日常生活数字化转向的时间地理学应对

The time geography response to the digital transition of everyday life

信息和通信技术(ICTs)对日常生活产生重要影响,而时间地理学及时应对了日常生活的数字化转向。论文梳理了日常生活数字化转向的基本特征,包括破碎化、多任务与时空替代等方面。相关实证研究试图回答ICTs是否以及如何改变日常生活,但是忽略了对其内在机制的阐释。时间地理学应对日常生活数字化转向的最新研究包括理论扩展与可视化及分析工具发展等方面,这为理解与刻画日常生活的数字化转向提供了新的理论框架与有效工具。研究发现,首先,经典时间地理学的理论和概念可扩展应用于虚拟空间中的行为。时空间去耦合是日常生活数字化转向的内在机制。其次,基于GIS开发了物质—虚拟混合空间行为的可视化和测度方法。最后,新时间地理学对日常活动复杂情境的分析直观揭示了日常生活数字化转向的时空去耦合机制与破碎化、多任务、时空替代等基本特征,并提出前后台活动、ICT介导的活动束、ICT介导的秩序口袋等理解移动ICTs影响下日常活动转型的创新概念。最后,以时间地理学为基础,提出以实虚活动系统为核心的日常生活数字化转向研究框架,并从数字生活、智慧社会和安全城市等方面讨论未来研究议题。

The information and communication technologies(ICTs) have made great impact on everyday life.However, there are few publications reviewing the relationship between ICTs and the digital transition of everyday life. In addition, little attention has been paid to the analysis of the theoretical progress and mechanism.Time geography timely responds to the digital transition of everyday life. This article reviewed the basic characteristics of digital transition of everyday life, including fragmentation, multitasking, and space-time displacement. Such empirical studies are usually inconclusive-one of the reasons is that they try to answer whether and how ICTs have changed everyday life while neglecting the underlying mechanism. The recent progress of time geography has provided a great theoretical base and analytical and descriptive tool to the digital transition of everyday life. First, the theories and concepts of the classical time geography have been extended to applied to the behavior in virtual space. It is found that space-time decoupling and the relaxation of space-time constraints are the underlying mechanism of the digital transition of everyday life. Second, visualization and analysis tools based on GIS have also been developed to visualize and analyze the hybrid physical-virtual space behavior. However, the intrinsic absolute space and time of GIS is inadaptive to the basic characteristics of the digital transition of everyday life. The decoupling has dissolved the one-by-one relationships between space-time position and activity, and fragmentation and multitasking have made the before-and-afterness as well as the sideby-sidedness more important than the absolute position in space and time. Therefore, third, the visualization of the complex activity contexts of new time geography can jump out of the three-dimensional visualization framework based on GIS, and demonstrate the fragmentation, multitasking, space-time displacement, and the complex relationships between online and offline activities of the daily activities in the hybrid physical-virtual space. Besides, the concepts of foreground and background activity, mediated bundle, and pockets of mediated order have been proposed, which are powerful in understanding the transition of everyday life under the impact of mobile ICTs. We finally proposed a time geography analytical framework of the digital transition of everyday life with the core of physical-virtual hybrid activity system. The digital transition of everyday life will be the important direction of space-time behavior in the future information society. We also discussed future research topics including digital life, smart society, and safe city.