The Shape of “Computime”: How Silicon Valley Time is Becoming Everyone’s Time

This article presents findings from ethnographic fieldwork in Silicon Valley investigating how computers utilize time and how human engineers and designers use and understand time. We found common themes across computational and human uses of time, including the quantification and calculation of time as a finite resource; the imbalance of clock time versus “event time,” and linear versus cyclical time; the perception and reality of the acceleration and fragmentation of time; and an approach to programmability which is applied to time, people, and the world as a whole. We show how these cultural assumptions become embedded into digital devices.