax and so you're trying to
have rest or free time, but you're constantly being interrupted
every few minutes by pings from work, email, or a
crying baby that needs to be soothed back to sleep.
How do you measure or categorize these types of time
use and and understand their qualitative effect on life? So
(32:03):
Pantsar says it's probably more important to look at quote
the quality of time spent, and especially the inner structure
of time use or the architecture of time. So the
author here says that there are a lot of studies
indicating that when people feel stress related to their time use,
(32:23):
a lot of it seems to come from dissatisfaction with
the way time is organized, rather than like just how
much free time you do or don't have. People seem
to feel more stressed when their time is spent in
a way that is quote externally directed, being largely reactive
to continual surprises. So I'm imagining you know when your
(32:43):
time is spent in a way that you did not
deliberately and autonomously choose, it's taken up by a bunch
of unpredictable stimuli or tasks or bids for your attention,
that you feel like you are obligated to react to
and don't know what they're going to be ahead of
time or when they're going to come in. This can
of course be true of the work life, especially for
(33:05):
certain professions, but also true of home life, especially for
people responsible for home and childcare and time use. Organize
this way creates a sense of urgency and sometimes a
lack of autonomy, leading to feelings of hurriedness and stress.
You know, for a hyper streamlined version of this, I
(33:25):
know my own brain reacts exactly this way. It work
like My sense of stress with work is almost perfectly
correlated to like how many unexpected emails and extra kinds
of tasks are coming in asking me to focus on
something other than like my main work. And likewise at home,
(33:46):
I feel a lot less stress about one big housework
project that I chose to do, versus like a bunch
of problems that keep popping up without warning that I
have to do something about immediately.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
That's a problem about about home ownership. Though. All you
do is you get all those little pop up problems
one after the other in addition to the big ones
that you know are coming.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
So Pantser calls this the number of quote action episodes
that our daily time use is broken up into, and
that the number of action episodes is likely to just
keep increasing. The differences in these numbers already correlate with
differences that we see in people's level of stress about
time use.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
At present, women's time is divided into more pieces than men's,
which perhaps explains why women are more stressed than men
about their time use. This trend is strengthened by the
fact that the overlapping of episodes has increased, especially with women.
And so when we look at this idea about the
quality or the inner structure of time use, we can
(34:49):
find empirical research documenting several changes, and Pantser summarizes them
into a table of five main trends. First of all,
studies find that in the recent decades, time use is
becoming more irregular. Just one example of time use becoming
more irregular a shift on average from predictable established meal
(35:11):
times to unpredictable ad hoc sessions of eating or snacking,
which occur at different times and last for different amounts
of time. I will say this is certainly true in
my life. I think when I was younger, I ate
at more predictable meal times. And I don't know, maybe
just that this is something personal, but certainly my eating
(35:34):
schedule is way more irregular than it used to be.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, I don't know. I feel my mine's
pretty We run a tight ship around here. Things are
pretty solid. But that being said, with a child, sometimes
it does take a long time to finish these meals.
I don't know, they're still working out exactly why this
is the case, but like, sometimes it's like a fifteen
minute meal. Other times it's like, all right, we're about
the inner hour two of dinner. We don't have time
(35:59):
for this.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Another example I thought of, I think people used to
have more regularized news consumption sessions on average. On average,
people used to have more likely like a standard time
for reading the newspaper or watching the evening news. Now,
following the news has become a more irregular, ad hoc
activity that occurs at less predictable times throughout the day
(36:21):
and fills in other bits of free time.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Which is, for a lot, if not most, people, not
a good model. I mean, sometimes your profession requires you
to stay on the pulse of the news twenty four
to seven. But I know for a lot of people,
like one of a big bit of like therapeutic advice
has been, hey, just pick a certain time to check
(36:47):
the news, or find a way where you're getting your
news via say a newsletter or something to that effect,
so that it's not just you're just constantly dipping in,
constantly diving into your news app feed or or worse,
you know, your social media related news feed, whatever the
case may be. Like setting aside a particular time and
saying this is when I will get the news, and
(37:08):
then I will get it again tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
I am not a mental health professional, but I think
that is really solid advice. I think confining your news
consumption to regularize time periods rather than just like looking
at the news in idle moments, is much better for
your brain.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I know in my experience, a big one has been
cutting out this whole model where if I'm in the car,
I'll probably have the news on and listen to the
news for a bit. You know, there are a lot
of great news programs on the radio and on public
radio that I enjoy a lot, and I still may
listen to them occasionally. But I felt myself evening out
(37:47):
a bit when I started leaning more into like, okay,
I'm I'm gonna listen to music, or I'm gonna put
on an audio book. If I need something that's non musical,
let's do an audiobook instead and set aside time for
checking out on the news some other time.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
I think that's a very good strategy. Okay, so that's
the first thing. Studies find time use becoming more irregular.
Second empirical finding time use is becoming more fragmented. We
are spending less unbroken time devoted to single activities. There
is more frequent switching between different activities and intrusions of
(38:22):
one activity on another. I think about myself, and again,
it's totally possible this may have more to do with personal,
individual life changes unique to me than changes in the
broader culture. I don't know. But still I'm reminded of how,
like ten fifteen years ago, I would really often, just
frequently sit down and watch a whole movie. I would
(38:44):
just watch it through from beginning to end, with no interruptions.
And in recent year, I mean, obviously now I have
a child, but even before I had a child, in
recent years, I don't know, the past five years, that
idea just seems ludicrous, like it's just a given, and
that there will be interruptions of some sort to the
movie watching experience. I'll need to break the viewing into
(39:06):
multiple sittings. Maybe I'll need to go focus on something else.
I'll get an email or text or something I need
to respond to, or just something happens that prevents me
from sitting down for two hours and paying attention to
one thing.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, sometimes I found this sometimes in my own experience,
And I certainly don't mind breaking up a movie watching
one half one day and one half the next. Sometimes
it's broken up a lot more than that. But at
times where there have been times where I've watched an
entire movie or the majority of a movie in one setting,
And it's a notable experience when that happens, Like generally,
(39:40):
it's a testament to how good the movie is that
it was able to like suck me in enough that
I was able to not get distracted by various other tasks.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Yeah, it feels. It feels significant when it happens now.
And the author of this paper relates this finding about
time use becoming increasingly fragmented to studies comparing something comparing
a couple of concepts called casual leisure versus serious leisure,
and the idea here is that they're actually different types
(40:09):
of leisure activities. There's casual leisure, which does not require
serious concentration, can be easily interrupted, broken into pieces, and
there's serious leisure, which requires concentration and has some hierarchical elements.
In my own case, I think of like scrolling junk
on my phone as casual leisure versus playing and recording
(40:30):
music as serious leisure. I get much much more enjoyment
and fulfillment from the latter. I would really rather be
spending my time doing that, but I often default to
the former, to the scrolling, because I know that I
only have a short amount of free time and I
expect to be interrupted by something, so I really can't
(40:52):
get into the committed concentration state necessary for music.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Yeah. Yeah, I also find this in my own life.
Like for me, casual leisure is often something like painting
a little bit on some minis, which are often on
a like a tray next to my work computer. So
I'll find on a good day, I may find, you know,
a couple of moments to sort of switch seats and
do a little bit of painting and then clean everything up,
(41:18):
let that dry go back to what I was doing,
you know, And I like that. I like having a
casual leisure activity that I can dip in and out of.
It certainly fits in with like a you know, busy lifestyle,
but yeah, that serious leisure when you can is sometimes
the kind of thing you you kind of fantasize about,
like you imagine yourself locked in a room with your
casual leisure activities where you can only do that one thing. Goodness.
(41:44):
I think I think of things like, you know, reading
a good book on a beach being in a way
kind of a serious leisure activity where it's like, what
am I doing for the next hour or two? This?
This is what I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
I think when we mentioned in our Weird House Cinema
episode on The Never Ending Story that the thing about
the movie I remember from childhood being even more exciting
than any of the fantasy elements, was just the idea
that this kid takes a book and he goes and
hides in a room and nobody knows he's there, and
he just reads the book all day and nobody comes
(42:15):
in and tells him that he has to go do
something else. And I remember at the time that just
feeling magical, and it still does make me feel that way.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I guess one of the problems that arises out of
all this is what you're probably not dealing with just
a this this division between casual leisure and serious leisure
and having to pin more on casual leisure. But also
it's like casual work versus serious work, right, and the
day ends up getting broken into like a bunch of
like short bursts of activity as opposed to like kind
(42:45):
of like deep focus, deep research sort of work that
many many jobs require in one form or another.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
Yeah, okay, but anyway, that's time is becoming more fragmented
this second finding third empirical finding.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
Time time use is becoming more overlapped. People are increasingly
trying to do multiple different things at the same time.
And there may be a few exceptions, but for the
most part, if you're trying to do multiple things at
the same time, you're probably not doing either one of
them very well.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Yeah, yeah, I mean at the same time, it's like
you want to catch up on your podcast listening. I mean,
what do you do You've put those earbuds in whilst
you're doing other things, right.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
Yeah, yeah, well, and that does highlight actually I mean,
there are certain things that are easier to do simultaneously
than others. Yeah, like listening to an audiobook or a
podcast or something while you're say, cleaning up the kitchen
that's something I do often, or doing other kind of chores,
wrote chores around the house. I think that's a different
kind of brain division, where you know, the divided attention
(43:56):
doesn't suffer too much. I think where it really does suffer,
at least in my case, is like, I don't know,
trying to work on something while also paying attention to
something else.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Like yeah, just like you're cooking, say you're cooking at
the same time while also trying to research for something
you know, where you're like, okay, that has fifteen minutes
put on that timer. Now I have fifteen minutes to
do this other task. But you're never really completely into
that other task because you know, you have the stove
running that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Now, a lot of times in people's lives, it just
seems like you have no choice but to multitask because
you know you've got two things you've got to do
and you only have a certain amount of time. So
this is just something that is increasingly true about modern life.
Apparently more and more tasks are taking place simultaneously. Another
change that studies have found, which is that time use
(44:45):
and everyday routines are shifting to new places. Just one
example here, people are increasingly trying to do certain time
use activities in the car while commuting that maybe used
to take place in the home or somewhere else. And
then finally last the fifth finding here is quote productivity
gains and rationalization achieved by new technology does not generate
(45:09):
free time, but rather heightens standards. So I think the
illustration here as you imagine some new labor saving device
that makes it easier to get your work done faster,
or makes it easier to clean your home. Maybe you
get a new appliance that does some kind of chore
for you that you used to have to do with
your hands. Does this generate more new free time in
(45:29):
your life? The answer is generally no. Instead, it increases
how much people report that they are expected to accomplish whatever,
you know, whether that's like paid work or housework or whatever.
So there's just sort of like an increasing standard of
what you feel you have to do.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Yeah, it's like the robot is cleaning the floor now,
and now I owe it to the universe to work
more to make up for like my laziness or something,
you know, I don't know, like sometimes there's kind of
this weird like element of guilt associated to it, you know,
like if I'm not working, if I'm not fixing something,
then I'm somehow like cheating the universe somehow.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
So there are some other sections of this paper that
are kind of interesting, but I'm not really going to
get into stuff about like rhythm analysis and relationship of
like biological rhythms to time use in life and stuff.
But one of Panther's points here is that while the
Tofflers may have gotten plenty of things wrong, their core
predictions about coming changes in time use are essentially borne
(46:35):
out by the empirical research. They were pretty good at
predicting what was going to happen with time, the increasing
fragmentation of our time, increasing multitasking, increasing irregularity, shortening of
time intervals for doing things that this is basically what
has been found by most of the research on this subject.
(46:55):
Our time use has become more irregular, more fragmented, and
more overlapped. And this it does correspond roughly with people
saying that they feel more hurried and stressed out about time.
And I think it's quite plausible that changes in technology,
and then downstream from that, changes in the economy, downstream
changes in culture, the culture of work and of home
(47:16):
life and all that are plausibly to blame for this. Now, interestingly,
here the author does point out one thing about these
time you studies that they do think that the Toffler's
got wrong. So Panser says, quote on one point, Toafler
was clearly wrong, according to our present knowledge. He expected
the society of urgency would kill human interaction and in
(47:38):
particular lead to a weakening of the position of the family,
the home, the children, and the spouse. In fact, however,
and rather surprisingly, both time you studies and value studies
conducted over the past few decades tell us about distinct
growth of family and home centeredness in the Western world.
And then a number of studies are cited here. Furthermore,
(48:00):
the new information technology has not moved time use away
from the home either. It has done the opposite. So
I thought that was really interesting. The Tofflers thought that
the technological environment of the super industrial age would weaken
family connections and get people to spend more and more
time coming and going outside the home. Empirically, people are
(48:23):
spending more time at home than ever. Perhaps it did
weaken some relationships, Like I think there might be some
research indicating a weakening of friendships outside the home and
maybe made people less likely to see friends in places
outside the home. And maybe now people instead are spending
more of their free time like at home with the
(48:45):
internet instead of going out and seeing friends and doing
things with friends. But I thought that was interesting that
it didn't change, It didn't weaken the home based relationships
the way they.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Predicted, right right, That is interesting.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
But in the end of this paper, Panther says that
the empirical studies on time use show that Tofler was
mostly correct about our time quote. In the future, if
we believe in Toafler, many of our repetitive everyday life
routines will disappear as our weekly rhythm of work breaks
up with the new communication technology accelerating our pace rather
(49:22):
than relaxing it. The duration and number of episodes, their
overlaps and mutual couplings, their construction and placement in time
and space, and opportunities to affect the placement of activities
are to the greatest extent, well being issues. So pointing
out again that like this isn't just sort of like
(49:42):
neutral information, that like studies about how we use our time,
the quality of time spent, and how time relates to say,
our expectations about time use. This affects our quality of
life and our mental health.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Yeah, there are. It kind of comes back to this
idea that, yeah, that we we are adaptive, but we
are not so adaptive that we can change in you know,
in real time to anything like there are there are
hard limits in place. It would seem to just what
we can roll with as as creatures.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
So I feel somewhat vindicated in that one of the
parts of the book that felt strongest to me does
seem to be in an at least large part born
out by subsequent empirical research. But we could come back
to the submarine schools and the organ transplant murder gangs.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Oh yes, the modular temporary humans yeah, and social yeah. Yeah,
There's a lot lot more to talk about in that vein,
and and also in the next episode, I do want
to talk a bit about some of the maladaptive coping
strategies that they lay out in the book, which I
thought we're very insightful, like talking about, well, how do
we how do we find ourselves or potentially find ourselves
(50:55):
dealing with future shock without actually dealing with it in
an actual beneficial manner. So yeah, we'll be back with
at least a third episode on future shock, and yeah,
in the meantime, we'll look forward to hearing from anyone
out there if you have thoughts on this general concept
or some of these related topics we've talked about, like
(51:17):
time usage, leisure, activity, and so forth.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
I agree that the section about the coping strategies is interesting. Yeah,
I'm excited to get into that.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
All right, Well we'll go ahead and close it out here,
but yeah, right in, we'd love to hear from you.
Just a reminder that we are primarily a science podcast
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But you know,
we got a lot, a lot of days to fill
up with content these days, constantly working, going from one
topic to the next, So we've got listener mail on Mondays,
we have a short form Monster Factor artifact on Wednesdays,
(51:49):
and on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
two in our series on Future Shock, an example of
that most interesting class of artifacts. A book of predictions
about the future written more than fifty years ago, which
is always fun. So if you haven't listened to part
one yet, you should go back check that out first,
but to briefly refresh here, Future Shock was an extremely influential,
(00:41):
best selling futurology book published in the year nineteen seventy
by an author named Alvin Toffler, and though only Alvin's
name appears on the copy that I read, a lot
of retrospective sources attribute these works to Alvin and Heidi Toffler.
Alvin was Heidi's husband, and they were apparently major collaborators
(01:02):
in developing ideas for the book, so a lot of
retrospective looks at it credit both Alfin and Heidi, so
we might say Toaffler or the Toafflers. Like most futurology books,
Future Shock contains a lot of predictions about the future,
some quite prescient, others that sound absolutely absurd with hindsight.
(01:23):
But the real core of the book is not its
specific predictions about what's going to happen twenty or thirty
years down the road, but in its description of a
mass psychological condition that the authors say is already evident
at the time of the book's writing, brought on by
the technological environment of what the Tafflers call super industrial society,
(01:47):
and this would be the next technological leap forward after
the Industrial Revolution. This is the technology environment beginning in
roughly the mid twentieth century, and we got into more
detail about this last time. But basically, according to the Tofflers,
future shock is a way of experiencing a world in
(02:07):
which technology, and downstream from that, economics and culture are
all themselves changing and changing the world at an ever
accelerating rate, and this leads to a variety of mass
psychological distress similar to what has been called culture shock.
Culture shock is when a person is plunged into a
foreign culture and they don't understand the customs, don't know
(02:30):
how to communicate, don't know how to interact with or
make sense of the world around them, and suffer increased
anxiety and other symptoms of psychological distress until they either
become acclimated to the culture and figure out how to
interact with it, or go home. Future Shock is like that,
but it's for one's own culture and the way it
(02:51):
is changed around us by technology. Except with the future Shock,
you can't fix it by going home. The past is
gone and the world is just going to keep changing,
and it's just going to keep changing faster and faster.
And this leads to, according to them, this feeling of
widespread distress. People feel that there's something wrong about modern life.
(03:13):
It's everything's too hurried. Something is just like something about
the world is just bugging and harassing me, and I
never feel safe for at home or like I can
figure out what's going on. And of course, they say,
of course, if this were true, it would have negative
downstream effects on physical and mental health, which they talk
about by creating this state of heightened stress and the
(03:34):
other symptoms brought on by future shock. So we wanted
to revisit this book and give it a look fifty
years on. What do we think they were right about?
What do we think they were wrong about? What are
some of the interesting insights in the book. What are
some of the funny things about the book. Last time
I think we ended up. Do we get into the
predictions about how children are going to have to learn
(03:56):
how to pilot submarines in school?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
No, I don't think you brought up the submarines. This
was definitely something that had been jettison from my brain
since my my original reading of the book. Tell us
about the submarines, Joe, I don't.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
I mean, there's just a bit. One of the big
predictions for the future is that more and more of
human life is going to take place on and underneath
the ocean because there are a lot of natural resources
to harvest there, which in a way is true. There
there are a lot of natural resources there, but we
haven't really shifted to ocean based cultures the way the
book predicts. And in the chapter about education, I do
(04:33):
recall there's a paragraph where it says something about how,
you know, obviously children in the future it might be
more advantageous for them to learn the skills of navigating
a submarine environment and maybe maybe like piloting submarines and stuff.
Then it will be to learn the learn the you know,
the dead languages of the past or something.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, yeah, it turns out the Sea Lab future hasn't
really caught on like they thought it might.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
But like we said, there are other parts of the
book where they offer insights that at least I thought
we're pretty on target and do describe things that have
happened in the last fifty years quite well. So maybe
today we're going to start off by getting into some
of the features of this future shock world that they
describe and predict. And so the Toplers identify three big
(05:20):
characteristics of super industrial society that they think will play
a major role in inducing this state of future shock.
Those elements are transience, novelty, and diversity. Basically, the world
brought on by these changes in technology is going to
be a world in which things just kind of situations
(05:41):
arise more quickly and fade away more quickly without giving
you time to adjust to them. That's the transience also,
but there's a physical transience of things around us and
of relationships between people. So there's a faster coming and
going of the situations of life. That's transience. There is
not which is obviously just like new things that you're
(06:02):
not used to are going to be constantly coming into being,
and you will have to get used to them somehow.
And this includes everything from you know, technology and consumer products,
to business and economic relationships, to things in culture like
the family arrangements and social groups and stuff like that.
And then finally diversity. There will just be more and
(06:22):
more different kinds of things in the world for you
to keep track of and select between and try to understand.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah. Yeah, so let's let's break it down a little
bit here, Yeah, because it definitely helps to sort of
single in on some of the key examples they bring up,
because they ultimately bring up so many different examples and
illustrations of what future shock is that it's it's easy
to just sort of think of it as this big
amorphous thing. So one of the key concepts that the
(06:53):
toplers bring up a lot is that of over choice quote,
the point at which the advantages of diversity and individualization
are canceled by the complexity of the buyer's decision making process.
So in this freedom becomes unfreedom as one suffers from
a kind of hyper decision fatigue. And they also offer
(07:16):
that there may be a social variation of over choice
as well, as one suffers from an inability quote to
create a sensible integrated and reasonably stable personal style. Now,
I don't know about that last part personally.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
If I understand this idea right, it's that you know,
when there's just like too much freedom and variety to
choose from in how to style yourself, like to decide
to like, hey, am I a biker or am I
a hippie or am I a whatever, that it's actually
kind of paralyzing to have all these options.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, And I mean, I would be very interested to
hear from listeners out there as far as personal style
is concerned. Here if you've ever felt over choice or
something like over choice concerning your personal style, I don't know.
I think of my own experience and I look around
in the world around me, and it seems like people, yeah,
have more choices than ever, but they still seem to
(08:11):
figure it out. If they're paralyzed by over choice regarding
whether to be a biker or not, they don't seem
to express it. I was just just saw somebody's social
media post the other day and they had like a
picture of their boyfriend there and they like were clearly
decked out like a nineteen seventies biker, and I was like, well,
they chose something and they're committing to it. They don't
(08:32):
seem to be paralyzed by choice.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Here a seventies biker, So this is a were wolves
on wheels biker, not like a fifties biker.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Total yeah, total seventies biker. Look. And you know because
even now, like if you choose biker, you do get
to choose which decade. Right, there are multiple choices, but
not necessarily overchoice.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Do I want to be like Roger Korman biker, like
a Marlon Brando biker, or do I want to be
a were wolf on.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Wheels exactly psychomania? You have your choice.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
I think one of the big differences is that the
earlier bikers bathe more.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
They do get grevier. In the seventies, everything get a
little gravier, all right, now, as far as decision fatigue goes,
this being related to this concept of over choice, A
lot has been written about decision fatigue over the years.
I know it was particularly hot as like a buzzword,
you know, maybe ten to fifteen years ago. I don't
think everything has been quite worked out concerning decision fatigue.
(09:29):
I think we all know that feeling when we have
trouble making yet another decision in the day, often late
in the day or laid in a shopping trip, and
we often wind up making questionable purchasing decisions, or that
seems to be the case. That's the argument of decision fatigue.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah, I haven't checked in on the empirical research on
decision fatigue, but I can say from personal experience it
seems to be a real thing. I mean that there
is an increasingly sort of taxing cumulative effect on the
mind of having to make decisions over and over, and
your desire to continue making decisions definitely goes down, and
(10:08):
the more you have had to do it, and probably
also your ability to use your rational faculties when making
those decisions goes down as part of that cumulative effect,
which may be a reason that you know, like certain
sales interactions are structured a certain way that like, you know,
you've already had to make a bunch of decisions about
investigating these cars and stuff, and then right at the end,
(10:30):
when you are just like weary of this process, they
hit you with upsells and stuff, and you're just like
trying to get this done and get out the door.
And so maybe you give in, even if it doesn't
make sense.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, Yeah, it does seem to either be a reality
or touch on a very firm reality when it comes
to sales interactions, because it has become something that that
various salespeople depend on now in terms of just over
choice more generally, you know, as far as my own
experiences go, I guess I have felt something like over
(11:04):
choice at times. Given, especially when you're thinking about extensive
digital catalogs of movies or books. There have been plenty
of times where I have my e reader device out
and I'm looking for something to read, and I end up,
you know, just browsing a lot, downloading some samples, and
then eventually I get sleepy and go to bed and
(11:25):
I haven't actually read anything I've In the past, I
had this experience with some of the big digital catalogs
of movies online where I'll go on there and I'll
start looking around at interesting looking films, looking at posters,
looking at who's in them, and then seeing what are
some like related films, and I end up spending like,
you know, an hour even looking around at films, never
(11:47):
pick out something to watch, get sleepy, go to bed. Yeah,
and even Reno reached the point where I'm just like
I just can't decide, and I realize I'm not going
to make a decision and I just need to do
something else.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
Yeah, this is an extremely common thing with browsing movie
selections on streaming services. I've also really noticed this with music,
and in a way, this makes me very sad. I
cannot help but conclude my connection with music has become
less deep and less fulfilling. I think as a result
of streaming services just having available anything I want to
(12:22):
listen to. I know I had a deeper and more
enjoyable relationship with music when I had a more limited
selection of music to choose from, and it was hard
to find things I wanted to listen to.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, I definitely remember back when I had to buy
an album, even if it was a digital album, Like,
all right, i've spent my ten, twelve bucks whatever it
is for the week. I can't rationally buy another album
this week or maybe even this month. So this is
the one I'm going to listen to, and I'm either
going to like it or I'm going to find reasons
to like it. I'm going to rationalize this purchase. But nowadays, yeah,
(12:56):
you can try anything, and you and I find myself
off in giving the new material just little or no
time to impress me, and it's got to really impress
me otherwise I just you know, it stays tagged, stays
in the list, but I might not listen to it
again for another year.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
I hate that this is true about me, but I
think it is now.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
I will say that with movies in particular, I find
it I'm encountering it less these days for a couple
of reasons. First, I think the monolithic selection that was
originally provided by some of these big, big box streaming platforms,
there's been a you know, there's been a fracturing, there's
been a contraction of their offerings. And also we've seen
(13:39):
the resurgence of physical media. So I find myself going
to like Atlanta's own videodrome more often these days, looking
around there, and you know, I can feel overwhelmed by
the physical selection as well, But there's something different about
that physical selection and knowing that, like, Okay, in maybe
fifteen minutes, I need to leave here, and I'm either
leaving empty handed or I'm leaving taking a chance on something.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
I think it may well be that your decision to
go to videodrome and get the physical media. Might be
kind of like the person who chooses says I'm a
biker or I'm a hippie. You know, it's part of
your personal style. You are in a way a movie nerd.
You're a guy who goes to videodrome.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Yeah, yeah, so I would be interested to hear from
everyone else out there on this. Do you feel over
choice or something like over choice or even just doing
decision fatigue in any area of your life that relates
to what we're talking about here, all right, now, the
(14:39):
next big one, this is something that, of course, you know,
we could easily talk at length about. And that's the
idea that it's a world of accelerating change, The idea
that you know, one just feels simply overwhelmed by the
rate of change in the world social, technological et cetera,
with of course, all the additional avenues of change brought
on by both. So the rate of change outstrips our
(15:01):
ability to adapt. And meanwhile, the book argues, old stabilizing
institutions fall away or become less important, so the guide
rail you've been following through this storm of change might
suddenly just not be there. Anymore or it gets shakier.
And and you know what am I supposed to do now?
Because I've been depending upon this system to get me
(15:22):
here Now, they write that humans are famously grad at adapting, right,
I mean, that's like humanity's thing. We can adapt to
all sorts of situations and events in life, and we've
adapted a great deal as humans have have have taken
over the world. But at the end of the day,
they say, we're still organisms. We're still quote unquote biosystems,
(15:44):
and quote all such systems operate within inexorable limits, they write,
quote we might We may define future shock as the distress,
both physical and psychological, that arises from an overload of
the human organism's physical adaptive system and it's decision making processes.
Put more simply, future shock is the human response to
(16:05):
over stimulation.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Yeah, and in some ways I see this as overlapping
with what we were just talking about. So in a
world where there is so much diversity of things to
choose between, and so many decisions you can or have
to make, that of course is a type of stress.
But also increasingly accelerating changes in the culture around you
(16:31):
force you to make new choices because they are they're
essentially they're obliterating the stable habits that you establish for
yourself that allow you to go through life without having
to make too many choices. Habits in a way are
just a way of alleviating choice stress, you know, like
I don't have to think about what I'm going to
(16:51):
do now I know what comes next. And we do
this with all kinds of things in our lives. When
the world around you is just changing faster and faster,
it's harder for you to stick to habits, and thus
it's just forcing new decision stresses onto you all the time.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Yeah. I mean even you know with technology obviously, you know,
in user interfaces, even as they make changes with various
interfaces to make it easier or supposedly make it easier,
like you still then have to adapt to it. And
I think we all encounter this all the time, like,
oh now my phone screen is different. Now this interface
is different, and maybe it's actually going to be better,
(17:28):
but I still have to learn it all again, and
there's no telling when this will happen again, and then
I have to relearn it once more. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
And one of the examples they talk about in the book.
This kind of relates to their discussion of planned obsolescence,
the fact that there are all kinds of consumer choices
people are forced to make, essentially because the you know,
manufacturers want to find a way to sell the new thing,
even if the new thing isn't actually all that better.
They've just they're trying to find ways to keep the
(17:56):
economic activity churning, which is still forcing you to learn
something new and make new decisions. Maybe maybe they can
convince you that, oh no, this, actually this new thing
is actually better. I do want the new thing, but
is it?
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Yeah, it's it seems so rare these days. I mean,
this is where this aligns up with a lot of truth.
It's so rare these days where you find a product
where it's like, oh, this works really well and I
don't think I'll ever have to replace it. There's no
way they could improve upon it. It seems almost bad
for business when that's the case. You know, Like I
have a coffee making device that I use all the time,
and I did manage to break it once whilst bringing
(18:31):
in on a flight, but otherwise it's simple, it doesn't break.
There's nothing really new you get for it, except for filters,
you know, or if you do lose or break apart.
And at times I'll wonder, it's like, wow, what's the
plan with this company? Like how can they you can
only like expand usage of this so much? How are
you going to sell additional ones to people who use
the product?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Yeah, well this ties into one of the next things
that they talk about, which is which is transience and
the economic or connsumer. One of the big economic or
consumer manifestations of transience is just everything around you being
more and more disposable, physically coming into your life for
a shorter and shorter period of time.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yeah. And so they talk about this at length in
terms of products certainly, and you know, we've always heard
bits of this like oh, the furniture of these days,
this is not meant to last old days. We had the
same furniture our whole lives and that was passed down
to us from our grandparents, that sort of thing. But
in the book they also apply it to things beyond products,
like relationships, jobs, cultural institutions, and more. And I think
(19:35):
a lot of these examples do ring with a certain
amount of truth. For instance, people having to reskill, you know,
to keep pace with changes in technology, you know, people
having to change careers multiple times during the course of
a lifetime and so forth.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
There was one part in this section of the book
that I actually found quite interesting where it made me
think about how there are different types of materialism of
you know, one material goods, whereas you know, usually when
you think about materialism, that's just like, oh, I want
to buy something, I want to own something and have it.
But there is a big difference. There's a big emotional
(20:11):
and psychological difference between wanting to buy something that you
will keep and form a relationship with versus wanting to
buy something that you will use and then discard and
get a different thing that feels different. And they use
the example of dolls that like, traditionally, you know, a
child might form a strong emotional connection with one doll
(20:34):
and then keep that one doll over many, many years.
And then they talk about the idea of toy companies
trying to introduce new models of relationships with dolls where
you would like, trade in your old doll, maybe trade
in your old barbie to get a new one, to
introduce this idea that you don't just have one doll
and have a relationship with it for years, but you're
(20:57):
always getting newer, better dolls.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
In a way, it's almost hard to process that because
it's just how everything is now, you know. I mean,
it's like, except for maybe the trade in factor, that
actually sounds more sustainable than just having a drawer of
old barbies with like their hair all missed up and
no clothing on anymore.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Well, I think, yeah, I think that the old barbie
is what you do with them now is you make
them look weird, right, you like cut their hair in
strange ways and like draw on them and stuff.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, that sort of thing. But yeah, like I actually
kind of like the idea of, oh, when you're done
with this doll, with this toy, whatever the thing happens
to be, let's trade that in, let's pass that on.
I don't know, I become more of a minimalist with
the sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
So I guess while we're discussing things that I think
the book does get largely right. One of the most
interesting and persuasive sections of Future Shock, in my opinion,
was the Toffler's discussion of how people use and understand
their time and how that's changing due to the technological environment.
(22:01):
For example, I thought there was a really interesting observation
about how fundamental duration expectation is to the character of
our lives. We are creatures that we have no choice
but to live in time, and most situations that we
are involved in or affected by, come with an unspoken
(22:22):
expectation of a certain duration in time. We expect it
to take a certain amount of time to make dinner,
a certain amount of time to complete the workday, a
certain amount of time to travel here or there. And
also for longer situations. There are duration expectations for business
and employment relationships, length of time at a particular residence,
(22:45):
length of a friendship or another type of social relationship,
length of a marriage, and sometimes we get these expectations wrong.
You know, you can't always predict, but we have to
be able to predict the duration of most of these
situations with some reasonable degree of accuracy, or we cannot
navigate our lives. Everything feels totally out of control. And
(23:08):
I think the Tofflers advance a pretty convincing case that
in general, in the twentieth century, especially the later twentieth
century and superindustrial society, most situations in life are evolving
to become shorter and change faster, and this acceleration is
(23:28):
too fast for people to adjust their duration expectations accordingly,
and this contributes to a widespread feeling that life is
overwhelming and out of control and causes people to feel
helpless and confused and alienated. And for the most part,
I think this diagnosis is largely insightful and correct.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
This is fascinating. Yeah, getting into how we think about
our time, how we estimate the time duration of things
we are going to be involved in, and then yeah,
I think we can all think of time just in
our regular day to day where you get something wrong
and yeah, before long, you maybe you don't feel just
like overwhelming anxiety, but you do feel that feeling of well,
(24:10):
there's a sense of narrowing, there's a sense of things
slipping a little out of your control, moving faster than
they should.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
So, because their comments on time use were one of
the most interesting things about the book to me, I
was wondering, Okay, has anybody looked at this empirically. Do
we have like a retrospective that has tried to evaluate
their claims and said how do they stack up? I
actually did find a paper on this subject. So there
was a paper published in the year twenty ten in
the Journal of Future Studies by an author named Mika Pantsar,
(24:43):
and it's called Future Shock, discussing the changing temporal architecture
of daily Life. So, Mika Pantsar is an economist based
at the University of Helsinki in Finland. And so this
article assesses some of the claim that are put forward
in Future Shock that feel correct, but are kind of
(25:04):
presented in the book without rigorous empirical backing. They're just
sort of asserted, specifically, claims about changes to the rhythms
of everyday life. Pants Are writes quote. The main purpose
of this article is to examine, in the light of
time use research, to what extent and in what ways
Tofler's claims about the quickening of life rhythms have come true.
(25:26):
And pants Are begins by noting a seeming paradox in
the research on time use. Since the time Future Shock
was published in nineteen seventy, studies in Western countries have
shown that, on average, the amount of leisure time in
people's lives has slowly but steadily increased. I think it's
not a huge difference, but there's been a gradual increase
(25:48):
of a little bit with the exceptions of the United
States in Great Britain, where it seems leisure time has
actually somewhat decreased in the same period, at least up
to the point of the studies pants are sites which
are from nineteen ninety two in two thousand and four,
can't be sure if the trend continues after that. But
even in the rest of the Western countries where people
have on average had a little bit more free time,
(26:12):
surveys have found people report consistently increased feelings of hurriedness
in their lives. So of course it makes sense why
people would be feeling more hurried and stressed out in
the US and Great Britain on average if people actually
have a little bit less free time, But why would
they be feeling that in countries where they have more
free time than they did a generation ago? And the
(26:34):
author argues that quote, the paradox of increased leisure time
and feelings of hurriedness become understandable when the focus is
shifted from the total amount of free time and duration
of activities to qualitative changes in rhythms resulting from various
interdependencies between mundane activities. So it may be not so
(26:55):
much how much time we have, but how time is
structured in our lives. So, first of all, just to
review a few interesting empirical findings on people's time use
in general. And again remember this was published in twenty ten,
so findings coming in after that could change the picture somewhat.
But first of all, as a note, it should be
said that accounting for people's time use has presented more
(27:19):
methodological difficulties than you might at first imagine. So time
youse studies are often structured so that you sort your
time use into episodes of activity that fit into various
categories like paid work or housework or rest or free time.
But studies found that there were some uses of time
that were kind of difficult to sort into categories, and
(27:41):
some events recognized as episodes by the subjects that researchers
didn't anticipate, such as Swedish researchers in the nineties discovering
that lots of people regard quote coming home as a
unique time use episode in the day. Where does that
fit in? You know, the time you're arriving at your
house and getting settled. So this kind of research isn't
(28:02):
as easy as it might sound. Still, there were a
selection of interesting findings I wanted to mention. One was
that international comparative studies in the seventies and early eighties
found that time use varied a lot more based on
the level of economic development than on the economic system.
So people might have imagined, going, you know, your hypothesis
(28:25):
might be that time use is very different on different
sides of the Iron Curtain. But instead they found that
superpower countries both communists and capitalists, had similar patterns of
time use. People used their time much the same way
as in the United States and the Soviet Union, but
these patterns were much different than how people spent their
time in less developed economies on both sides of the
(28:47):
Cold War divide. And I think that would kind of
stack up with the future shock claim that changes in
technology filter down to changes in the rest of culture
and in work and in family life, and this is
largely what's guiding changes in how people experience time. Okay,
there's also some research indicating that in Western countries time
(29:07):
use is converging on more uniformity across different demographic categories.
So like it used to be that men and women
spend their time in more different ways, some studies apparently
find that their patterns are coming closer together, though, and
the same would be true of differences between social classes.
Though even though there might be a trend in the
(29:28):
direction of more similarity over time, differences remain and Pantsar
also cites research finding that on average, men still had
more free time than women, and the rich still had
more than the poor, But overall time use studies of
this sort revealed that changes between nineteen seventy and this
paper in twenty ten are fairly modest in terms of
(29:50):
overall time use, with one major exception one big change,
which is TV. One of the biggest changes that can
be tracked since the time of Future Shock is the
average change in the amount of time daily spent watching television.
People on average across all Western countries spend a lot
of their free time watching TV. Quote in almost all
(30:12):
Western countries, the share of television from the roughly six
hours of daily free time is nowadays about a third,
that is over two hours. Increasingly, TV watching serves as
a kind of indicator of the flexibility of daily schedules,
So when there is more free time, TV watching sort
of expands to absorb that time, and when people have
(30:34):
more things to do and they have less free time.
TV watching is cut to make the time.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
I mean we do, or at least we have been
living in an age of prestige television though, I mean
the golden age of television with so many great shows.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Surely that is what we're all spending our time on.
We're watching the great shows.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yeah, you get Yeah, you gotta make fun make time
for the fun shows too.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah. But Pantzer also says that the inner, of course,
is changing these patterns. Again, this was twenty ten, so
it seems very likely that the Internet is increasingly filling
time that used.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
To be devoted to TV.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
So maybe today people spend a lot of the time
that used to be devoted to TV scrolling social media instead.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
Step up. I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (31:19):
However, these types of studies have real limits because, for example,
they give an oversimplified picture of what each of these
classes of activities really means. What about when you are
doing work, like your paid job work on a laptop
and you're texting with a friend and watching TV at
the same time. What about when you're watching TV while
(31:40):
you're cooking dinner for your family. What about while when
you're like trying to relax and so you're trying to
have rest or free time, but you're constantly being interrupted
every few minutes by pings from work, email, or a
crying baby that needs to be soothed back to sleep.
How do you measure or categorize these types of time
use and and understand their qualitative effect on life? So
(32:03):
Pantsar says it's probably more important to look at quote
the quality of time spent, and especially the inner structure
of time use or the architecture of time. So the
author here says that there are a lot of studies
indicating that when people feel stress related to their time use,
(32:23):
a lot of it seems to come from dissatisfaction with
the way time is organized, rather than like just how
much free time you do or don't have. People seem
to feel more stressed when their time is spent in
a way that is quote externally directed, being largely reactive
to continual surprises. So I'm imagining you know when your
(32:43):
time is spent in a way that you did not
deliberately and autonomously choose, it's taken up by a bunch
of unpredictable stimuli or tasks or bids for your attention,
that you feel like you are obligated to react to
and don't know what they're going to be ahead of
time or when they're going to come in. This can
of course be true of the work life, especially for
(33:05):
certain professions, but also true of home life, especially for
people responsible for home and childcare and time use. Organize
this way creates a sense of urgency and sometimes a
lack of autonomy, leading to feelings of hurriedness and stress.
You know, for a hyper streamlined version of this, I
(33:25):
know my own brain reacts exactly this way. It work
like My sense of stress with work is almost perfectly
correlated to like how many unexpected emails and extra kinds
of tasks are coming in asking me to focus on
something other than like my main work. And likewise at home,
(33:46):
I feel a lot less stress about one big housework
project that I chose to do, versus like a bunch
of problems that keep popping up without warning that I
have to do something about immediately.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
That's a problem about about home ownership. Though. All you
do is you get all those little pop up problems
one after the other in addition to the big ones
that you know are coming.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
So Pantser calls this the number of quote action episodes
that our daily time use is broken up into, and
that the number of action episodes is likely to just
keep increasing. The differences in these numbers already correlate with
differences that we see in people's level of stress about
time use.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Quote.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
At present, women's time is divided into more pieces than men's,
which perhaps explains why women are more stressed than men
about their time use. This trend is strengthened by the
fact that the overlapping of episodes has increased, especially with women.
And so when we look at this idea about the
quality or the inner structure of time use, we can
(34:49):
find empirical research documenting several changes, and Pantser summarizes them
into a table of five main trends. First of all,
studies find that in the recent decades, time use is
becoming more irregular. Just one example of time use becoming
more irregular a shift on average from predictable established meal
(35:11):
times to unpredictable ad hoc sessions of eating or snacking,
which occur at different times and last for different amounts
of time. I will say this is certainly true in
my life. I think when I was younger, I ate
at more predictable meal times. And I don't know, maybe
just that this is something personal, but certainly my eating
(35:34):
schedule is way more irregular than it used to be.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, I don't know. I feel my mine's
pretty We run a tight ship around here. Things are
pretty solid. But that being said, with a child, sometimes
it does take a long time to finish these meals.
I don't know, they're still working out exactly why this
is the case, but like, sometimes it's like a fifteen
minute meal. Other times it's like, all right, we're about
the inner hour two of dinner. We don't have time
(35:59):
for this.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
Another example I thought of, I think people used to
have more regularized news consumption sessions on average. On average,
people used to have more likely like a standard time
for reading the newspaper or watching the evening news. Now,
following the news has become a more irregular, ad hoc
activity that occurs at less predictable times throughout the day
(36:21):
and fills in other bits of free time.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
Which is, for a lot, if not most, people, not
a good model. I mean, sometimes your profession requires you
to stay on the pulse of the news twenty four
to seven. But I know for a lot of people,
like one of a big bit of like therapeutic advice
has been, hey, just pick a certain time to check
(36:47):
the news, or find a way where you're getting your
news via say a newsletter or something to that effect,
so that it's not just you're just constantly dipping in,
constantly diving into your news app feed or or worse,
you know, your social media related news feed, whatever the
case may be. Like setting aside a particular time and
saying this is when I will get the news, and
(37:08):
then I will get it again tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
I am not a mental health professional, but I think
that is really solid advice. I think confining your news
consumption to regularize time periods rather than just like looking
at the news in idle moments, is much better for
your brain.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I know in my experience, a big one has been
cutting out this whole model where if I'm in the car,
I'll probably have the news on and listen to the
news for a bit. You know, there are a lot
of great news programs on the radio and on public
radio that I enjoy a lot, and I still may
listen to them occasionally. But I felt myself evening out
(37:47):
a bit when I started leaning more into like, okay,
I'm I'm gonna listen to music, or I'm gonna put
on an audio book. If I need something that's non musical,
let's do an audiobook instead and set aside time for
checking out on the news some other time.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
I think that's a very good strategy. Okay, so that's
the first thing. Studies find time use becoming more irregular.
Second empirical finding time use is becoming more fragmented. We
are spending less unbroken time devoted to single activities. There
is more frequent switching between different activities and intrusions of
(38:22):
one activity on another. I think about myself, and again,
it's totally possible this may have more to do with personal,
individual life changes unique to me than changes in the
broader culture. I don't know. But still I'm reminded of how,
like ten fifteen years ago, I would really often, just
frequently sit down and watch a whole movie. I would
(38:44):
just watch it through from beginning to end, with no interruptions.
And in recent year, I mean, obviously now I have
a child, but even before I had a child, in
recent years, I don't know, the past five years, that
idea just seems ludicrous, like it's just a given, and
that there will be interruptions of some sort to the
movie watching experience. I'll need to break the viewing into
(39:06):
multiple sittings. Maybe I'll need to go focus on something else.
I'll get an email or text or something I need
to respond to, or just something happens that prevents me
from sitting down for two hours and paying attention to
one thing.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, sometimes I found this sometimes in my own experience,
And I certainly don't mind breaking up a movie watching
one half one day and one half the next. Sometimes
it's broken up a lot more than that. But at
times where there have been times where I've watched an
entire movie or the majority of a movie in one setting,
And it's a notable experience when that happens, Like generally,
(39:40):
it's a testament to how good the movie is that
it was able to like suck me in enough that
I was able to not get distracted by various other tasks.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Yeah, it feels. It feels significant when it happens now.
And the author of this paper relates this finding about
time use becoming increasingly fragmented to studies comparing something comparing
a couple of concepts called casual leisure versus serious leisure,
and the idea here is that they're actually different types
(40:09):
of leisure activities. There's casual leisure, which does not require
serious concentration, can be easily interrupted, broken into pieces, and
there's serious leisure, which requires concentration and has some hierarchical elements.
In my own case, I think of like scrolling junk
on my phone as casual leisure versus playing and recording
(40:30):
music as serious leisure. I get much much more enjoyment
and fulfillment from the latter. I would really rather be
spending my time doing that, but I often default to
the former, to the scrolling, because I know that I
only have a short amount of free time and I
expect to be interrupted by something, so I really can't
(40:52):
get into the committed concentration state necessary for music.
Speaker 2 (40:58):
Yeah. Yeah, I also find this in my own life.
Like for me, casual leisure is often something like painting
a little bit on some minis, which are often on
a like a tray next to my work computer. So
I'll find on a good day, I may find, you know,
a couple of moments to sort of switch seats and
do a little bit of painting and then clean everything up,
(41:18):
let that dry go back to what I was doing,
you know, And I like that. I like having a
casual leisure activity that I can dip in and out of.
It certainly fits in with like a you know, busy lifestyle,
but yeah, that serious leisure when you can is sometimes
the kind of thing you you kind of fantasize about,
like you imagine yourself locked in a room with your
casual leisure activities where you can only do that one thing. Goodness.
(41:44):
I think I think of things like, you know, reading
a good book on a beach being in a way
kind of a serious leisure activity where it's like, what
am I doing for the next hour or two? This?
This is what I'm doing.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
I think when we mentioned in our Weird House Cinema
episode on The Never Ending Story that the thing about
the movie I remember from childhood being even more exciting
than any of the fantasy elements, was just the idea
that this kid takes a book and he goes and
hides in a room and nobody knows he's there, and
he just reads the book all day and nobody comes
(42:15):
in and tells him that he has to go do
something else. And I remember at the time that just
feeling magical, and it still does make me feel that way.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I guess one of the problems that arises out of
all this is what you're probably not dealing with just
a this this division between casual leisure and serious leisure
and having to pin more on casual leisure. But also
it's like casual work versus serious work, right, and the
day ends up getting broken into like a bunch of
like short bursts of activity as opposed to like kind
(42:45):
of like deep focus, deep research sort of work that
many many jobs require in one form or another.
Speaker 4 (42:52):
Yeah, okay, but anyway, that's time is becoming more fragmented
this second finding third empirical finding.
Speaker 3 (43:06):
Time time use is becoming more overlapped. People are increasingly
trying to do multiple different things at the same time.
And there may be a few exceptions, but for the
most part, if you're trying to do multiple things at
the same time, you're probably not doing either one of
them very well.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Yeah, yeah, I mean at the same time, it's like
you want to catch up on your podcast listening. I mean,
what do you do You've put those earbuds in whilst
you're doing other things, right.
Speaker 3 (43:34):
Yeah, yeah, well, and that does highlight actually I mean,
there are certain things that are easier to do simultaneously
than others. Yeah, like listening to an audiobook or a
podcast or something while you're say, cleaning up the kitchen
that's something I do often, or doing other kind of chores,
wrote chores around the house. I think that's a different
kind of brain division, where you know, the divided attention
(43:56):
doesn't suffer too much. I think where it really does suffer,
at least in my case, is like, I don't know,
trying to work on something while also paying attention to
something else.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Like yeah, just like you're cooking, say you're cooking at
the same time while also trying to research for something
you know, where you're like, okay, that has fifteen minutes
put on that timer. Now I have fifteen minutes to
do this other task. But you're never really completely into
that other task because you know, you have the stove
running that sort of thing.
Speaker 3 (44:23):
Now, a lot of times in people's lives, it just
seems like you have no choice but to multitask because
you know you've got two things you've got to do
and you only have a certain amount of time. So
this is just something that is increasingly true about modern life.
Apparently more and more tasks are taking place simultaneously. Another
change that studies have found, which is that time use
(44:45):
and everyday routines are shifting to new places. Just one
example here, people are increasingly trying to do certain time
use activities in the car while commuting that maybe used
to take place in the home or somewhere else. And
then finally last the fifth finding here is quote productivity
gains and rationalization achieved by new technology does not generate
(45:09):
free time, but rather heightens standards. So I think the
illustration here as you imagine some new labor saving device
that makes it easier to get your work done faster,
or makes it easier to clean your home. Maybe you
get a new appliance that does some kind of chore
for you that you used to have to do with
your hands. Does this generate more new free time in
(45:29):
your life? The answer is generally no. Instead, it increases
how much people report that they are expected to accomplish whatever,
you know, whether that's like paid work or housework or whatever.
So there's just sort of like an increasing standard of
what you feel you have to do.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Yeah, it's like the robot is cleaning the floor now,
and now I owe it to the universe to work
more to make up for like my laziness or something,
you know, I don't know, like sometimes there's kind of
this weird like element of guilt associated to it, you know,
like if I'm not working, if I'm not fixing something,
then I'm somehow like cheating the universe somehow.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
So there are some other sections of this paper that
are kind of interesting, but I'm not really going to
get into stuff about like rhythm analysis and relationship of
like biological rhythms to time use in life and stuff.
But one of Panther's points here is that while the
Tofflers may have gotten plenty of things wrong, their core
predictions about coming changes in time use are essentially borne
(46:35):
out by the empirical research. They were pretty good at
predicting what was going to happen with time, the increasing
fragmentation of our time, increasing multitasking, increasing irregularity, shortening of
time intervals for doing things that this is basically what
has been found by most of the research on this subject.
(46:55):
Our time use has become more irregular, more fragmented, and
more overlapped. And this it does correspond roughly with people
saying that they feel more hurried and stressed out about time.
And I think it's quite plausible that changes in technology,
and then downstream from that, changes in the economy, downstream
changes in culture, the culture of work and of home
(47:16):
life and all that are plausibly to blame for this. Now, interestingly,
here the author does point out one thing about these
time you studies that they do think that the Toffler's
got wrong. So Panser says, quote on one point, Toafler
was clearly wrong, according to our present knowledge. He expected
the society of urgency would kill human interaction and in
(47:38):
particular lead to a weakening of the position of the family,
the home, the children, and the spouse. In fact, however,
and rather surprisingly, both time you studies and value studies
conducted over the past few decades tell us about distinct
growth of family and home centeredness in the Western world.
And then a number of studies are cited here. Furthermore,
(48:00):
the new information technology has not moved time use away
from the home either. It has done the opposite. So
I thought that was really interesting. The Tofflers thought that
the technological environment of the super industrial age would weaken
family connections and get people to spend more and more
time coming and going outside the home. Empirically, people are
(48:23):
spending more time at home than ever. Perhaps it did
weaken some relationships, Like I think there might be some
research indicating a weakening of friendships outside the home and
maybe made people less likely to see friends in places
outside the home. And maybe now people instead are spending
more of their free time like at home with the
(48:45):
internet instead of going out and seeing friends and doing
things with friends. But I thought that was interesting that
it didn't change, It didn't weaken the home based relationships
the way they.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
Predicted, right right, That is interesting.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
But in the end of this paper, Panther says that
the empirical studies on time use show that Tofler was
mostly correct about our time quote. In the future, if
we believe in Toafler, many of our repetitive everyday life
routines will disappear as our weekly rhythm of work breaks
up with the new communication technology accelerating our pace rather
(49:22):
than relaxing it. The duration and number of episodes, their
overlaps and mutual couplings, their construction and placement in time
and space, and opportunities to affect the placement of activities
are to the greatest extent, well being issues. So pointing
out again that like this isn't just sort of like
(49:42):
neutral information, that like studies about how we use our time,
the quality of time spent, and how time relates to say,
our expectations about time use. This affects our quality of
life and our mental health.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Yeah, there are. It kind of comes back to this
idea that, yeah, that we we are adaptive, but we
are not so adaptive that we can change in you know,
in real time to anything like there are there are
hard limits in place. It would seem to just what
we can roll with as as creatures.
Speaker 3 (50:16):
So I feel somewhat vindicated in that one of the
parts of the book that felt strongest to me does
seem to be in an at least large part born
out by subsequent empirical research. But we could come back
to the submarine schools and the organ transplant murder gangs.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Oh yes, the modular temporary humans yeah, and social yeah. Yeah,
There's a lot lot more to talk about in that vein,
and and also in the next episode, I do want
to talk a bit about some of the maladaptive coping
strategies that they lay out in the book, which I
thought we're very insightful, like talking about, well, how do
we how do we find ourselves or potentially find ourselves
(50:55):
dealing with future shock without actually dealing with it in
an actual beneficial manner. So yeah, we'll be back with
at least a third episode on future shock, and yeah,
in the meantime, we'll look forward to hearing from anyone
out there if you have thoughts on this general concept
or some of these related topics we've talked about, like
(51:17):
time usage, leisure, activity, and so forth.
Speaker 3 (51:21):
I agree that the section about the coping strategies is interesting. Yeah,
I'm excited to get into that.
Speaker 2 (51:26):
All right, Well we'll go ahead and close it out here,
but yeah, right in, we'd love to hear from you.
Just a reminder that we are primarily a science podcast
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But you know,
we got a lot, a lot of days to fill
up with content these days, constantly working, going from one
topic to the next, So we've got listener mail on Mondays,
we have a short form Monster Factor artifact on Wednesdays,
(51:49):
and on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (52:15):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.