A Quarter of a Second
The accelerating pace of modern life is a given for most people. Love it or hate it, we do more in less time than ever, thanks in large part to cheap microprocessors and widely available high-bandwidth transmission systems. But is it outpacing us, or simply catching up to us?
It's an interesting read. Pay particular attention to the part where they're talking about rapid-fire cuts in modern film. Like me, you'll probably point to it and say "Yep! Damned ADHD kids! Can't pay attention for a full second!" Until you get to the part where they note that silent films from a century ago had just as many cuts. It throws a bit of cold water on your grumping and grouching.
I suspect that as technology begins to surpass our natural temporal cognitive abilities, one of two things will happen. Either we will stop it at the "ideal" speed, whatever that may be, or we'll find ways to make ourselves faster. I strongly suspect the latter. In fact, I'd argue it's already happening, this conversion of human to cybernetic organism. Smartphones have become something like a necessary appendage for many people. Business, entertainment, communications... they do it all. Our lives are intertwined with them, and more and more people are doing what I did years ago: cutting the wire. Everyone in my life -- friends, family, customers -- knows that I don't have a home phone and my mobile number has been the same for fifteen years. It is, in a very real sense, me.
More than once I've left the house and been driving down the road to work when I suddenly get a split-second anxiety attack as I try to remember if I picked up my phone on the way out the door. A quick pat of my pocket reassures me the demanding little imp is safely saddled and my heart rhythm returns to normal. That sort of "Oh crap!" moment used to be reserved for "Did I forget my wallet?" But the smartphone in modern society has, for many people, become just as indispensable as our wallet or purse. For some people, they're one-and-the-same. I have a jacket for my phone with space for cash, license, credit cards, etc. If I so desired, I could ditch my wallet entirely. Only my natural conservatism (and a bit of sentiment) keeps me from doing so.
Over the next two decades, we'll see the phone integrated more and more with the human organism: Google Glass and the augmented reality it is bringing towards us in a headlong rush is just the beginning. Your great-grandparents would have had absolutely no idea what to do with a smartphone. Your great-grandchildren may be closer to the Borg than you think. That created a negative connotation for you, didn't it? But is it bad? Anymore than primitive medicine, manual typewriters and horse-drawn buggies were better than the way we live today? I think you'd agree not. Different? Absolutely. In any event, I'm betting that the pace of modern life isn't not going to stop accelerating any time soon, so you may as well get used to it. Embrace the speed, to turn a phrase.
A quarter of a second, then, is a biological bright line limiting the speed at which we can experience life. And the life that we are creating for ourselves, with the help of technology, is rushing towards that line. The German sociologist Hartmut Rosa catalogues the increases in speed in his recent book, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity. In absolute terms, the speed of human movement from the pre-modern period to now has increased by a factor of 100. The speed of communications (a revolution, Rosa points out, that came on the heels of transport) rose by a factor of 10 million in the 20th century. Data transmission has soared by a factor of around 10 billion.
As life has sped up, we humans have not, at least in our core functioning: Your reaction to stimuli is no faster than your great-grandfather’s. What is changing is the amount of things the world can bring to us, in our perpetual now. But is our ever-quickening life an uncontrolled juggernaut, driven by a self-reinforcing cycle of commerce and innovation, and forcing us to cope with a new social and psychological condition? Or is it, instead, a reflection of our intrinsic desire for speed, a transformation of the external world into the rapid-fire stream of events that is closest to the way our consciousness perceives reality to begin with?
It's an interesting read. Pay particular attention to the part where they're talking about rapid-fire cuts in modern film. Like me, you'll probably point to it and say "Yep! Damned ADHD kids! Can't pay attention for a full second!" Until you get to the part where they note that silent films from a century ago had just as many cuts. It throws a bit of cold water on your grumping and grouching.
I suspect that as technology begins to surpass our natural temporal cognitive abilities, one of two things will happen. Either we will stop it at the "ideal" speed, whatever that may be, or we'll find ways to make ourselves faster. I strongly suspect the latter. In fact, I'd argue it's already happening, this conversion of human to cybernetic organism. Smartphones have become something like a necessary appendage for many people. Business, entertainment, communications... they do it all. Our lives are intertwined with them, and more and more people are doing what I did years ago: cutting the wire. Everyone in my life -- friends, family, customers -- knows that I don't have a home phone and my mobile number has been the same for fifteen years. It is, in a very real sense, me.
More than once I've left the house and been driving down the road to work when I suddenly get a split-second anxiety attack as I try to remember if I picked up my phone on the way out the door. A quick pat of my pocket reassures me the demanding little imp is safely saddled and my heart rhythm returns to normal. That sort of "Oh crap!" moment used to be reserved for "Did I forget my wallet?" But the smartphone in modern society has, for many people, become just as indispensable as our wallet or purse. For some people, they're one-and-the-same. I have a jacket for my phone with space for cash, license, credit cards, etc. If I so desired, I could ditch my wallet entirely. Only my natural conservatism (and a bit of sentiment) keeps me from doing so.
Over the next two decades, we'll see the phone integrated more and more with the human organism: Google Glass and the augmented reality it is bringing towards us in a headlong rush is just the beginning. Your great-grandparents would have had absolutely no idea what to do with a smartphone. Your great-grandchildren may be closer to the Borg than you think. That created a negative connotation for you, didn't it? But is it bad? Anymore than primitive medicine, manual typewriters and horse-drawn buggies were better than the way we live today? I think you'd agree not. Different? Absolutely. In any event, I'm betting that the pace of modern life isn't not going to stop accelerating any time soon, so you may as well get used to it. Embrace the speed, to turn a phrase.
posted by Jar(egg)head at 14:54
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