The Procrastination Economy. Ethan Tussey
to access their personal media collections or have a private conversation in public spaces. Critics of mobile devices see these activities as a cocoon that separates people from the outside world.4
The fact that mobile devices often act as a barrier to public interaction leads people to see mobile technology as detrimental to empathy and community. The cultural theorist Jonathan Sterne equates mobile devices with increased individualism, as people can use these devices to customize their experience of public spaces.5 Michael Bull claims that mobile devices create an “audio bubble” that physically separates people from their fellow citizens.6 A substantial amount of research on mobile devices has focused on the question of the effects of mobile devices on social interactions.7 Zizi Papacharissi’s work sees mobile devices as offering a retreat to a private sphere where people can feel comfortable engaging with public life.8 For Papacharissi, mobile device use in public space is a political act in which people assert their autonomy by “sustain[ing] existing relationships and creat[ing] new ones.”9 Scott Campbell’s research confirms some of Papacharissi’s arguments, as he finds that mobile devices offer “network privatism” by supporting strong relationships and hindering weak relationships.10 Essentially, these devices make it easier to stay connected with our loved ones while also helping us disconnect from our immediate surroundings.
Mobile devices amplify and enhance preexisting behaviors and tactics for navigating public space. If we focus on the procrastination economy, mobile devices are positioned in the appropriate spatial and historical context. Media technologies have long been used to fill our downtime, and modern mobile devices are a part of this history. Only by understanding this history does the procrastination economy emerge as the dominant logic that supports mobile use and the monetization efforts that attempt to profit on those habits. Scholars tend to overlook the contextual factors in favor of an examination of the technological affordances of mobile devices. For example, Campbell contends that mobile devices, smartphones in particular, have affordances that offer “an added layer of flexibility by allowing for flows of information, communication, and content while users are physically in motion and/or carrying out their normal, and not so normal, affairs and activities.”11 Campbell’s assessment of the technology is accurate—mobile devices do enable constant connectivity—but this technological affordance does not determine use or explain why people use them in particular contexts. Campbell’s concept of “network privatism” suggests that we look to our mobile devices for comfort and familiarity, but the history of the procrastination economy shows that we have always looked to media to fulfill this desire. Contextualizing mobile device use as part of the history of site-specific media more accurately explains how the technology extends social and cultural practices.
The History of the Procrastination Economy
The pervasiveness of personal mobile devices has brought new attention to our everyday routines. Yet, compared to leisure and recreational pursuits, the activities we enjoy when “killing time,” multitasking, or procrastinating are often dismissed as ephemera. Cultural critics and academics treat the cinema, television, and video games as art forms worthy of analysis, while procrastination is the domain of efficiency experts, a bad habit to be corrected. Despite the stigma, accounts of mobile media use throughout history reveal the sophisticated ways different technologies have allowed people to weave entertainment properties, telecommunication, and art into their everyday lives. The history of the procrastination economy shows that mobile technologies have always been used for productivity, recreation, and socializing appropriate to particular social and spatial politics. At the same time, marketing and media companies have targeted the procrastination economy in an attempt to monetize these mobile habits. The pursuit of the mobile audience informs the development of products and services. The history of the procrastination economy is one in which people have consistently used mobile technologies to assert their agency in public space, while media companies have supported this desire and privileged those audiences who most often turn to mobile media in their in-between moments.
Books
The history of mobile media culture begins with the first mobile media technology, books. The historian Sydney Shep explains, “Unlike cave paintings, stelae, totems or monuments, the material form of the book is a fundamentally portable communication technology.”12 In Shep’s estimation, the portability of the book enabled globalization; it facilitated the transport of revolutionary ideas and injected media into everyday life.13 The power of this portable media was also seen as a danger, particularly for women, who were considered weak-willed and susceptible to retreating from reality via reading. Even more distressing to early cultural critics was the concern that people could steal away with a book and, unsupervised, encounter lewd ideas or dangerous notions. These concerns resulted in the banning of books—a practice designed to ensure that any books people privately enjoyed would be wholesome and safe.14
The desire to regulate the use of mobile media for the sake of the public good is one that reoccurs throughout the history of mobile media. Censors could control the content of mobile media but not how that content was used. Reading in public spaces presented a number of opportunities for people to navigate the politics of public space. Mary Hammond notes that at the beginning of the nineteenth century, “reading in public spaces such as train carriages serve[d] a number of social functions, from avoiding the gazes of predatory fellow-passengers to advertising one’s literary taste.”15 The history of books makes clear that people use mobile technology intentionally to negotiate their relationships to public spaces despite efforts to regulate usage. The act of bringing a book to a public space can be threatening to the status quo because the act of reading signals that a person’s attention and engagement is private and not necessarily aligned with the ideology of his or her surroundings.
Amateur Portables Era
The invention of electronic mobile media devices in the 20th century could only intensify the issues raised by books. As early as the 1910s, radio amateurs were converting military wireless radio technology and consumer electronics to create early portable radios.16 These early “portables” were designed in response to amateur radio contests and were not intended for commercial use.17 The anthropologist Michael Brian Schiffer explains that though the first portables were popular for outdoor activities, such as Boy Scout retreats, they were primarily a curiosity.18 Amateur operators dominated the early history of wireless communication. This largely male community of hobbyists influenced early efforts to expand the capabilities of broadcasting. For this group of pioneers, portable radios were more science experiment than a conduit to culture and conversation.
Entertainment and cultural programming were not broadcast until businesses understood the commercial potential of radio. Throughout the 1920s, consumer products companies such as Crosley Musicone, Outing, and Grebe attempted to capitalize on the public’s love affair with radio by making portable devices for cars, camping trips, and other summertime activities.19 The ability to be in public spaces and reach a faraway place fascinated early adopters. From the beginning, the design of mobile devices was conceived with particular public places in mind, namely, on vacation, in the car, and in nature. The technology may not have been reliable, but the brief portable craze of the 1920s provided a glimpse of Americans’ desire for mobile entertainment to enhance their experience of public spaces.
Transistor Radio Era
Portable radios became more technologically advanced in the 1930s and 1940s, as the components became smaller, but the devices did not become truly popular until the invention of the transistor in the early 1950s. Transistors replaced the bulkier and more energy-intensive Audion tubes, making portable radios inexpensive and long lasting. The end of the Second World War, the development of America’s automobile culture, and the beginnings of teen-focused marketing had a massive effect on mobile media. Portable radios provided people with a sense of independence and control over space, as it enabled people to fill their surroundings with music. The rise of the teen audience changed the music industry, as record labels began making rock ’n’ roll music that teens could conceal from their parents via personal headphones.20 Schiffer writes, “The shirt-pocket portable or, simply, the transistor (as it was called then) became a metaphor for freedom and independence; the right to express, in music and in things, the style and tastes of youth.”21 The popularity and utility of the transistor to youth audiences came as a surprise to manufacturers that originally thought