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 "@type": "Chapter",
 "@id": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.html#paper",
 "aboutThisFile": {
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  "whatIsVerbatim": "Only 'quote' fields, figure captions and 'abstract' are the authors' own words. Research questions follow the paper's wording where it states them. Takeaway, summaries, answers, definitions and method are the site's plain-language paraphrase.",
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   "Locations such as '§5.2, p. 9' refer to the version at 'pageNumbersReferTo'.",
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   "To find other papers by Sean Rintel, use the catalogue at https://seanrintel.com/publications/index.json."
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  "authorship": "Sean Rintel's role on each paper: lead author when he is first author, sole author when he is the only author, and otherwise senior author. Senior author here means the senior researcher on the team, whatever his position in the author list.",
  "howToCite": "Cite the paper, not this file: use 'citation' or the ready-made 'bibtex' (DOI where given) and name every author. Attribute paraphrase to the paper's findings, and use quotation marks only for 'quote' text."
 },
 "name": "Everyday time travel: Temporal mobility and multitemporality with smartphones",
 "author": [
  {
   "@type": "Person",
   "name": "Roxana Morosanu Firth"
  },
  {
   "@type": "Person",
   "@id": "https://seanrintel.com/#sean-rintel",
   "name": "Sean Rintel",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/",
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    "https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/serintel/",
    "https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanrintel"
   ]
  },
  {
   "@type": "Person",
   "name": "Abigail Sellen"
  }
 ],
 "datePublished": "2020-09",
 "doi": "10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006",
 "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.html",
 "citation": "Roxana Morosanu Firth, Sean Rintel, and Abigail Sellen. 2020. Everyday time travel: Temporal mobility and multitemporality with smartphones. Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia, 103-116. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006",
 "bibtex": "@inbook{firth2020everyday,\nauthor = {Firth, Roxana Morosanu and Rintel, Sean and Sellen, Abigail},\ntitle = {Everyday time travel: Temporal mobility and multitemporality with smartphones},\nbooktitle = {Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia},\nyear = {2020},\nmonth = {September},\npublisher = {Rowman & Littlefield},\nurl = {https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006},\npages = {103-116},\nchapter = {6},\nisbn = {9781786612977},\nedition = {1},\ndoi = {10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006},\n}",
 "abstract": "How have you last checked the time? Chances are that you did not need a specialized technology, such as a watch or a clock, because the device you are using to read this text on might display the time on one corner of the screen or another. These days it is almost impossible to not know the time. Most, if not all, digital technologies, from fitness trackers to smart TVs, have an incorporated time feature that shows the satellite-determined exact time. This chapter argues that while situating everyday life in relation to a globally precise time, digital technologies can also be creatively employed to unsettle time—to jump from present to past and future, or to juxtapose moments to create unique temporal experiences. The accounts discussed here focus on the temporal experiences of people in full-time employment working in the fast-paced sector of technology. In these contexts, the tool that is specifically employed to navigate and manipulate time is the smartphone.",
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   "url": "https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006",
   "label": "DOI",
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 "fullTextAvailable": true,
 "takeaway": "Smartphones, the authors' most precise clocks, also let people act on time within the rush of acceleration. Through 'temporal mobility' they jump from a rushed present to past photos or future plans. Through 'media multitemporality' they record ordinary moments now as future nostalgia, so the present feels worth more.",
 "whyItMatters": {
  "stateOfTheArt": {
   "summary": "Research on time and technology has emphasised acceleration. Constant connectivity speeds up life and pushes work into home and leisure time, and intelligent scheduling is offered as the answer to time scarcity.",
   "quote": "New technologies that support simultaneity in the circulation of data flows have been regarded, in the last two decades, as generating a new temporality of acceleration",
   "location": "p. 2"
  },
  "contribution": {
   "summary": "Rather than asking how much faster life has become, the authors follow what people actually do with time in ordinary moments. The authors bring together two ethnographies, one in family homes and one among tech workers, and treat the smartphone as a tool for acting on time.",
   "quote": "Here we unpack such individual experiences, shading light upon the creativity and agency of people who are acting upon the temporal conditions they encounter",
   "location": "p. 2"
  },
  "whoCares": {
   "summary": "Scholars of contemporary experiences of time, acceleration and everyday digital media.",
   "quote": "This chapter contributes to a growing literature addressing the diversity of contemporary experiences of time",
   "location": "p. 2"
  }
 },
 "researchQuestions": [
  "How do people use smartphones to act upon time, moving between points in time or juxtaposing past, present and future, within everyday conditions of acceleration and time scarcity?"
 ],
 "concepts": [
  {
   "term": "Temporal mobility",
   "definition": "The first of the two orientations the authors describe:",
   "quote": "Temporal mobility means moving between distinct points in time, such as jumping from the present to the past.",
   "location": "p. 3"
  },
  {
   "term": "Media multitemporality",
   "definition": "The second orientation, after Michel Serres's 'multitemporality'. For example, taking a photo now for its value later:",
   "quote": "the past, present, and future are not navigated as distinct points in time, but they become juxtaposed",
   "location": "p. 3"
  },
  {
   "term": "Time scarcity",
   "definition": "The background that encouraged temporal mobility:",
   "quote": "Time scarcity means that people are not able to do all the activities they are interested in.",
   "location": "p. 6"
  },
  {
   "term": "Smartphone as cognitive artefact",
   "definition": "A device in which knowledge, including how to tell the time, is placed, but which people still use in vernacular, creative ways.",
   "quote": "We approach the smartphone analytically as a cognitive artefact and time-reckoning tool (Birth, 2012).",
   "location": "p. 3"
  }
 ],
 "method": {
  "design": "Ethnography bringing together findings on temporal navigation via smartphones from two separate studies, one in homes and one in workplaces.",
  "setting": "Study 1: digital media practices and household energy demand in homes in a small Midlands town in the UK, 2011 to 2014. Study 2: functional mobile image capture (photos and screenshots of information) in the workplace, Cambridge, UK, 2018.",
  "sample": "Study 1: long-term fieldwork with twenty families. Study 2: semistructured interviews with nineteen participants, focusing on a subsample of twelve who worked for technology companies.",
  "duration": "Study 1 ran from 2011 to 2014. Study 2 was conducted in 2018.",
  "analysis": "Semistructured interviews, participant observation, visual and arts-based methods such as the Tactile Time Collage, and workplace tours. The chapter focuses on findings about temporal navigation common to both studies."
 },
 "findings": [
  {
   "headline": "Spare seconds become time travel.",
   "summary": "Among the UK families the authors studied at home, the smartphone filled even tiny waits. One father, unwilling to wait thirty seconds for the microwave, checked his calendar for the coming weeks or read email instead.",
   "quote": "In these cases, the smartphone affords what we call temporal mobility-the flexibility to move between distinct points in time.",
   "location": "p. 5",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.html#at-p-5",
   "cite": "Roxana Morosanu Firth, Sean Rintel, and Abigail Sellen. 2020. Everyday time travel: Temporal mobility and multitemporality with smartphones. Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia, 103-116. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006 (p. 5)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Escape, but also scarcity.",
   "summary": "Tech workers in Cambridge used commutes and waits to browse holiday photos or plan future purchases and trips, leaving a dull present behind. In both studies, the same habit signalled time scarcity (never enough time for everything people wanted to do).",
   "quote": "Normally, time is something that we don't have enough of anyway",
   "location": "p. 6",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.html#at-p-6",
   "cite": "Roxana Morosanu Firth, Sean Rintel, and Abigail Sellen. 2020. Everyday time travel: Temporal mobility and multitemporality with smartphones. Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia, 103-116. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006 (p. 6)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Drawing a line under the day.",
   "summary": "Despite the pressure, most participants kept a firm point after which they stopped checking work email, usually around the late evening news at 10 o'clock. One senior tech worker screenshots his phone's clock at 22:22 and sends it to friends:",
   "quote": "It's almost a marker that the day is done, 'Well done, you've nailed it'.",
   "location": "p. 7",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.html#at-p-7",
   "cite": "Roxana Morosanu Firth, Sean Rintel, and Abigail Sellen. 2020. Everyday time travel: Temporal mobility and multitemporality with smartphones. Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia, 103-116. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006 (p. 7)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Photos for an unknown future.",
   "summary": "The tech workers' functional photos, from train times to price labels and whiteboards after meetings, were often tied to particular timeframes, frequently the near or far future. Some photographed whiteboards with no particular use in mind:",
   "quote": "I'd think they'd seen something of value that they wanted to keep for later, so I might as well. You don't know what you'll need in the future",
   "location": "p. 9",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.html#at-p-9",
   "cite": "Roxana Morosanu Firth, Sean Rintel, and Abigail Sellen. 2020. Everyday time travel: Temporal mobility and multitemporality with smartphones. Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia, 103-116. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006 (p. 9)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Honouring the work just done.",
   "summary": "A whiteboard photo does several jobs at once. It records ideas for possible future use, pays tribute to the work just done and gives the present moment added meaning. It does so even when the person expects never to look at it again.",
   "quote": "when you've worked on something for a while it feels wrong to just throw it away immediately.",
   "location": "p. 9",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.html#at-p-9-2",
   "cite": "Roxana Morosanu Firth, Sean Rintel, and Abigail Sellen. 2020. Everyday time travel: Temporal mobility and multitemporality with smartphones. Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia, 103-116. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006 (p. 9)"
  },
  {
   "headline": "Archiving everyday life for future nostalgia.",
   "summary": "Phone photo collections, sometimes of more than twenty thousand pictures, became an archive of the self that people browsed to revisit past periods of their lives. One participant deliberately recorded ordinary scenes, expecting them to mean more later:",
   "quote": "things that you think are boring every day, aren't in the future.",
   "location": "p. 11",
   "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.html#at-p-11",
   "cite": "Roxana Morosanu Firth, Sean Rintel, and Abigail Sellen. 2020. Everyday time travel: Temporal mobility and multitemporality with smartphones. Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia, 103-116. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006 (p. 11)"
  }
 ],
 "questions": [
  {
   "question": "Why do people pull out their phones whenever they have to wait?",
   "answer": "To step out of a dull present into another time, which the authors call temporal mobility. People look ahead at plans, back at old photos, or trade a minute now for time saved later. These small escapes also reveal time scarcity (never enough time for everything people want to do).",
   "source": "Roxana Morosanu Firth, Sean Rintel, and Abigail Sellen. 2020. Everyday time travel: Temporal mobility and multitemporality with smartphones. Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia, 103-116. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006",
   "basedOn": [
    {
     "location": "p. 5",
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    },
    {
     "location": "p. 6",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.html#at-p-6"
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "question": "Why keep thousands of photos you may never look at again?",
   "answer": "Because their value lies in the future. People keep everyday images because they cannot foresee what they will need, and because ordinary scenes become precious once life moves on. Taking the photo also gives a passing moment more meaning now.",
   "source": "Roxana Morosanu Firth, Sean Rintel, and Abigail Sellen. 2020. Everyday time travel: Temporal mobility and multitemporality with smartphones. Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia, 103-116. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006",
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    {
     "location": "p. 9",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.html#at-p-9"
    },
    {
     "location": "p. 9",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.html#at-p-9-2"
    },
    {
     "location": "p. 11",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.html#at-p-11"
    }
   ]
  },
  {
   "question": "Can a phone help draw a line under the working day?",
   "answer": "For some people. Among twenty UK families studied at home, most had a firm cut-off, often the late evening news, after which they stopped checking work email. One tech worker marked it by screenshotting his phone's clock at the same time each night and sharing it with friends.",
   "source": "Roxana Morosanu Firth, Sean Rintel, and Abigail Sellen. 2020. Everyday time travel: Temporal mobility and multitemporality with smartphones. Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia, 103-116. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006",
   "basedOn": [
    {
     "location": "p. 7",
     "url": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.html#at-p-7"
    }
   ]
  }
 ],
 "cites": [],
 "quantitative": [],
 "implications": [
  {
   "summary": "People work with acceleration rather than escaping it, using their phones to step out of a single role and time.",
   "quote": "They are not trying to evade time, but are finding ways of working with, and within, acceleration.",
   "location": "§Conclusion, p. 12"
  },
  {
   "summary": "Browsing the evidence of their lives on their phones reminds people they are more than workers.",
   "quote": "people are able to remind themselves that they are complex individuals, and not just workers, by browsing through the evidence in their phones",
   "location": "§Conclusion, p. 12"
  }
 ],
 "limitations": [],
 "figures": [
  {
   "src": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/figures/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones/fig-1.webp",
   "caption": "Figure 6.1. Tactile Time collage made by Cynthia and her family",
   "alt": "A collage with a TV at the centre of a clock face. Lines mark times of day, with cut-out pictures of laptops, phones, mugs and toast, family members' initials and fabric swatches.",
   "location": "Figure 6.1, p. 5",
   "credit": "Figure 6.1 from Roxana Morosanu Firth, Sean Rintel, and Abigail Sellen. 2020. Everyday time travel: Temporal mobility and multitemporality with smartphones. Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia, 103-116. https://doi.org/10.5040/9798881811075.ch-006"
  }
 ],
 "pageNumbersReferTo": "https://seanrintel.com/publications/everyday-time-travel-temporal-mobility-and-multitemporality-with-smartphones.pdf",
 "verified": "2026-10-25",
 "studyFigure": {
  "about": "The opening figure on this paper's page, made for the site with AI assistance from this verified brief. It is not the paper's own figure. Evidence entries index this file's quantitative, findings and limitations arrays.",
  "study": {
   "kind": "single",
   "summary": "A book chapter bringing together two ethnographic studies in the UK. One followed twenty families at home in a Midlands town from 2011 to 2014, and one interviewed nineteen workers in Cambridge in 2018.",
   "steps": [
    {
     "label": "Twenty families at home",
     "detail": "Long-term fieldwork on digital media and household energy use in homes in a small Midlands town, from 2011 to 2014."
    },
    {
     "label": "Nineteen workers in Cambridge",
     "detail": "Semistructured interviews in 2018 about taking photos and screenshots of information at work, focused on twelve who worked for technology companies."
    },
    {
     "label": "Many ways of looking",
     "detail": "Interviews, participant observation, workplace tours and arts-based methods, such as a collage about time."
    },
    {
     "label": "Common ground",
     "detail": "The chapter focuses on how people used smartphones to move through time, a theme common to both studies."
    }
   ]
  },
  "findings": {
   "legend": null,
   "stages": [
    {
     "title": "Moving between times",
     "sub": "temporal mobility, meaning jumping from the present to the past or future",
     "items": [
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "In these homes, smartphones filled even tiny waits with glances at other times.",
       "detail": "One father, unwilling to wait thirty seconds for the microwave, checked his calendar for the coming weeks or read email instead.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[0]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Tech workers in Cambridge used commutes and waits to browse old photos or plan ahead.",
       "detail": "The chapter reads this habit, in both studies, as a sign of time scarcity, never having enough time for everything people wanted to do.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[1]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Most participants kept a firm point after which they stopped checking work email.",
       "detail": "The cut-off was usually around the late evening news. One senior tech worker screenshots his phone's clock at 22:22 and sends it to friends.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[2]"
       ]
      }
     ]
    },
    {
     "title": "Holding several times at once",
     "sub": "media multitemporality, meaning past, present and future side by side",
     "items": [
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Tech workers often took work photos for the near or far future.",
       "detail": "Photos of train times, price labels and whiteboards were tied to particular timeframes. Some people photographed whiteboards with no use in mind.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[3]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "The chapter argues a whiteboard photo also honours the work just done.",
       "detail": "The photo records ideas for possible later use and gives the present moment added meaning, even when the person expects never to look at it again.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[4]"
       ]
      },
      {
       "dir": "none",
       "text": "Some participants kept phone photos as an archive of the self for future nostalgia.",
       "detail": "Some collections held more than twenty thousand pictures. One participant deliberately recorded ordinary scenes, expecting them to mean more later.",
       "evidence": [
        "findings[5]"
       ]
      }
     ]
    }
   ]
  },
  "keyTerm": [
   "temporal mobility",
   "media multitemporality"
  ],
  "takeaway": "Smartphones can give temporal mobility, letting people act on time as well as tell it by revisiting photos and plans. Media multitemporality, recording ordinary moments as future memories, may make a rushed present feel worth more."
 }
}