Synchronisation and de-synchronisation in the era of the smartphone

Abstract

Speed has a financial significance, it is always a reason for investment. But still many innovations were abandoned because high speed doesn’t always mean success. Smartphone rapidly conquers the world. People managed their lives perfectly well before they were colonised by the smartphone. Yet life had a different rhythm then. Our social interaction doesn’t change much, but smartphone lets us run multiple processes at the same time. Smartphone compresses and destabilises time and space, but it also has a potential to expand space and make time more flexible. Smartphone makes consumption, communication and production more efficient. But it can also reduce the pace. Speed differs by country. Acceleration, fragmented time, and addiction to speed make stress. This is a problem in affluent classes in overheated countries. On the other hand, slowness and too many gaps are in least overheated regions. Contribution of the smartphone to the economy and overall speed is huge. But not everything accelerates: family organisation, religious values, cooking practices may not have changed at all. The fast rhythms required by the smartphone clashes with the slow rhythms in the natural and physical world. Life is polyrhythmic, and the smartphone can only synchronise a few slices of it.