Check out Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything. The notion that never in the history of the human race have so many had so much to do in so little time is explored in depth.
Summary: “Faster delivers a brisk volley of observations on how microchips, media, and economics, among other things, have accelerated the pace of everyday experience over the course of the manic 20th century.”
Author of Chaos, James Gleick makes a mass of interesting facts and anecdotes real, and weaves them into this discussion, such as tracing the modern history of chronometry (from Louis-François Cartier’s invention of the wristwatch to the staggeringly precise atomic clocks of today’s standards bureaus) and revealing the ways the camera has sped up our subjective sense of pace (from the freeze frames of Eadweard Muybridge’s early photographic experiments.
“Gridlocked and Tarmacked are metonyms of our era,” writes Gleick, “……to be stuck in place, our fastest engines idling all around us, as time passes and blood pressures rise.”
This paradox, and the “simultaneous fragmentation and overloading of human attention” that results, he contends, can be traced to a wide variety of everyday conveniences: microwaves and automatic dishwashers, express mail, beeper medicine, television remote control, even speed-dialing telephones (“Investing a half-hour in learning to program them is like advancing a hundred dollars to buy a year’s supply of light bulbs at a penny discount”).
Renee Blodgett is the founder of We Blog the World. The site combines the magic of an online culture and travel magazine with a global blog network and has contributors from every continent in the world. Having lived in 10 countries and explored nearly 80, she is an avid traveler, and a lover, observer and participant in cultural diversity.
She is also the CEO and founder of Magic Sauce Media, a new media services consultancy focused on viral marketing, social media, branding, events and PR. For over 20 years, she has helped companies from 12 countries get traction in the market. Known for her global and organic approach to product and corporate launches, Renee practices what she pitches and as an active user of social media, she helps clients navigate digital waters from around the world. Renee has been blogging for over 16 years and regularly writes on her personal blog Down the Avenue, Huffington Post, BlogHer, We Blog the World and other sites. She was ranked #12 Social Media Influencer by Forbes Magazine and is listed as a new media influencer and game changer on various sites and books on the new media revolution. In 2013, she was listed as the 6th most influential woman in social media by Forbes Magazine on a Top 20 List.
Her passion for art, storytelling and photography led to the launch of Magic Sauce Photography, which is a visual extension of her writing, the result of which has led to producing six photo books: Galapagos Islands, London, South Africa, Rome, Urbanization and Ecuador.
Renee is also the co-founder of Traveling Geeks, an initiative that brings entrepreneurs, thought leaders, bloggers, creators, curators and influencers to other countries to share and learn from peers, governments, corporations, and the general public in order to educate, share, evaluate, and promote innovative technologies.
