Face time
Encyclopedia
Face time is an English idiom
for direct personal interaction or contact between two or more people at the same time and physical location
. Face time therefore occurs in "real life
" or "meatspace" and contrasts primarily with interaction or contact which occurs over distance (eg. via telephone
) and/or electronically (eg. via email
, instant messaging
, e-commerce, or computer simulation
s).
The term was originally a colloquialism
but has entered the vernacular
with the increasing number of people throughout the world who commonly and extensively rely on telecommunications and the internet
for personal and business communication.
Face time (or "putting in face time") may also refer to the practice of staying later at one's place of work beyond the time that is required because: 1) other employees are staying late (particularly one's supervisor); and/or 2) because it is perceived that it would be undesirable to leave until most, if not all, of the others (including the supervisor) go home. It is implied that the person who is putting in face time would prefer to go home if it were not for the perceived necessity to stay later at work.
"Face time" was a primary theme in Douglas Coupland
's novel Microserfs
.
Idiom
Idiom is an expression, word, or phrase that has a figurative meaning that is comprehended in regard to a common use of that expression that is separate from the literal meaning or definition of the words of which it is made...
for direct personal interaction or contact between two or more people at the same time and physical location
Location (geography)
The terms location and place in geography are used to identify a point or an area on the Earth's surface or elsewhere. The term 'location' generally implies a higher degree of can certainty than "place" which often has an ambiguous boundary relying more on human/social attributes of place identity...
. Face time therefore occurs in "real life
Real life
Real life is a term usually used to denote actual human life lived by real people in contrast with the lives of fictional or fantasy characters.-Usage online and in fiction:On the Internet, "real life" refers to life in the real world...
" or "meatspace" and contrasts primarily with interaction or contact which occurs over distance (eg. via telephone
Telephone
The telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
) and/or electronically (eg. via email
Email
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
, instant messaging
Instant messaging
Instant Messaging is a form of real-time direct text-based chatting communication in push mode between two or more people using personal computers or other devices, along with shared clients. The user's text is conveyed over a network, such as the Internet...
, e-commerce, or computer simulation
Computer simulation
A computer simulation, a computer model, or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system...
s).
The term was originally a colloquialism
Colloquialism
A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech, academic writing, or paralinguistics. Dictionaries often display colloquial words and phrases with the abbreviation colloq. as an identifier...
but has entered the vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
with the increasing number of people throughout the world who commonly and extensively rely on telecommunications and the internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
for personal and business communication.
Face time (or "putting in face time") may also refer to the practice of staying later at one's place of work beyond the time that is required because: 1) other employees are staying late (particularly one's supervisor); and/or 2) because it is perceived that it would be undesirable to leave until most, if not all, of the others (including the supervisor) go home. It is implied that the person who is putting in face time would prefer to go home if it were not for the perceived necessity to stay later at work.
"Face time" was a primary theme in Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland
Douglas Coupland is a Canadian novelist. His fiction is complemented by recognized works in design and visual art arising from his early formal training. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularized terms such as McJob and...
's novel Microserfs
Microserfs
Microserfs, published by HarperCollins in 1995, is an epistolary novel by Douglas Coupland. It first appeared in short story form as the cover article for the January 1994 issue of Wired magazine and was subsequently expanded to full novel length...
.
See also
- DigitalityDigitalityDigitality is used to mean the condition of living in a digital culture, derived from Nicholas Negroponte's book Being Digital in analogy with modernity and post-modernity....
- Principle of localityPrinciple of localityIn physics, the principle of locality states that an object is influenced directly only by its immediate surroundings. Experiments have shown that quantum mechanically entangled particles must violate either the principle of locality or the form of philosophical realism known as counterfactual...
- Social alienationSocial alienationThe term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...
- SynchronicitySynchronicitySynchronicity is the experience of two or more events that are apparently causally unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance and that are observed to occur together in a meaningful manner...
Further reading
External links
- catb.org jargon
- Zero face-time protocol
- Face time - a novel by Erik Tarloff
- word spy
- The Importance of Face Time - an article
- Favouring Face Time - an article
- Marriam-Websters Dictionary
- Bartleby Dictionary
- article on shrinking face time