Faster 95
Thanks to Crag Pfeifer for sending a review of James Gleick's Faster. If you've ever felt like life's moving faster then ever, this is worth reading.
| Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything | |
| author | James Gleick |
| pages | 324 |
| publisher | Pantheon, 1999 |
| rating | 8/10 |
| reviewer | Craig Pfeifer (cpfeifer@acm.org,http://www.cpfeifer.org |
| ISBN | 0679408371 |
| summary | An observation of some of the causes, symptoms and results of living in an accelerated age.Rating: (8/10) |
The Scenario
Ever feel that the pace of life today is much faster than 10 or 20 years ago? You're not alone. James Gleick offers us 37 insightful observations of the causes, symptoms and results of living in an accelerated age. Interestingly enough, this book is the victim of the condition it describes: out of the 37 chapters, not one of them is more than 12 pages long (7.36 pages on average).If you are looking for high theory about the effects of technology on society and culture, shoot for Marshall McLuhan. If you're wondering who flipped the switch 20 years ago to push western society into overdrive, read on.
What's Bad?
Absolutely nothing. The anecdotes hit their mark each time. But don't expect a precise scientific examination of the psycho/sociological effects of technology. Faster is a well-grounded reflection on the current state of society with references to relevant articles and interviews. These reflections do tend to wander slightly off course. For example, you probably didn't expect to receive a history of the major advances in modern elevator technology, in the middle of an explanation of the origin of the 'close door' button.What's Good?
Gleick's perspective has the clarity of someone looking in the window of the western world, and the intimacy of a fellow participant. Gleick has a gift for expressing technical subjects with such sensitivity, passion and understanding that the topics and people come alive on the page. This is evident in Gleick's other works, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman most notably. Also, a wonderful bibliography is provided for further reading.
Summary of Selected Chapters:
Pacemaker
"Humanity is now a species with one watch and this is it," explains Gleick on his trip to the National Directorate of Time at the Naval Observatory in northwest Washington, DC. In the first chapter, Gleick takes us on a visit to the global metronome that measures time in units so small they pass before you notice they existed. Here devices track the frequencies of atoms and engage 50 other devices around the world in the same conversation millions of times a day: what time is it? We know that a day is 24 hours, 1440 minutes, 86,400 seconds, but the length of a year changes. To account for the subtle wobble of the earth's axis and gradually slowing spin rate, they add a "leap" second whenever it is neccessary to keep everthing in synch. As time goes on, we will have to add this second more and more often.The second half of this chapter is an overview of the 36 upcoming vignettes: Technology enables us to process more information than ever before, but it also allows us to produce more information than ever before. "500 channels" at the click of a button on a remote control, 30 different coffees at the corner coffee franchise. "What is true that we are awash in things, information, in news, in the old rubble and shiny new toys of our complex civilization, and -- strange, perhaps -- stuff means speed."
How Many Hours Do You Work?
Juliet Schor calculated that the average American employee spends a full extra month working today compared with similar employees in the 1970's. Based on this, Gleick examines where all of this time went. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, payroll records show a stedy decling in weekly hours over the past four decades. But the research is inconclusive: some studies show that we're working more than ever, others show that working hours actually have decreased steadily since the 1950's. This could be due to the fact that the traditional definition of "work time" is changing. Today more people "work from home," spend more time outside of the office thinking about work, spend more time commuting, and take less vacation time than 20 years ago. Why? Gleick posits that time has become a "negative status symbol." If you have "spare time", you must not be very important. How about lunch next week? Let me check my Palm Pilot/Franklin Planner/leather-bound officious looking object that projects to everyone around me that I'm a very busy person... This week is bad, how about in two weeks? "Overwork equals importance." says Gleick.Attention Multitaskers!
This chapter (weighing in at a terse 5.5 pages) hits very close to home. One of the biggest contributors to the speed up of life in the western world: multitasking. The simultaneous execution of unrelated activities (flossing and catching up on email) makes us feel more efficient that we shave seconds off of our daily routine, and ensures that we never have to sit idle. New devices have encouraged this habit: cell phones, so we can have meaningful conversations wherever we are, the remote control so we can watch 3 programs all at once, and the ultimate multitasking tool, the computer. Gleick tells us about a Bloomberg employee who is engaged in a phone conversation to a colleague in New York, and simultaneously exchanging e-mail volleys with another colleague in Connecticut. Multitasking is another way we try to do more with our vanishing time, and make sure that every second of our attention is fully utilized.So What's In It For Me?
The insights are painfully true, and hit home on multiple levels. The French novelist Stendahl said "a novel is a mirror walking down a road." And that is exactly what purpose this books serves; it is a reflection of the collective choices we have made as a society over the past 20 years, for better or worse. Faster doesn't pass judgement about whether the acceleration that has taken place over the past 20 years is a "good thing" or a "bad thing," it simply points them out and presents the context which allowed them to happen.Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.
Table of Contents
- Pacemaker
- Life as Type A
- The Door Close Button
- Your Other Face
- Time Goes Standard
- The New Accelerators
- Seeing in Slow Motion
- In Real Time
- Lost in Time
- On Internet Time
- Quick -- Your Opinion?
- Decomposition takes time
- On Your Mark, Get Set, Think
- A Millisecond Here, a Milisecond There
- 1,440 Minutes a Day
- Sex and Paperwork
- Modern Conveniences
- Jog More, Read Less
- Eat and Run
- How Man Hours Do You Work?
- 7:15 Tooke Shower
- Attention! Multitaskers
- Shot-Shot-Shot-Shot
- Prest-o! Change-o!
- MTV Zooms By
- Allegro ma Non Troppo
- Can You See it?
- High-Pressure Minutes
- Time and Motion
- The Paradox of Efficiency
- 365 Ways to Save Time
- The Telephone Lottery
- Time is Not Money
- Short-Term Memory
- The Law of Small Numbers
- Bored
- The End
- Acknowledgements and Notes
- Index
why?: think geek for $19 VS. amazon for $16.80 (Score:1)
Re:Faster brains not faster machines (Score:1)
This is Good News (Score:2)
thank you
My review: trite, hackneyed, boring (Score:2)
I really liked James Gleick's "Chaos" and "Genius", but this book (the first third of it, anyway) seemed to add absolutely nothing new to an already boring one-sided conversation.
Re:Threads... of Slashdot (Score:1)
--
Re:Great book, but no answers (Score:1)
Re:Modern Life is Rubbish (Score:1)
Secondly, I hardly think that shooting small furry animals amount to the important things in life. Sure, kill animals eat the meat and use the rest as you see fit. However, doing it for fun seems wasteful especially since I come from the backwoods where hunting was seen as a way to supplement the diet with meat not as merely as a way to have fun.
As for the decline in religion, that subject can fill and has filled volumes both from the right, left, religious and non-religious sources. I do not think that is what this book is about.
I am interested as many of us here are in the resulting effects of technology on culture. However, I think this book does little in terms of drawing well thought out conclusions and merely mouths many already accepted points of view while at the same time adding only a few essays on different scenes we all see every day. Once again, it is the intellectual conceit of telling the reader what they already know to make yourself look insightful.
The decline in religious activity by the masses is a symptom of the moral decline of society not the cause itself. People miss this point frequently. The idea of morality or good in people has been marginalized to the point that people simply do not see the need to seek guidance for their morality from any religious source. As society grows larger and larger and further away form the individual and more inclusive of more and more divergent groups, the idea of a diety becomes an idea so large and far removed from the lives of the individuals in the society that people cannot relate. This is a symptom once again of the moral decay of a society and not the cause in and of itself.
Faster change in great-grandparents time (Score:1)
people had to deal with electricity, plumbing, cars, radio,
air planes, store-bought food, store bought clothes,
motion pictures, the income tax, communism, fascism, etc.
Machines don't change that fast anymore-
we still drive similar cars, fly simliar planes,
watch similar TV to 30-50 years ago.
Re:1,440 Minutes a Day (Score:2)
Solutions? They're in suspension. (Score:2)
The same can be said for Darwin's "Origin of the Species".
"Faster" sounds like a trend observers journal. Do we want proposed solutions to the process of life? I'm not so sure. I think that a keen observation is enough.
This way, those folks who are bothered by their ever-accelerating life-style can take steps to slow down. Others might actually get some useful hints on how to work even faster.
Doing paperwork while having sex?? Who would have thunk? Paper-cuts much be a b!tc# though.
Hey! Hacking while fscking!! The best of both worlds!
Re:Missing references (Score:1)
http://www.freep.com/news/locway/qbaby 15.htm [freep.com]
Short version: a busy professor leaves his baby in a hot car and it dies.
Sounds like a good companion volume to... (Score:1)
Re:What is bad? (Score:1)
Oh, I do agree that you may have a reason to be suspicious - after all, the owners of /. have a good reason to publish favorable reviews - both /. and ThinkGeek are owned by Andover.net. 90% of the reviews are of books that ThinkGeek carries. I don't think ThinkGeek even sells books that haven't been "reviewed" in Slashdot.
Wonder why old books get reviewed ? Surprise, ThinkGeek just put it into their selection. Granted, all their books are very good, but still - remember that the reviews are a work of a marketing machine.
Of course, you don't have to buy your books from ThinkGeek.
Re:faster? (Score:1)
One of the best parts of that chapter was discussing how elevators were designed to make you not think about the 2-5 seconds you were wasting, Close Door buttons that don't actually work they just give you something to push instead of counting the seconds, or the display of what floor you're on so you can predict how long it will take to get to your stop.
All in all kinda disturbing.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Re:Great book, but no answers (Score:2)
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
What is necessary, what you choose to do. (Score:1)
We end up using technology for things that really don't matter and end up wasting time. We keep up with things that really don't do anything just to keep up.
Technology gives us the ability to do important things quicker and better. But we fill the time with new things to do that may not necessarily be worth it.
Re:What is bad? (Score:1)
I wrote this review. I'm not affiliated with slashdot or thinkgeek in any financially-beneficial way.
I'm just a guy who read a book, liked it, and thought that other people in the slashdot community might be interested in it too. No one approached me from slashdot (this site), thinkgeek (the associated sales site) or pantheon (the book's publisher) about writing a review of the book to post on the site. All I did was send mail to Hemos saying that I'd like to write a review of Gleick's Faster. I don't get any portion of the proceeds of the sales.
Dissapearing time. (Score:1)
Where does my time go? I've been trying to observe the passage of time with more scrutiny than in the past. I drive the speed limit, and enjoy the view. Since I run early hours (7:00 - 3:45) I rarely get stuck in traffic. However, noticing the travel time makes it last a little longer, and it also proves to be relaxing. I don't tense up when I drive at a reasonable pace. This helps me feel more relaxed as I delve into my daily work. This is a good thing.
As for the close button on elevators, I don't use them myself. If I can, I'll take the stairs. I used to take it up ~10 stories with ~40 lbs of luggage on my back. It felt good. I was still on time, and there were no worries.
I slow down other ways. I get plenty of sleep, since it is: a) unavoidable, and b) The only way I can get up at 5:30 am. I don't miss the time I spend dreaming. In fact, I find it worthwhile to get a good night's rest, else I am a grump.
Still, my weeks fly by. I have been meaning to get back into the martial arts, but that would take up 2 of the 6 hours I am home at night. I am uncertain if I can afford this timewise.
Also, when all is said and done, I end up working 9 hours a day. Whatever happened to 9-5? To me it seems more like 9-5:45. I couldn't see spending all the hours of sunlight indoors. Nor could I see waiting in rush hour traffic. I'd rather trade sleep to come in early rather than leave late.
Nothing new here... (Score:1)
Alvin Toffler said it all 30 years ago in Future Shock [barnesandnoble.com].
Interestingly enough, he took 561 pages to say it. It takes quite a while to read and digest it. Gleick skims the top, puts in some snappy internet-age anecdotes, and puts it in a book you can read on the flight between Boston and SF. (Implications here should be obvious.)
For an excellent treatment of possible implications of accelerated culture, check out John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider [barnesandnoble.com].
Time is an illusion (Score:2)
Hours, minutes, seconds -- all were invented by man for his own convenience. How much of our perceived lack of time is just that -- pure perception? If we decide how to measure it -- if we decide to measure it at all -- do we not also decide that we do not have enough of it?
It is because They(TM) define the standard unit of time? Perhaps we should be lobbying for Open Source time instead of software?
(Yes, I'm waxing philosophical. So sue me.)
Disappointed (Score:1)
My main problem with the book is that there are really no interesting ideas in it. The book is basically a semi-coherent collection of time-related stories, observations, interviews. It looks as if Gleick decided to write a book about acceleration of life, went out, collected a lot of material, edited it, put it in a big pile and presented this pile to the readers.
Nothing hold this book together besides the trivial commonality of subject. There is no main thread running through it, no interesting claims made, no good arguments put forward. The main idea of the book -- that life becomes subjectively faster -- is self-evident and seeing demonstrations of this basic fact over and over again becomes quite tiring quickly.
I think that I dislike this book because there is no insight in it. It's just a pile of facts and that doesn't quite cut it.
Kaa
Re:Gleick on Fresh Air (Score:1)
Oh blah blah blah (Score:1)
How very very PC. Picasso was truly ahead of his time. I guess figuring out how to cure cancer is "useless". Forget trying to predict hurricanes--it's useless. And what about AI? I think computers have posed some hard questions there.
Of course, I understand Picasso's point--he was overstating in the first sentence for shock value, then giving the punchline in the second sentence. Unfortunately some people take the overemphasis straight.
For instance, "[b]ut would you want someone else's solutions?" Let's assume that Gleick and I both think that the phenomena he describes have negative aspects. Why would I not be interested in hearing what he thinks might fix or alleviate this? I don't have to run out and implement his ideas--just take them in and mull them over.
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No, you are missing MY point (Score:1)
Is that so? Hypothetical example: 3 year-old with cancer. Sure to die. Goes to doctor. Doctor has experimental cure. Child takes pill. All better now.
The child has been handed an answer he didn't understand. Ask the parents if it was "useless".
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Re:1,440 Minutes a Day (Score:2)
It's a case of unstable equilibrium. Imagine a ball on the top of a hill. It is ready to roll, but has no direction to roll in. The slightest disturbance, however, will get it rolling.
Moral to the story: use less time on your microwave--you don't want the water to be superheated!
flossing and catching up on email (Score:2)
That strikes too close to home. Of course, the reason I do it is because reading my email in the morning is a habit, and I can remember to floss only if I combine flossing and reading email. I don't do it to save time, I do it to actually remember to floss!
-russ
Re:were pointed out much earlier. (Score:1)
The Discoverers is much more in-depth, though, and our changing concept of time is just one portion of it. A fascinating book - I'd highly recommend it.
Our changing perceptions of time... (Score:3)
Re:Oh blah blah blah (Score:2)
Well, actually, I think you are missing Picasso's point -- the point that anything which presents only answers is useless. Real solutions and real knowledge only come from reflection, from the give and take of questions and answers going both ways. Yes, a computer can tell you the sine of 1, but it cannot explain it to you in a way you will understand (unless it has been specifically told how to do so).
And for the record I wasn't saying that the comment's poster (I don't even remember whoit was, sorry!) was getting it all wrong; I was just reminded of the quote upon initial reading of the comment. Of course we all want to hear other people's solutions. Chances are pretty good (almost 100%, in fact) that any solution to the problems discussed in the book is going to either come from someone who is not me, or someone else is going to contribute a great deal to the solution. Not seeing that is blindness, pure and simple. Well, blindness and a whole lot of egotism.
darren
Cthulhu for President! [cthulhu.org]
Re:No, you are missing MY point (Score:2)
But we are not the three-year-olds in this equation, we are the doctors, or at least we should be. The doctor understands the drug, the researched who discovered the drug understands it. What you are suggesting is more along the lines of: 3-year-old with terminal cancer finds a magic pill on the side of the road, eats it, and gets better. No one knows what the pill was, or where it came from, or how it cured her. Thoughtful analysis of the human condition is not the same as curing a terminal illness (well, some buddhists think it is, but you know what I mean).
I agree -- a cure for cancer is not useless. I think somewhere along the line we started discussing two different things. Expecting answers from a book, which was written by (effectively) a pundit (as far as I can tell, he is not a licensed metaphysician, a theologian, physicist, or anything like it), is a little like expecting your computer to start spitting out answers to all the important questions. Those answers come from interaction, intelligent reflection on the issues, and a variety of viewpoints, and definitely not from one single source.
darren
Cthulhu for President! [cthulhu.org]
Re:Great book, but no answers (Score:3)
Your comment reminded me of one of my favorite quotes, from Picasso: "Computers are useless. They only give you answers."
But would you want someone else's solutions? I think the author's point is, "Here's some stuff I've noticed." You need to take it from there, and create your own solutions.
Personally, I'd like to see more books like this. Isn't this the kind of thing that makes for really good standup comedians? Observations? Why did so many people like Seinfeld, a self-proclaimed "show about nothing"? Because it was all observation and reflection, albeit with a humorous bent.
I definitely think I'm going to grab this book, it sounds like a great read.
darren
Cthulhu for President! [cthulhu.org]
does it apply outside of USA ? (Score:1)
Since, I have traveled a bit, and it seems time does not flow at the same speed in different places. On the internet it goes an other way. Time goes much faster there. So when you switch from places to places you seem out of synch with the locals, except those who spend much of their time online.
were pointed out much earlier. (Score:1)
Re:why?: think geek for $19 VS. amazon for $16.80 (Score:2)
Trust me... (Score:2)
Future Shock (Score:1)
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
Re:Threads... of Slashdot (Score:1)
This song has it all:
Catchy tune, simple lyrics, and every red-blooded American who is older than 23 knows the chorus by heart.
And You said there's been no good music in the last 20 years.
And how could you possibly overlook the prophetic genius in Wierd Al Yankovic's clappy tune, "First I was a Hippie, then I was a Stock Broker, Now I am a Hippie Again"
How many people will be singing THAT in June?
But it frankly scares the crap out of me that someone may actually believe that I _AM_ trying to make an honest counter-argument.
this article (Score:2)
Closer (Score:2)
>always there but added on? When was this added to our everyday
>elevators? This really does say something about us if we feel that
>those 2 seconds we just saved by closing the elevator door a hair
>faster really affected our time management. LOL!
My condo elevators have "close" buttons, and they do work. I've also seen the kind that are mere placebos (or perhaps trigger a timer).
I tend to slyly observe people in situations like elevator rides, and I think I can say that for a lot of people it's not about
impatience, but about control. An elevator ride is already a somewhat uncomfortable situation for many people, and pressing the button (however impotently) feels better than waiting for
the doors to close at their own machine whim. When I'm not in my little tower condo I work as a sysadmin, and I'd venture to say the observation extends to a lot of other places where people have to wait on technology, especially technology they don't (and increasingly, can't hope to) understand. For my part, I rarely ride the elevators anyway, and I feel that time passes slower and qualitatively better when I take the stairs (even though the time invested averages about the same).
Good read, but is this a problem? (Score:1)
Some times you need to get as much out of your time as you can. Other times you can simply run away. I know several people in thier 50's who walked away from the thier high stress jobs and moved out to the contry and simply enjoy life on a slower pace. I myself am choosing to get into a more time intensive job (and therefore life) to earn the money so I can get away and truly enjoy life.
Missing references (Score:3)
Our rate of change carries with it twin dangers, the Scylla and Charibdis of our age. Merely to keep up, one must be an unrepentant neophile. And yet, we cannot blindly accept all that is new as a boon. I don't believe that we can keep new ideas from being distributed, nor would I approve of doing it. We need to constantly consider the consequences they may bring and prepare ourselves for them.
Re:Threads... of Slashdot (Score:1)
May I suggest 'The Boxer' (Simon and Garfunkel, from 'Bridge over Troubled Water') as a mutational targer into 'The Poster'??
Reference: _Longitude_ (Was Re:Shame the book...) (Score:1)
_Longitude_ is an excellent book about John Harrison, the inventor of a seagoing clock and basically father of the pocketwatch. The need for accurate timekeeping was central to the problem of measuring longitude.
Eric Nystrom
Re:Modern Life is Rubbish (Score:1)
Like what... shooting cats ?!
I do not think that rising violent crime has anything to do with the fact that kids don't get the opportunity to cause pain in creatures when feeling frustrated. sheeesh.
Hey I won't mark you post "flamebait" or "troll" just poorly thought out.
What's The Point (Score:1)
I don't feel like reading books that are simply commiseration over something that is common knowledge.
nothing new (Score:2)
Re:Chapter 16? (Score:1)
I HATE those papercuts!
--
Re:Gleick on Digital Village (Score:1)
Move fast. Find destination. STOP. (Score:1)
Empty, harried multitasking can certainly reduce quality of life. One great problem is that it fosters a sense that one always has to be doing something, that relaxation and mindfulness in everyday activities is decadent. Humans were not built for constant stress and mental occupation, though, and a shame-driven call to utilize every moment can lead to dangerous levels of stress. Physical health becomes frankly involved when one applies this ethic to sleep, as Americans (myself included) often do. Sleep debt [stanford.edu] is not only dangerous, it can impair memory and alertness to the detriment of the very things we skimp on sleep to accomplish!
Another unfortunate outgrowth of our ever-bustling society is the feeling that simple things are no longer worth doing well. Too many people live on fast food, have cheap and shallow relationships, and neglect to exercise, read, or think because there is always so much work to do, so many places to shop, so much web to browse. After a certain point, quantity is a poor replacement for quality.
So Gleick is doing a valuable service in pointing out how driven we've become. However, we must not take his reaction too far. I maintain that the technological genie is out of the bottle, that we don't even want it to go back, and that the only solution is to become intelligent and well-informed information consumers. Because all the negative things that technology does have positive counterparts.
If one is properly discriminating, multitasking doesn't necessarily mean important tasks will suffer -- it simply requires the discipline to recognize them. I was opening my mail while reading
Similarly, the modern profusion of books, magazines, journals, websites, television programs, experts, expert systems, entertainers, celebrities, commercials, politicians, fortune cookies, religious leaders, and weatherpeople who want to tell us what to think can lead to an endless, indiscriminate information grazing which doesn't really enrich or enlighten. The ease of pulling up a page on the Ames test for carcinogens [ultranet.com] allows thousands of recreational browsers to waste their time, feeling like they're learning something useful... but for a few biologists, it may be just the right information, at just the right time.
Technology is only dangerous if we try to adapt ourselves to it. Just because we can live lives divisible in nanoseconds doesn't mean we have to.
- Michael Cohn
The bad do bad because the bad is rewarded. The good do good because the good is rewarded.
Further insight.. (Score:2)
Trying to make adolescents abstain/wait from sex.
Eat slower and eat less
Prolong sickness/death even when 'its over'
more work = less sleep (i love sleep)
Wait longer in line
And of course, these pressures of society often cause rebellion, such as more obesity, teenage sex/pregnancy, smoking, and others. This inversion is causing more problems than began with.
My personal belief is that as more and more parents are not taking care of their child as they should be (working mothers, one-parent families, day-care, etc.), children are being weened earlier, and grow complexes and fixations.
The World War II era is the time where many women went to work, and stayed there after the war's end. They also bred many baby[-boomers]. This is now the generation that is causing such psychotic behavior, because of fixations that many did not get over. There's a huge anal-retentive generation there, and it's still being passed on down. Now everyone is going crazy...
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Chapter 16? (Score:4)
Disappointing Book.... (Score:2)
Re:Missing references (Score:1)
Not more time but higher standards... (Score:1)
One of the main reasons why we develop technology is to save time and effort. Unfortunately there's not a lot of evidence that that's what happens. It used to be, for example, that if you were writing a report for your boss it had to come typed. Now it has to come word processed and custom formatted with 3-d color charts and a matching Powerpoint presentation.
I recall hearing from one of my professors about a study in which the time spent on housework in the 1970s(?) was compared to similar figures from the 1920s. You'd figure the vacuum, washing machine, dishwasher, etc. would have made life easier, right? Actually, they spent more time doing housework because the standards were higher: doing laundry everyday, vacuuming shaggy installed carpeting, that kind of thing. No wonder we have no time: we strive to make our lives look better, rather than be better.
Re:Great book, but no answers (Score:1)
Re:why?: think geek for $19 VS. amazon for $16.80 (Score:1)
Here's one of my favorite quotes from Gleick's Chaos:
Go Chaos Theory!!
One things that creeps me out in this book is how he refers to a lot of people in past tense, as though they were dead. I know some of these people, and it seems like he is refering to them as being dead! They aren't dead yet.
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I fear the faster we go, the dumber we get... (Score:1)
As things get faster, are more people being left behind? OK, 100 years ago most people didn't finish high school, let alone take calculus in high school, but I'll bet most of them could handle small math problems in their head. Several times now, I've thought I've seen every oddity concening store clerks and their increasing inability to make simple change. (The latest: cashier has to give the money to the manager to make change which is handed back to the cashier who hands it to me --- I kid you not!)
I have read reports which claim that over the last generation (about 30 years) people read less, and our vocabularies(?) have, like, dropped(?) significantly enough to affect word usage (i.e., words are changing meaning through misuse).
I've been calling it the "New Dark Ages".
Great book, but no answers (Score:2)
The only downside (if there is one) is that it's all reflection and no solutions. I think the review tried to suggest this, but didn't quite pull it off. After reading about 20 chapters of ludicrous human behavior, (How many of us keep hitting the close door button on an elevator praying it might work quicker if we hit it more) - I guess I kind of was hoping for the author's opinion as to the solution, but he didn't have any. You get done with the book feeling the changes in society are permanent. And barring economic disaster, maybe they are.
Otherwise, it was a great book - I really recommend this one myself
Have you ever gone slow? (Score:1)
Re:Read this only if you didn't get the joke. (Score:1)
Re:Missing references & Third Wave (Score:1)
The Third Wave, even after 20 years, is a great book, mostly for the way it elucidates the way the changes we've seen in our lifetimes are not just a new trend. Toffler sees this as the "third wave" of civilization, with the first being the rise of agriculture and settlement, and the second being the Industrial Revolution. His predictions about what the third wave will be about haven't all panned out (he predicted undersea settlement), but his most valuable insight (to me, at least) is the idea that this new age we're in is separate from and will gradually replace the Industrial Revolution. Toffler's analysis of how the Industrial Revolution changed the world, through centralization of power/control, standardization, credentialism replacing apprenticeship, synchronization of our daily lives (think rush hour) is right on the mark. I think his hypothesis that all these things must soon change is true also, although the power structures of the Industrial Age are reluctant to let go. It will be interesting to see what replaces these industrial age dinosaurs:
Burning Microwave Popcorn (Score:1)
In Transition (Score:1)
We're probably smarter and better informed today, but as a society we don't know the things that affect our lives the way earlier people did because they cannot be determined in this age of transition. Our technology has given us more choices and we just haven't come to a consensus about things yet.
We may never again have a time of slow change like our grandparents had, but in another 20 or 30 years, we will have figured out better ways of dealing with constant change. I think younger people today are more comfortable with the fast pace of change than older generations. The fact that Gen Y are still teenagers makes them appear to have more problems, but teenagers always have problems. If you look at Gen X, I think you see a lot of young professionals who are comfortable with our technology and the pace of change. A lot of Gen Xers are waiting to have families, wishing not to repeat the mistakes of their parents.
I think in 20 years things won't seem so crazy, they'll just seem "normal". And I'm hoping the internet will eliminate waiting in line.
The time just got distributed (Score:1)
Unfortunately instead of distributing this "leisure time" evenly amongst the population it has tended to polarise.
In heavily technology focussed countries ( I take the UK as my example) the manufacturing base and agriculture that employed most people has reduced the number of employees. Thus saving humanity loads of time - that of the manual workers laid off. Unfortunately those that manage the technology now have more work to do. So instead of providing more "leisure time" for all it has oversaturated in some people at the cost of others.
Humanity needs to reconsider this distribution of time. In monetary terms the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer but time seems to distribute in the opposite direction for the many.
We need to re-distribute the workload not the wealth!
Shame the book is actually quite poor. (Score:1)
Whereas Chaos excellently followed the growth of a science and Genius was a biography this is merely a loose collection of reasonable asides about time. I found "Longitude" (?) and "The Code Book" (Singh) which I read at the same time to be far better.
A real shame because I've always really enjoyed Gleick's other stuff. Chaos was the book that inspired me to take up computer programming so I have him to thank for that.
Re:1,440 Minutes a Day (Score:1)
When my kettle broke, and up till I picked up a new one, I used my microwave to boil mugs of water. It was significantly faster. However, the boiling water behaved in a slightly odd way. As soon as I put anything in it (like a tea-bag or powdered soup) it would fizz, even when it had stopped bubbling. The same thing never happened with my kettle. Try it with your microwave, or better still, try to tell me what was going on because I have no idea.
Cheers mate (Score:1)
Re:Threads... of Slashdot (Score:2)
Re:Further insight.. (Score:1)
Re:Oh blah blah blah (Score:1)
If you know of a computer that gives you ANSWERS, please letme know. I certainly want one!
In my experience, on the contrary, if you want to program you need a very thorough understanding of the problem.
In fact, one of the best ways to be sure you know some subjet well, is to try to program it.
The other is to teach it.
I understand what PicassoTRIED to say, but his exemple is a very bad one.
Re:Modern Life is Rubbish (Score:1)
Is that the First Reformed Church of Abusing Small Animals? Or is it the Unified Temple of Feline and Canine Pummeling?
Oh...and those activities are not thoughtcrime dear friend...they're just plain old--and mean spirited---regular crime.
Guess I'm just a Yankee sissy for venting all my frustration by pounding a baseball, racing my brother on our bikes, or hacking nasty Orcs in the virtual realms of pencil, paper, and our collective imaginations.
The evolved adapt and utilize the delights of technology while retaining kindness and thoughtfulness. Decrying the pace and development of society while simultaneously clinging to some ethic of fear of godhead and the romance of subsistence agriculture is merely luddite brutism.
And stay away from my rock garden. And my dogs.
Threads... of Slashdot (Score:2)
I've come to program you again.
because a haxor softly creeping,
guessed my password while I was sleeping.
And the flames
with just remnants in my brain,
don't remain,
upon the threads... of Slashdot.
In flick'ring lights I type along.
Submit my post, what was wrong?
Letters haloed by my squinting,
at the flame that I was typing.
For my eyes were blurred
by the flash of the cathode beam,
term'nal screen,
and all the trolls... on Slashdot.
And in the fuzzy light I saw
10,000 zealots, maybe more:
Zealots reading blinking,
Zealots flaming without thinking.
Zealots modding posts
that karma never shared.
(No one dared,
disturb the Perl... of Slashdot)
"Fools," said I, "you do not know.
Honest opinion makes the karma grow.
They post the rules so that I might read them.
Meta mod 'cause we ignore them."
But my words
like unread printout fell,
(Oh well...)
An echo,
On the threads... of Slashdot.
1,440 Minutes a Day (Score:2)
If it takes 4 mins to microwave a pizza, maybe I should switch to a burrito, at 2 mins...
1,440 1,436 1,438
1,440 1,440 1,440
100% 99.7% 99.9%
Look at all of the time I could save!
.2% of my day...
It all adds up.
What is bad? (Score:1)
Is there anywhere we could get a second opinion on this?
Progress? (Score:2)
-Benjamin Hoff
Re:Faster brains not faster machines (Score:1)
of important operations which we can perform
without thinking about them."
--Alfred North Whitehead,
An Introduction to Mathematics
Re:Great book, but no answers (Score:1)
Why *Buy* the Book At All? (Score:1)
Well, why buy the book at all? Just go down to your local library, and borrow it for free! Read it, return it, and when you want to read it again, borrow it again! All for nothing! Libraries are also a good place to find books that have been out of print for a while, too.
With e-commerce sites like Amazon.com, FatBrain, and ThinkGeek, book-buying appears to have become rather "hip" lately. What if you buy the book and end up hating it, despite a good review? Returning it isn't always an option.
The only problem I can see with this is that, in order to insure brisk sales, some publishers may not allow libraries to stock new books until they've been on sale for a certain amount of time. Also, some libraries may have a really long process to go through before deciding to buy new books. I also find that my library is really bad about computer reference books. They're great, though, if you want to learn about Excel 4 for Windows 3.1.
But for general works of nonfiction like this, and fiction too, don't forget about your local library. If you hate Amazon, this is the best way to stick it to them!
Faster brains not faster machines (Score:2)
Re:Our changing perceptions of time... (Score:1)
Or, for the ones that really never get out, what season is it?
New life forms. . . (Score:1)
Has anybody else noticed how corporations are like very early life forms? They grow and eat and reproduce, and display many of the same characteristics that cell cultures do. (And cell cultures just eat and grow and eat until the petri dish is dry and crusty.)
Like the cells in the human body which live and work and die tirelessly so that we humans can all lumber around our daily lives and watch bad television. . . I think that's what people are becoming in corporations, which push and push to get the maximum efficiency and minimum trouble out of their human building blocks.
When I grow up, I want to be a disease that kills big, lumbering life forms.
-Garund
If you're not an anarchist, you're a sleeper.
I once read this (and I fully agree): (Score:1)
the slower time passes,
the longer you live.
Perception of Time (Score:1)
Gleick on Fresh Air (Score:3)
Follow this link [whyy.org] to hear the interview in Real Audio format. Gleick talks about the book and Terry Gross tries to pry into his life and a plane accident that almost killed him. It's a good interview.
The Gleick interview is towards the end of the show.
Re:Have you ever gone slow? (Score:1)
Read this only if you didn't get the joke. (Score:1)
As the man said, its funny. Laugh.
Re:Great book, but no answers (Score:1)
We keep seeing people point out the problems in the world, but no one seems to be coming up with any alternative answers (Eg., DC this weekend).
Re:Our changing perceptions of time... (Score:1)
Re:Progress? (Score:1)
Re:Progress? (Score:1)
-Nev
Re:Great book, but no answers (Score:1)
Re:Good read, but is this a problem? (Score:1)
Re:faster? (Score:1)
Is that really true that the "Close Door" button on elevators was not always there but added on? When was this added to our everyday elevators? This really does say something about us if we feel that those 2 seconds we just saved by closing the elevator door a hair faster really affected our time management. LOL!
<3 Kat ^_^
Working more hours than 70s, less than 1900s (Score:2)
Re:Modern Life is Rubbish (Score:1)
I actually wrote a review of Faster for the Village Voice a few months ago that made this argument -- here's a quote from the piece:
Is there something uniquely compressed about late-twentieth century time, compared to earlier periods? Certainly our eyes have acclimated to more cuts-per-second, and our multitasking skills have never been sharper. In absolute terms, no one doubts that the age of the nanosecond is faster than the age of the town clock or the Taylorite stopwatch. But as a force weighing upon lived experience, it's conceivable that earlier accelerations were more dizzying for the people living through them. ... the switch from the task-based time of agrarian culture to the automated, abstract clock-time of industrialization (wonderfully described in E.P. Thompson's classic essay, ''Time and Work Discipline'') was powerfully felt by everyone living through it, laborers and landed gentry alike.
Granted, shoveling coal in a Manchester factory was still slower than watching the ''Ray Of Light'' video, but the *rate* of change was far more severe in the early nineteenth-century, when the majority of the population still had a trace memory of rural life. And in terms of physical motion -- bodies hurtling through the air at an ever faster clip, in trains, plains, and automobile -- the great leap forward really wound down in the first half of this century. Indeed, you can make the case that our transportation options have grown slower over the past few decades. (As Gleick himself points out, the Concorde was a failure, and the traffic has never been worse.) In recent years, the rise of the Web has resulted in a cooling down of our media experiences as well, with consumers moving from the syncopated image parades of television to the web's sluggish download times and text-based formatting. Even the sports currently in vogue right now-- baseball, golf, soccer -- drift along at a slower pace, some of them with no clock at all...