CONCEPT
Temporal Monoculture
The condition in which a single temporal domain — typically production — colonizes all others, producing apparent abundance in its domain while depleting the temporal soil (rest, care, relational depth, developmental time) that its continued productivity depends on.
Temporal monoculture is Wajcman's implicit extension of ecological metaphor into temporal politics. Like agricultural monoculture — a field planted entirely in a single crop — temporal monoculture can produce enormous yields in the short term while depleting the conditions necessary for sustained production over time. The condition is self-reinforcing: as a person spends more time in the domain of production, skills and satisfactions associated with other domains decay, making the domain of production relatively more rewarding. Each domain that atrophies makes production feel more alive. The cycle deepens. The temporal portfolio contracts. The life that contained multiple temporal domains becomes a life with one.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The concept provides a diagnostic instrument that does not require access to subjective experience. Where the distinction between flow and compulsion depends on the person's internal report, the temporal-monoculture analysis asks an external question: what temporal domains has this person's productive engagement displaced, and