“Holding Out for Something Better”: Timing and Other In-Between Times

Abstract

The chapter considers timing or timeliness, as a qualitative experience of time, in three short stories about Filipinos in different types of service work: Mia Alvar’s “The Miracle Worker” in her short story collection In the Country: Stories (2015) about a special education teacher in Bahrain; Michelle Cruz Skinner’s “In the Company of Strangers,” the title short story triptych about domestic workers in Italy; and Nicholas Go’s flash fiction, “The Blind Oracle of Mactan” about a youthful 400-year old masseur who can foretell the future. Timing and timeliness, or kairos in rhetoric, is that intangible eventuality not wholly about individual intent but the deployment of social conditions to configure possibilities for the moment. These narratives of economy highlight how the authors nuance the moment of insight to draw attention to in-between times—speculation, meantimes, and conjoined futurity. These times in-between bring to light vital exchanges and value-making that generate possibilities for world-making and communing otherwise.

Locating infrastructural agency: Computer protocols at the finance/security nexus

“…These were exemplified most prominently by reoccurring technical outages. In the case of Facebook, a major outage led to the bulk of what is considered to be the internet for millions in South Asia and elsewhere to be inaccessible for hours (Isaac and Frenkel, 2021). This specific episode highlights a first way in which activities at the site of computer protocols help to locate security politics in the (re)formation of digital networks, including that of the internet as the network-of-networks (DeNardis, 2012).…”

Overcoming Uncertainty when WhatsApp Errors/Downs: Convergence of Interpersonal Communication and Mass Communication

“…Perusahaan-perusahaan terputus dengan kliennya karena aplikasi yang digunakan oleh miliaran orang di seluruh dunia mengalami penurunan. (Isaac & Frenkel, 2021).…”