The Procrastination Economy: The Big Business of Downtime

by Ethan Tussey

Overview

2018 Outstanding Academic Title, given by Choice Magazine

How mobile devices make our in-between moments valuable to media companies while also providing a sense of control and connection

In moments of downtime – waiting for a friend to arrive or commuting to work – we pull out our phones for a few minutes of distraction. Just as television reoriented the way we think about living rooms, mobile devices have taken over the interstitial spaces of our everyday lives. Ethan Tussey argues that these in-between moments have created a procrastination economy, an opportunity for entertainment companies to create products, apps, platforms, subscription services, micropayments, and interactive opportunities that can colonize our everyday lives.

But as businesses commoditize our free time, and mobile devices become essential tools for promotion, branding and distribution, consumers are using these devices as a means of navigating public and private space. These devices are not just changing the way we spend and value our time, but also how we interact with others and transform our sense of the politics of space.

By examining the four main locations of the procrastination economy—the workplace, the commute, the waiting room, and the “connected” living room—Ethan Tussey illuminates the relationship between the entertainment industry and the digitally empowered public.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479844234
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	02/06/2018
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Ethan Tussey is Assistant Professor of Communication at Georgia State University. He is the Coordinating Editor of In Media Res, and co-founder of the Atlanta Media Project.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 The Procrastination Economy and the Mobile Day Part 16

2 The Workplace: Snacks and Flows 35

3 The Commute: "Smart" Cars and Tweets from Trains 74

4 The Waiting Room: Profiting from Boredom 110

5 The "Connected" Living Room: The Idiot Box Gets a Diploma 140

Conclusion: The Procrastination Economy in the Era of Ubiquitous Computing and the Internet of Things 172

Acknowledgments 187

Notes 191

Selected Bibliography 229

Index 233

About the Author 239

Editorial Reviews

12/18/2017
Critics who are quick to lament people’s habits of “wasting” time on their phones are missing the point, argues Tussey, a Georgia State University assistant communication professor, in this engrossing study. The ubiquity of mobile content, he reminds entrepreneurs, has opened up a whole new opportunity to monetize “in-between” moments that occur between work and leisure. Mobile devices can act as a barrier to interaction in public and are therefore widely seen as a barrier to empathy and community. But this may be too simplistic a viewpoint, says Tussey, who sees smartphones and comparable products as enhancing preexisting behaviors rather than substantively changing them. Making better use of these in-between moments allows people to reassert the value of their own time, and understanding these small periods of time will help developers create “a defining logic that will most likely inform the design of future site-specific media technology.” Though sometimes dry in tone and academic in orientation, Tussey’s book is likely to strike a chord, not just with the intended readership of businesspeople but also with the many readers who see their smartphones and other mobile devices as a help, rather than hindrance, to their lives. He has crafted a thoughtful, if perhaps too finely targeted, approach to a pervasive aspect of modern life. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"This insightful and timely book focuses on how earlier mobile devices paved the way for the era of smartphones and ubiquitous computing. By studying four quotidian environments—the workplace, the commute, the waiting room, and the ‘connected’ living room—Tussey’s first book contributes to a growing literature on waiting and temporality as social and political constructs."

Media Industries Journal

"This book is a nice contribution to the growing body of work on new media spectatorship."

Television & New Media

"Mobile devices and social media apps are only the most overt elements. In his overview of the system, Tussey focuses on the network of content providers, subscription services, consumer-behavior monitors and data-mining algorithms that operate, so to speak, in the hidden depths of our screens."

Inside Higher Ed

"A lucid and innovative rethinking of the cultural politics of mobile media. Building on astute, site-specific fieldwork, Tussey picks apart moral panics and tired corporate paradigms alike. The book shows instead how complex adaptive behaviors now constitute industry-user interactions within the in-between times, non-spaces, and strategic mobile day-parts of digital and social media. This book forces scholars and developers alike to question the sacred cows of media specificity and new technology exceptionalism."

John T. Caldwell

"Ethan Tussey offers an exciting and foundational conceptthe 'procrastination economy'that is sure to have a long life and change the way we think about entertainment and mobile technology. Insightful and original, incorporating both industry insight and audience use, this book takes a smart approach to a new media phenomenon."

Amanda D. Lotz

2017-11-20
A dense analysis of mobile devices and how they have blurred the lines between public and private spaces.As the subtitle suggests, wasting time has become big business, as brands extend across cyberspace and into seemingly every area of our lives. "The procrastination economy thrives at the intersection of branding, public space, and digital technology," writes Tussey (Communication/Georgia State Univ.). "As our digital lives become entwined with our real lives, there will be material consequences in the ways we move through locations." For readers capable of cutting through thickets of academic verbiage, there are some interesting insights. Rather than simply wasting time and hurting productivity, procrastination in the office an improve spirit and bonding (as with the NCAA basketball tournament), like the water cooler of old, and provide necessary breaks. In "The Waiting Room," the author focuses on waiting at airports and on CNN Airport in particular. As "programming to entertain and relax travelers in waiting rooms," it "is now available in 47 airport waiting rooms around the world." In addition to delivering a captive audience to advertisers, its "real value to Turner lies…in the promotion of other Turner properties," thus extending the brand. While travelers may feel that they are simply watching CNN, the programming shies away from crises and particularly airline crashes, switching "to pretaped segments or weather forecasts." The audience also has other options on mobile devices, including thousands of games; the author suggests, of those playing those games, that "the level of care and effort that goes into these designs is astonishing." Tussey also offers a useful analysis of how Twitter and TV have become so intertwined and how mobile devices have changed and expanded the living room experience: "the ‘connected' living room can create a vicarious living room for families that are not occupying the same space or even the same zip code."Though the observations encompass the general populace, this intermittently interesting study aims at an academic market rather than a lay readership.

Kirkus Reviews