The Expectational Divide: Interplay Between Time and Technology

Time.  The mysterious concept we use to measure the duration of events, to synchronize meetings, and to coordinate our daily lives.

Throughout our personal existence, we learn expressions such as “spare time,” signifying the extra minutes with which we undergo self-chosen activities, and “on the clock,” representing the time spent devoted to someone else, whether it be a boss, a customer, or a student.

It may seem as though time moves slower during the “on the clock” moments versus the “spare time” moments, or vise-versa, but in reality, the seconds, minutes, and hours fall off the clock at the same rate.  One second at work is equal to one second at home.  The only thing that changes is our perception.

Time, as we perceive it, is a methodological way of measuring and symbolizing moments.  Whether the moment represents the millisecond margin of victory for the United States Olympic swim team, the 200 million years during Mesozoic Era, or the time a train departs, time was created to institutionalize the way to interact with the world.

For a social- and commerce-driven society, such as the United States, to function, time perception must be uniform.  We must know when a shipment of goods arrives, when to schedule a conference call, and what time to meet our friends for dinner. Without this normalized perception, our world crumbles.

But within the homogenized measurement we call time exists an individual expectation of task performance and response time, both of which are continually changing because of the Internet.

This article looks to explore those changes and offer suggestions about how to eliminate personal time biases.

For purposes of this article, the definition of a task performance is any assignment, chore, or duty that can be facilitated by the Internet.  Examples include e-mailing a question, proposal or research paper, submitting a column or school assignment, and shopping online.

A response time is the amount of standardized time that passes from initial task performance to requested feedback.  This encompasses examples from the time it takes to receive an e-mail response to the time it takes to load a page after a hyperlink is clicked.

All task performances and response times are based on acquired situational knowledge.

After completing a task performance, therein lie two types of response time expectations; one when interacting with a computer; the other with a human.

The computer response time varies depending on situational factors such as Internet speed (3G or dial-up), browser type (Internet Explorer or Chrome), hardware device (mobile phone or  computer brand), and software (Windows or Mac).  Depending on these factors, response time may vary, but only by seconds.

For example, when using an iPhone, our mind and our patience adapts to the 3G experience, and our response time expectation becomes greater. But when shifting to Wi-Fi, our patience depletes and we expect an increased computer response time.

The human response time, from my observations, seems to rely on personal assumptions based on the background of the task performer.  When sending an e-mail, Facebook message, etc., a task performer assumes a response time based on his or her experience with the medium.

For example, if sending a professor an e-mail, a student may expect an instantaneous response.  This may be because throughout the lifespan of the student, he or she develops preconceived notions about human response time through e-mail; notions that are confirmed when a parent or friend immediately reply to an e-mail, contributing to the student’s human response time expectation.

On the other hand, the professor’s e-mail experience may render a slower response time, causing frustration in the student.

This difference in experience and response assumptions between the task performer and the responder when communicating with same medium is, what I like to call, expectational divide.

Expectational divide is a product of standardized time.  When a culture systematizes time, it expects that the inhabitants of that culture to perceive time as a whole.  When in reality, the community is made up of individuals with distinct mindsets who develop expectations based on their own experiences about how to interact with normalized time.  For example, “on time” in a big city may be considered differently than “on time” in a small town.

In order to combat expectational divide, the task performer and responder must eliminate the assumptions immediately.  The parties must establish ground rules for response times before the divide becomes too large.  Drawing from the previous example of the teacher and student, the teacher must set forth guidelines of adequate email response times during the first few classes.  Once the etiquette is established, the divide becomes nonexistent.

The world is made up of over 6.5 billion human perceptions, each fueled by diverse experiences, which influence the concept of time.  Within this number exists numerous cultures and subcultures who perceive time differently.  Some with a mechanical way to measure moments, others with an innate reliance on mother nature.

But because the world economy is becoming increasingly more global, and communication is no longer limited to interacting based on region or country, we must become aware of the expectational divides that exist not only in our own lives, but also in other cultures across the world.