Although I take advantage of these opportunities, I am not convinced this is a good thing. Though computers are attuned to it, they did not create this world; the cultural drive to continually use our time productively and to expand our range of choices predates computers. The modernist worldview that arose in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, inspired by scientific and technical advances, espouses the use of rational choice and means-ends analysis to optimize our activities and control our lives. This orientation is reflected not only in the technologies that we develop but also, and more insidiously, in our everyday habits as Westerners, and perhaps especially, dare I say it, as Americans. Though I understand it only imperfectly, the set of everyday strategies to optimize time use that have driven my career have become so much a part of me that I no longer experience them as such. Disciplining myself to work quickly and efficiently, continually seeking to fit more into a given period of time, and seeking out more information that will help me optimize my behavior and my

Our role as IT designers is to imagine and create the technologies of the future. In doing so, we are taking part in an ongoing cultural process of modernization that, since the early 20th century, has emphasized values such as expanding choice, productivity, and controlling one’s time.