TRENDS : In the Future, Leisure Time May Be a Thing of the Past : Will the new technology revolution keep us from having fun? The experts think so, since we already have trouble just doing nothing.

Utopian writer Edward Bellamy put it this way: “If bread is the first necessity of life, recreation is a close second.”

That was a century ago. Since then, through the cycle of the Industrial Revolution with all its gilded promises of machines to save us time and work, Americans remain uneasy with play. We yearn for it, fret about it and throw our money in quest of it. But we don’t regard it seriously.

“It’s a very contradictory part of America,” says John R. Kelly, professor of sociology and leisure studies at the University of Illinois. “There is increased emphasis in people’s lives on what we call leisure. Still, in the social ideology is the concept that if something is not productive, it’s not important.”

Now the nation crosses the threshold of a new Information and Technology Revolution. And it appears Americans once again are beguiled by the promise of machines. These new electronic devices will make us smarter, bring to our fingertips the wonders of the world and worlds beyond, entertain us and delight us.

If you follow the breathless promotions closely, you might even arrive at a neo-utopian vision wherein technology can erase the distinction between work and play, so we won’t have to feel guilty about leisure any more.

One machine will do it all--we will earn our livelihoods from it, play on it, learn, organize ourselves, establish friendships, let it entertain us, and have the unheard of mobility to do all of this while we roam the countryside on our own schedules.

Finally, we will be in charge of our lives.

Not buying this promise are some of those who study leisure as a necessary component to human balance and satisfaction. These thinkers offer at least two contrasting expressions of skepticism about tomorrow’s technology.

Kelly subscribes to the “big mirage theory.” That is, technology is evolutionary and not revolutionary; it may alter how we do things, but not what we do.

“Vastly overblown,” Kelly says about foretold changes in American life. The huge costs of technology, its inherent complexity and longstanding patterns of cultural behavior will naturally, and significantly, modulate the process of social transformation.

“Technology doesn’t change things very much in the small worlds in which people live. Most people still live in families, they eat dinner, go on vacation. Change will have to fit in with that,” he says.

So, a 12-year-old obsessively playing with dolls or toy soldiers in 1950 is not so much different from today’s youngsters fixated on their beeping Game Boys.

A more disturbing view comes from other scholars.

As they see it, technology is rapidly separating us from the natural world, blurring the distinctions between what is real and what is not, substituting vicarious stimulation for actual experience, and giving us no leisure relief from the relentless acceleration of time.

The ballyhooed coming of virtual reality is particularly unsettling to these experts. As envisioned, these machines will simulate places and experiences without requiring physical effort or skill, for instance deep sea diving without getting wet.

“Our definition of mental illness and sanity is the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is not,” says Geoffrey Godby, professor of leisure studies at Penn State.

“People already are yearning for what is real. Why else would a highly sugared nut beverage be marketed as ‘the real thing?’ . . . Leisure is giving oneself to an act, not taking something from it. And technology is no friend of that.”

At Cal State Northridge, Al Wright, professor of leisure studies, says he is staggered, overwhelmed and depressed at how little students know of the real world around them.

For example, urban youth have seen so many images of rivers that real rivers hold no mystery. “Then I take them out to a river, and they say, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t know this is what a river sounds like.’ ”

Wright fears that Americans will accept simulated experience and never know what they are missing. “And it won’t result in the same benefit,” he adds.

Virtually all experts in the field say that Americans undervalue leisure--even in the face of overwhelming data that show that well-rounded individuals live longer and happier. Rather than trying to intermingle work and play, these scholars say Americans need more thoughtful emphasis on leisure apart from toil.

How important is it? “I’ll answer that with a question,” says Brett Wright, a professor of recreation at George Mason University. “How important is it to sleep? To eat? To breathe? We can’t continue to rob ourselves of it. We can’t sustain our lives without it. Psychologically, we’re beginning to reach that point.”

Perhaps the most important ingredient of leisure is the release from the pressure of time. And in this regard, even the most enthusiastic futurists offer little consolation.

Rather than measure time by the seasons as their ancestors did, Americans now rush to upgrade their IBM 286 computers for the faster 486, compressing time into ever quickening bursts. This, despite their lament, expressed in poll after poll, that society is too fast-paced already.

Says Godby: “Efficiency is the most important value in American life. We are becoming ever more efficient, at the resultant death of tranquillity. Whatever happened to tranquillity anyway?”

Where Does the Time Go?

How we spend our time is an eternal fascination. Jim Spring of the research organization Leisure Trends published his work in a 1993 issue of American Demographics. Among them:

* Americans have about 41 duty-free hours each week, when they are not sleeping, working, keeping house or personal care.

* TV viewing consumes one-third of our free time during the week, and one-quarter during weekends.

Top Activities

1) TV

2) Socializing

3) Reading

* Monday is the day Americans spend the highest proportion of their time working in their gardens. Thursday is the day they perfer home computers.

* Americans say they enjoy sex more than anything else. But they spend only an average of 22 minutes a week making love--less time overall than they spend financial planning.

Too Busy to Have Fun?

The University of Georgia offers advice on enjoying your free time.

1. Use restraint in work and at home to develop a slower pace.

2. Resist the pressure to use time as efficiently--and as quickly--as possible.

3. Choose activities carefully. Resist the idea of accumulating experience in the same way that you resist the idea of accumulating goods.

5. Choose activities in which you can become completely absorbed, where time becomes irrelevant and the quality of the moment is most important.

Source: American Demographics magazine, University of Georgia Department of Recreation and Leisure.