Abstract
Time and space are the two elementary categories that, any activity taking place in a person’s life or in the society lies on. This research therefore discusses the questions below: Given the condition of contemporary time-space compression which is rooted on the basis of development of information technology, how do IT engineers in Taiwan, who are always facing enormous real-time works assigned to them, deal with the conflict between real-time works and other realms of everyday life? How do they conceive and accordingly arrange the boundaries within the realms of their everyday life? Further, how are they, as subjects that conceive and act, affected by real-time works that being possible only under contemporary information technology, and how do they consequently interact and reproduce their life world? According to the investigation of the study, there appears to be two main strategies for survival under real-time labor, which can be identified in the practices in the everyday lives of the interviewees. They are as below: Firstly, in terms of cognition, interviewees tends to treat different aspect of everyday life with an attitude that over-emphasizing utility and being technological-rational; secondly, a tendency of being numb in terms of capability of feeling and emotion is also shown. Based on these findings, this study also brings up the issue of reconsidering the adequacy of using the classic concept – alienation, to explain the current conditions of post-industrial society.