Datafied times: Surveillance capitalism, data technologies and the social construction of time in family life

Abstract

This article maps three different yet interconnected hegemonic temporalities that define data technologies: immediacy, archival and predictive time. These hegemonic temporalities, it will be argued, cannot be understood without considering the political economic structures of surveillance capitalism. However, to understand the relationship between data technologies and the social construction of time, we also need to consider the multiple ways in which these temporalities are reproduced and experienced through everyday temporalizing practices. Drawing on an ethnographic project which investigates the impact of data technologies on family life, the article will explore different ways in which these temporalities are impacting the lived experience of family life. Looking at the ways in which everyday experiences intersect with hegemonic constructions of time enables us to ask critical questions about how data technologies surveille and govern subjects through time and consider their implication for our democratic futures.