Public vs. Private Time

According to Steven Kern in The Culture of Time and Space, artists and writers around the turn of the century sought to show through their work the increasing disparity of public and private time. While clocks had been in use for some time before the early 1900’s, the birth of modern technology around that era established a need for precise public time. The strict forward march of the new public time created a tension between the way governing bodies and corporations viewed time and the way time was viewed by individuals. Kern says in his book, “In a diary entry of 1922 Kafka commented on the maddening discordance between public and private time. ‘It’s impossible to sleep, impossible to wake, impossible to bear life or, more precisely, the successiveness of life. The clocks don’t agree. The inner one rushes along in a devilish or demonic-in any case inhuman-way while the outer one goes, falteringly, its accustomed pace.’” (Kern, 17)

What Kafka experienced at the turn of the century was the result of modernization pushing public time onto a stricter schedule than in the past, and as a result society began to demand more of the individual’s time that made up the public time. Before the advent of modern technology, society ran off of an agrarian schedule. Work began at sunrise and stopped at sunset. Public and private time had set definitions; no one was expected to plow a field at night.

However, with new technologies came changes to the centuries old way of life. Electricity, light bulbs, factories, and the accurate clock changed the average worker from someone who worked based on natural limitations of light to one that worked based on the limitations of their own stamina. As society became increasing dependent on accurate time, time allowed for individuals began to suffer.

Today, new technologies have also affected how we view time. The cell phone, the internet, and personal electronic devices have effectively completed the social transformation begun hundreds of years ago. At the turn of the 20th century there was a tension between public and private time. At the turn of the 21st century public and private time have become almost inseparable. Most people are now chronic multitaskers as shown in the documentary Digital Nation, but this is just a consequence of the intertwining of public and private time. Whereas in the past work was constrained to a set place and time, people now must check their emails constantly for new developments. Essentially the work day doesn’t end. A consequence of this is that private time has also invaded public time. Facebook, google, etc. has allowed a reverse assault on time that once was viewed as strictly for productivity. For example, while I am writing this blog post I am on Facebook and listening to music. In our modern society borders that once existed between the time which we use for ourselves versus for others has been abolished, and it will be interesting to see where we go from here.

Digital Nation. Dir. Rachel Dretzin. Perf. Douglas Rushkoff. Frontline, 2010. Documentary.

Kern, Stephen. The Culture of Time and Space: 1880 - 1918. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard Univ., 2003.