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If one quality defines our modern, technocratic
age, it is acceleration. We are making haste. Our computers,
our movies, our sex lives, our prayers -- they all run faster
now than ever before. And the more we fill our lives with
time-saving devices and time-saving strategies, the more
rushed we feel.
In Faster, James Gleick explores
nothing less than the human condition at the turn of the
millennium. He shines a light of enterprising and analytical
reporting -- as well as sly wit -- on the newest paradoxes
of time. His journey takes us through the bunkers and trenches
of a war we barely knew we were fighting: to the atomic
clocks of the Directorate of Time, to the waiting rooms
that focus our impatience, to the film production studios
that test the high-speed limits of our perception, to the
air-traffic command centers that give time pressure
new meaning.
We have become a quick-reflexed, multi-tasking,
channel-flipping, fast-forwarding species. We don't completely
understand it, and we're not altogether happy about it.
Faster is a mirror held up to our times -- and a
mordant reminder of why some things take time.
James Gleick is the author of Genius:
The Life and Science of Richard Feynman (available from
Vintage Books) and Chaos: Making a New Science, both
of which were National Book Award nominees. He lives in
New York.
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