We killed leisure
We think we have less time than ever, but this is only an illusion. The Economist:
Ever since a clock was first used to synchronise labour in the 18th century, time has been understood in relation to money. Once hours are financially quantified, people worry more about wasting, saving or using them profitably. When economies grow and incomes rise, everyone’s time becomes more valuable. And the more valuable something becomes, the scarcer it is.
In some ways we're living in the mushroom cloud of a productivity time bomb that was first wired by the Protestant work ethic. It just couldn't go nuclear until there was enough technology to mostly replace physical work with knowledge work.
Taken to its ultimate conclusion, if technology commoditizes all but human judgement (the purest of knowledge work products), the perceived value of time in a capitalist culture will approach infinity. In other words, our own attention will be the only value left to be added over technology.
Rather than increasing leisure time, our technological innovations may enslave us to our own inverted perceptions of value—paradoxically leading us to a state of total time poverty. The more we can do with any minute of the day, the more prohibitively expensive leisure time will become.
I want to say more. Way more. I just don't have enough time. I mean, it's not like you're paying me to write this.