Time and numbers: Counting the consequences

• In Event: How Do STS Studies Translate Numbers: Knowledge, Theory, Method

Abstract

Every moment of every day, since the mid-1980s, STS scholars and members of societies rely on a coordinated dissemination of standard time signals realised according to an international uniform reference time framework. Vast numbers of timers embedded in devices and material and social practices are synchronised and vast numbers of data points are stored according to the values emanating from this global time network. Many scholars have critically examined assumptions and political implications undergirding this contemporary time framework. Despite its ubiquity, the assumptions are commonly unacknowledged and taken for granted.
Few studies have examined contemporary time according to heterogeneous networks of actors and numbers - the approach that inspires this paper. According to this approach, the connection between time and counting becomes visible. Time and counting have been closely linked ever since the first timing procedures involving water bowls, sundials, celestial bodies and pendulums.
With this paper I review examples of STS studies, highlighting dichotomies and contradictions arising from the unexamined practices and discourses of time and numbers and their mediating effects. I identify for example, dichotomies such as singularity and multiplicity, control and surprise, unfolding and co-creating and supersedure and emergence and contradictions such as a single universal monotonic frequency versus the kaleidoscopic frequencies constituting life. My analysis has implications for how STS scholars are participating in reinforcing ways of engaging with the future that discount multiplicity, diversity, heterogeneity, emergence and other characteristics they often claim to value.

Author

• Barbara Bok, Swinburne University of Technology