FASTER

James Gleick

With an interesting blend of history, philosophy, complaints, and insight, James Gleick ruminates on our “Faster” world. His timelines of progress in measuring how we live our lives are enlightening and you cannot come away from this book without having a much better take on who we are, how we got here, and where we’re going.

If one accepts Gleick at face value, one might see this as a long critique of modern civilization, but if you read between the lines, you see that technological progress has always speeded up time, and today we are all better off for it. Perhaps why we feel we have so much to do is that there is so much more available to be done than at any other time in history. Is that bad? Ask all the beneficiaries of modern technology if they’d rather have done it the way our forbearers did? Few would prefer to revert back to an earlier time of outhouses, the horse & buggy, and the ice box. Who would want to remove Medivac, the fire engine, antibiotics, etc., all which have "speeded up" our world?

The best way to digest Gleick’s musings is to realize that speed is ever-present, and instead of raging against the machine, we should adapt and move forward. As he brilliantly documents, the need to speed up (via artificial means - Alice in Wonderland’s pills, or other methods - HG Wells, Sherlock Holmes, etc., down through the present drug culture) has always been a part of man’s desire. Now that we’ve done it through technology simply validates earlier longings and makes it more readily available to everybody.

So, it comes down to how to deal with our faster reality. Glick’s calling the issue to the fore in this best selling book is certainly one of the best ways for it to be acknowledged, brought up for discussion, and eventually dealt with, as we content with its far-reaching effects. If that occurs rapidly, then Gleick will have done his part in helping us deal with our Faster, and better, world.