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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
A little depressing, but really interesting. This is about how our perception of time has changed. It prompted me to rethink how I spend my own time and change my habits a little. Gleick is a great writer, making things accessible without dumbing them down, with great prose that's not obfuscatory.
Twenty-first century life in the fast lane!
James Gleick, author of the bestseller Chaos has created another compelling and often disturbing tale of the nature of our society. Faster characterizes our modern day thinking as overwhelmingly occupied with notions of time - time management, saving time, using time, keeping time, multi-tasking, channel surfing, high speed internet, moving sidewalks, high speed elevators, telephone speed dial functions, and, of course, the plethora of self-help books touting improvements in personal efficiency and productivity.
A few pithy trenchant quotations from the book will illustrate Gleick's brilliant observation of the twenty-first century's morbid pre-occupation with time, speed and the generally unhealthy acceleration of life:
"A medication is marketed `for women who don't have time for a yeast infection' - as though slackers might have time for that."
"There are ... places and objects that signify impatience. Doctors' anterooms. The DOOR CLOSE button in elevators, so often a placebo, with no function but to distract for a moment those riders to whom ten seconds seem an eternity."
"Marketers and technologists anticipate your desires with fast ovens, quick playback, quick freezing and fast credit. We bank the extra minutes that flow from these innovations, yet we feel impoverished and we cut back - on breakfast, on lunch, on sleep, on daydreams."
"It might seem that to save time means to preserve it, spare it, free it from some activity that might otherwise have consumed it in the hot flames of busy-ness. Yet time-saving books are constantly admonishing people to do things."
And yet, paradoxically, this notion of filling every millisecond of every day with productive activity is juxtaposed with the rather strange realization that:
"Our idea of boredom - ennui, tedium, monotony, lassitude, mental doldrums - has been a modern invention. The word `boredom' barely existed even a century ago."
Boredom - as silence, as emptiness, as time unfilled - was a mental state all but inconceivable a hundred years ago. But perversely, with all of the activities available at our fingertips and the ability to access those activities in seconds, we find ourselves thirsting for more and more.
I wonder what Gleick would think of the fact that there were times when I found his book so interesting that I was skimming ... just so I could absorb it more quickly. (Note to self: the next time I listen to a piece of classical music, I'm going to do nothing else. I'm going to listen to the music for its own sake). Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss
James Gleick, author of the bestseller Chaos has created another compelling and often disturbing tale of the nature of our society. Faster characterizes our modern day thinking as overwhelmingly occupied with notions of time - time management, saving time, using time, keeping time, multi-tasking, channel surfing, high speed internet, moving sidewalks, high speed elevators, telephone speed dial functions, and, of course, the plethora of self-help books touting improvements in personal efficiency and productivity.
A few pithy trenchant quotations from the book will illustrate Gleick's brilliant observation of the twenty-first century's morbid pre-occupation with time, speed and the generally unhealthy acceleration of life:
"A medication is marketed `for women who don't have time for a yeast infection' - as though slackers might have time for that."
"There are ... places and objects that signify impatience. Doctors' anterooms. The DOOR CLOSE button in elevators, so often a placebo, with no function but to distract for a moment those riders to whom ten seconds seem an eternity."
"Marketers and technologists anticipate your desires with fast ovens, quick playback, quick freezing and fast credit. We bank the extra minutes that flow from these innovations, yet we feel impoverished and we cut back - on breakfast, on lunch, on sleep, on daydreams."
"It might seem that to save time means to preserve it, spare it, free it from some activity that might otherwise have consumed it in the hot flames of busy-ness. Yet time-saving books are constantly admonishing people to do things."
And yet, paradoxically, this notion of filling every millisecond of every day with productive activity is juxtaposed with the rather strange realization that:
"Our idea of boredom - ennui, tedium, monotony, lassitude, mental doldrums - has been a modern invention. The word `boredom' barely existed even a century ago."
Boredom - as silence, as emptiness, as time unfilled - was a mental state all but inconceivable a hundred years ago. But perversely, with all of the activities available at our fingertips and the ability to access those activities in seconds, we find ourselves thirsting for more and more.
I wonder what Gleick would think of the fact that there were times when I found his book so interesting that I was skimming ... just so I could absorb it more quickly. (Note to self: the next time I listen to a piece of classical music, I'm going to do nothing else. I'm going to listen to the music for its own sake). Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss
A little dated now, this is a great primer on what just happened in terms of the loss of our free time, family time, alone time, despite the rapid advances in technology and communication. Gleick is a great author, I highly recommend this book, "Chaos", and "Genius".
A little bit dated (already).
Somewhat interesting.
Somewhat interesting.
A little depressing, but really interesting. This is about how our perception of time has changed. It prompted me to rethink how I spend my own time and change my habits a little. Gleick is a great writer, making things accessible without dumbing them down, with great prose that's not obfuscatory.
Although some sections of the book were dated to the point of irrelevance, the majority of the book was thought-provoking and still applicable. There is even an author's note at the end stating that a book about our ever increasing dependence on technology and increasing the speed of our lives became outdated in the months between the time it was written and the time it was published. Still, I found the ideas the author discussed- about our culture's need for speed and how it has spawned our collective impatience and inattention- pertinent even ten years after the book was re-released. There are plenty of books and magazine articles available telling us that our lives are fast-paced and offering solutions to the stated fact. This book was not a New Age list of how to slow your life down or 10 ways to savor the moment, but an examination of how we got to where we are, the depth of our speed addiction, and how in some ways we can not escape the pace that has been set. James Gleick isn't telling you what to do, he just hopes you'll think about the issue.
Horribly outdated by this point, Gleick's accounting of acceleration reads as a collection of new phrases/inventions/gadgets/foods/behaviors he's either annoyed with or bemused by. There were still some nuggets of interesting-ness that touched off different semi-enjoyable musings (how quickly humans adapt to new things - how doing something faster makes us inevitably imagine the old way of doing it felt horribly slow at the time - how human speech and then idea patterns are influenced by the world around them) but this could have been accomplished much better in article format.
But even if there was an updated version that's just a short story in Wired, I wouldn't want to read it.
Gleick's "The Information" was wonderful though so I'm going to continue picking up his books regardless.
But even if there was an updated version that's just a short story in Wired, I wouldn't want to read it.
Gleick's "The Information" was wonderful though so I'm going to continue picking up his books regardless.
When I was buying this book, I was worried it might not be relevant anymore since it's around 10 years old. But I bought it because of James Gleick and It was totally worth it in the end. He beautifully captures how our lives have sped up and asks whether the accelaration is worth the cost.
Despite this book showing its age in a manner I did not strictly anticipate (though obviously should have), I really enjoyed Gleick's examination of the role of time in our lives. And, I admit, there was something strangely fun about imagining the world before the turn of the millenium and 9/11 and the rebirth of Apple and the smartphone and...you get the idea. It made extrapolating his points all the more exciting, because you could see how his thoughts relate to the future as it is now.
Also, Gleick is an exceptional writer and has the sort of style often reserved for novelist. I enjoyed reading him and the way he framed his information through encounters,
In the end, though I enjoyed the obsoleteness, the book did suffer for being 13 years out of date--my fault, not its--but it's still a provocative read about the role of time in our lives.
Also, Gleick is an exceptional writer and has the sort of style often reserved for novelist. I enjoyed reading him and the way he framed his information through encounters,
In the end, though I enjoyed the obsoleteness, the book did suffer for being 13 years out of date--my fault, not its--but it's still a provocative read about the role of time in our lives.
informative
medium-paced