Review of "Faster," by James Gleick

 Review of

Faster, by James Gleick ISBN 0679408371

Five out of five stars

Proof that things are accelerating

 Nearly everyone talks about how things in life are moving faster and in this book, Gleick gives many examples that it is not an illusion. One of the best examples is when an air traffic controller instructs a pilot to perform a maneuver in a minute. When it is not done quickly, he raises his voice and says, “I meant a New York minute, not a hillbilly minute!”

 One of the main things that have been sped up is the amount of information that is packed into videos. The film industry is constantly pushing the envelope to determine the high-speed limits of our perception. Although I am a lifelong fan of comic books, I find it very difficult to watch the latest superhero movies as I become overwhelmed with the imagery content.

 I generally watch the network news in the evening, and I have noticed how the remote correspondents talk much faster than they used to. When the anchor cuts to them, they immediately begin their report and when done, they quickly snap it back to the anchor. One can easily visualize the clock in front of the correspondent counting down their allotted seconds.

 My favorite chapter has the title, “A Millisecond Here, a Millisecond There.” It opens with what I consider the signature line of the book, “Between thoughts, there are gaps – very, very short gaps. Can this time be used?” Decades ago, efficiency experts worked diligently in order to shave seconds off of operations or ways in which seconds of dead time could be utilized. In the world described by Gleick, that time is now measured in thousandths of a second.

 Published in 1999, this book is of course dated in the sense that many things have changed, from the development of the smartphone to various forms of social media. Yet, in it Gleick had proven to be prescient, things do indeed move faster now than even twenty years ago. The continued increase in the speed of things must of course become asymptotic to the theoretical maximum.

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