streaming video broadcast of its NCAA tournament coverage, which allowed employees to watch games at their desks.11 The audience research firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas estimated that the event cost the nation’s economy billions of dollars in lost productivity.12 Major media outlets picked up on this figure and published stories about the dangers of watching the games at work. These alarmist reports ignored the fact that employees discussed the tournament, checked scores, or set up portable televisions to watch the tournament long before streaming video was a part of office culture.13 Furthermore, the numbers used in the Challenger, Gray, and Christmas estimate are only accurate if every person that reported to be a sports fan in the country decided to watch every second of every game at work.14 Such a scenario is highly improbable. The outrage and concern over workplace viewing focuses on the disruptive potential of the mobile devices instead of the ways they relate to existing workplace culture.
A similar complaint is levied against the use of mobile devices on the commute. Critiques of mobile devices claim that this technology disconnects individuals from the community.15 Buskers have sung on public transit to earn money and transform trains into communal concert halls for decades.16 Public-transit authorities discourage these performances and encourage riders to wear headphones if they want to transform their commute through music. Considering these restrictions, smartphones actually increase options for socializing on public transit by enabling people to engage in conversations remotely and discreetly.
Music has been a part of commutes just as games and puzzles have been a part of waiting rooms prior to the proliferation of mobile devices. In 1996, Eileen McNamara of the Boston Globe wrote about the many ways people cope with the tyranny of waiting.17 Her story described the “waiting room veteran” who returned to the hospital day after day to dote at the side of a coma patient. To pass the time, the veteran invited people to work on puzzles and provided hugs and comfort to those who needed it. Not all waiting rooms come with a kindhearted veteran, but mobile devices provide tools for coping such as abundant games and easy access to people who can give us comfort.
People also turn to media technologies to help them navigate the social dynamics of their homes. For example, Linda Paulson placed a television in her bathroom to create a private sanctuary away from her daily stresses.18 Paulson’s tactics are echoed in research that demonstrates the variety of ways people use media technologies and content to navigate the politics of everyday life.19 Media technologies can provide a topic of conversation for coworkers, a shared reference can be the currency that solidifies a friendship, and the positioning of screens can invite conversation or repel unwanted interactions.20 Smartphones and tablets are merely the latest media technologies to help people navigate the politics of public space.
Long before Internet-connected mobile devices became popular, Paulson, Hiliker, commuters, and “waiting room veterans” looked to sporting events, music, games, and television to help them connect with others and assert themselves in their surroundings. The versatility of smartphones, tablets, and laptop computers makes these technologies all-purpose tools for navigating specific contexts such as the living room, the commute, the workplace, and the waiting room. Mobile devices’ association with these specific contexts is meaningful as emerging technologies are inextricably linked to their primary contexts of use. The historian Carolyn Marvin explains that the development of the telephone, for example, was shaped by its integration into the home.21 As the telephone was a technology of the domestic sphere, manufacturers had to address concerns about privacy.22 Telephone companies addressed these fears by creating private lines and fostering formal etiquette. The film historian Robert Sklar describes a similar relationship between early film theaters, immigrant communities, and the foundations of the movie industry.23 The same goes for television’s rise to popularity, which Lynn Spigel attributes to the television industry’s efforts to situate the technology as a part of postwar suburban living rooms.24 In each of these cases, media technologies develop aesthetics and conventions appropriate to specific spatial contexts.
While mobile technology gives people greater control over their surroundings, it also allows advertisers and media companies into our everyday routines. Media companies attempt to capitalize on our mobile habits and behaviors in particular contexts. The media historian William Boddy explains, “the commercial launch of any new communications technology typically combines a public rehearsal of contested and self-serving fantasies of the new product’s domestic consumption with a polemical ontology of its medium and an ideological rationale for its social function.”25 The “rehearsal” and discursive process travels through five stages: “technical invention,” “cultural innovation,” “legal regulation,” “economic distribution,” and “social mainstreaming.” Boddy’s description provides a structure for tracking the progress of mobile devices in the cultural imagination. Mobile devices are currently in the moment of “economic distribution,” in which media industries and creative entrepreneurs attempt to develop long-term business models for this nascent technology.26 According to Boddy’s theory, once a viable business model takes hold, it shapes future production and consumer habits.
In 2007, the audience for Internet video matched the corresponding daytime television audience, inspiring entertainment companies to target online viewers.27 Digital production divisions such as New Line Cinema’s “the hub,” Sony’s “The Station” and “Crackle,” and NBC’s “Dotcomedy” created content specifically for the online audience. At the same time, the New York Times observed that American cubicle dwellers were increasingly choosing to spend their break time watching online videos, playing Flash games, and engaging in social networking instead of hanging out at the watercooler.28 The market research firm Visible Measures reported spikes in website traffic during the six-hour period from noon Eastern Time to three p.m. Pacific Time, when the audience went online looking for content during lunch breaks.29 Digital content executives such as NBC’s vice president of digital content and development, Carole Angelo, confirmed that studios adjusted their content and their production schedules to match these viewing behaviors.30 Targeting a specific audience at a specific time gave industry veterans a familiar template and business model for mobile screens. The proliferation of smartphones intensified the entertainment industries’ targeting of the workday online audience. A 2015 Pew study indicates that 68% of US adults have a smartphone, including 86% of those ages 18 to 29, and 83% of 30- to 49-year-olds.31 These are the same populations that are prized by advertisers and entertainment companies. Targeting these people’s “in-between” moments became a strategy for creating platforms and services for mobile devices. These efforts have implications for the form and content associated with mobile devices as companies such as NBC create short-form programs for mobile apps such as Snapchat that feature the vertical orientation and aspect ratio of the mobile screen.32
I call these efforts to monetize mobile users’ in-between moments the procrastination economy. This book reveals the procrastination economy by putting mobile devices in historical, industrial, and spatial context. The procrastination economy predates mobile devices, but the proliferation of smartphones and tablets has dramatically expanded commercial interest. The procrastination economy is different from leisure time, for which producers can assume that consumers seek entertainment in the comfort of their home, a theater, or a specialized venue. It is different from work time, when people reach for their mobile phones to complete tasks. It is not a “distraction economy” because people actively choose to use their phones to help them navigate their surroundings. Many businesses offer products and services for leisure and work, but thanks to mobile devices, media companies are now targeting our in-between moments to help us kill time. Consumers in the procrastination economy largely accept efforts to monetize their mobile habits because in exchange, they receive tools for using culture, information, entertainment, or games to help them navigate a variety of social situations and enhance their mobile conversations.
Media companies, device manufacturers, and software developers are each engaged in commercializing the procrastination economy. In these efforts, they contribute to a common understanding of mobile media usage that privileges the behaviors and habits of the most active and monetizable members of the procrastination economy. Media companies develop distribution technologies and platforms such as the mobile apps for Netflix, YouTube
