Technology will free up our time, but we won’t know what to do with it

Perhaps the greatest promise of modern technology is the liberation of time – that is, the possibility of having more time for ourselves. But this means nothing other than a promise of freedom, of greater individual self-determination. The liberation of time, in fact, is nothing other than the liberation of life itself, because we are made of time. All this entails an increase in the scope of freedom, in the possibility of shaping one’s own life, of being able to become oneself, increasingly overcoming the constraints imposed by the ‘necessities of life’: from work to the pointless frustrations of our everyday lives that consume our time. The more ‘machines’ are able to streamline the pointless procedures that clog up our lives, the more the promise of having more time to be who we truly wish to be becomes a reality.

After all, every utopian dream has always aimed at this: to free us from the constraints of life that chain us to its repetitive and almost always pointless, if not unbearable, chores. One need only recall that in "The German Ideology", those two idealists, Marx and Engels, whilst railing against the division of labour, stated that in a communist society everyone could become practically anything: “Society regulates general production and, in this very way, makes it possible for me to do one thing today, another tomorrow; to go hunting in the morning, fishing in the afternoon, tending livestock in the evening, and writing criticism after dinner, just as I please; without becoming a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman or a critic.” From this perspective, time is liberated through the triumph of a sort of colossal “social brain” that perfectly coordinates the overall system of labour and production with maximum efficiency. In this way, it frees up time to become practically anything one wishes, at different times of the day, without being a slave to any specific role. How fortunate they are!

Things have turned out slightly differently from what the two founders of communism envisaged, but the outcome they hoped for seems to be increasingly within reach. It is a pity for them, however, that this is happening thanks to capitalism and its formidable technical and economic development. After all, technological development has always played a similar role: accelerating, simplifying, freeing up time. And yet it feels as though we never have enough of it. We are always short of time. Indeed, the more we free ourselves from one task, the greater the number of others that get in our way – or that we choose to take on. Why? The main reason is that we do not want free time.

Pascal, a man who knew a thing or two about the human condition, was well aware of this when, with a certain melancholic irony, he wrote that the greatest source of happiness in the life of kings lies in the fact that people constantly seek to entertain them and provide them with every sort of pleasure. The King is surrounded by people who think only of entertaining him and preventing him from thinking about himself. For he is unhappy, however much a King he may be, if he gives it any thought. And if this is the case for the King, imagine how it is for other men.

However, today, technology has made us all kings. We can be entertained constantly. What else are we doing, after all, when we’re constantly scrolling through our phones? Do we gain anything useful from it? Does it really increase our freedom? Do we learn anything? Are we enriched? No. It is pure entertainment, just like that of the king Pascal speaks of.

Technology frees up time, but at the same time provides us with ways to fill it. To kill time, to pass the time. And here are two of the most atrocious expressions ever devised by human language, yet so perfectly representative of what we mostly do with our time. After all, the very epitome of the most deleterious aspect of our relationship with time is the expression "free time". We should always ask ourselves, first and foremost: free from what?

The great promise of technology is that, ultimately, technology itself will work for us, freeing up all our time. And in the end, there will be nothing left to free ourselves from, except, perhaps, ourselves. Then we will be able to kill time however we please, trying to forget that by constantly killing time, we eventually die.