Our age is fed up with free time. Since the beginning of civilization, no human has ever had that much time for themselves. What do we do with the time saved by the wonders of technology? Who decides or influences our choices? How can these choices become generators of lasting inequality?

Free time can be used in three ways: to develop relationships with other people, to develop oneself or to get entertainment. While we must be careful to maintain a balance between the three, entertainment has taken over a large part of our free time thanks to new digital technologies. Time for oneself paradoxically becomes time without oneself, wasted and controlled by others. The almost unrivaled dominance of screens in our lives is a manifestation of this.

The play is a free time preparing for the future of our inequality. Its use by each social group is a determining element of their differences. A gap emerges between those who have a balanced strategy for using free time and those who do not. The former use their time to develop, directly or indirectly, their social and economic capital. The latter are hostages of a system in which they are the raw materials and not the customers.

This book shows that we are experiencing, without realizing it, a leisure crisis that is also bringing about profound social and political turmoil. It also shows concrete ways to regain self-control and stop wasting time.

Writer biography
Olivier Babeau is the founding president of the Sapiens Institute, an ideas laboratory dedicated to reflecting on humanity’s place in an emerging technological world. He regularly speaks in the media and has written many works, including Éloge de l’hypocrisie (Cerf, 2018).