ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the ‘time work’ practices described by workers in the information communication technology (ICT) and digital creative sectors. Their time work intersects with all those other strands of corollary work addressed in this book to make MKW possible. It is also shaped by a temporal orientation of what we are calling ‘anticipatory availability’. Anticipatory availability for work in particular is underpinned by a pre-emptive logic in which action is shaped by uncertainty about the future, customers’ unpredictable schedules and efforts to keep up with constant technological change and new information. It incorporates ever-readiness for uncertain proximate and far futures and relies on either the tight scheduling or backgrounding of non-work activities and family. These workers’ relationships to anticipatory availability and the time work it occasions are shaped by gender and differential access to financial, digital and other resources.
