Faster

Rating:
Summary: An interesting read
Review: There are some interesting anecdotes in this book, and I think it succeeds in making you contemplate the speed and rush with which we occupy our daily lives. (After reading this book, I now look at 'door close' buttons in elevators in a totally different light!) Where it falls down is in its style. It loses impact because of the very fact it is simply recounted as a series of 'interesting anecdotes' or examples, with little if any nexus linking one to the next (from telephones to elevators, from clocks to computers). Nevertheless, an interesting read which I'd recommend.

Rating:
Summary: Can we compress time further? Gleick investigates!
Review: A good book, well worth the read. I bought it because I trusted Gleick to do the subject justice, and he does. We look at how Western society is getting more obsessed with time, and the subject matter is broken into manageable chunks, written in Gleick's everyday style. Everything from how scientist are recording minute periods of time (splitting the 'time atom'?) to the psychology behind elevator design and their recognition of human time related behaviour. Pretty much confined to the technologically advanced part of the planet, but this does not detract from the observations.

Rating:
Summary: A solid study of modern society
Review: James Gleick has written a fascinating account of society's obsession with time and the ways it has changed our lives. Some of the developments are well known - the constantly shifting images of MTV, the decline in readership of newspapers and the rise of multi-tasking. But others, such as the networks shrinking of "black" time may be less familiar.

I have two minor quibbles with the book however. First, the book seems weaker when Mr. Gleick moves away from organizational changes to individuals. He seems to base his observations too heavily on the life style of well-educated urbanites. I wonder how well his observations reflect life in Northeastern Vermont or rural Montana. And even as one of those well-educated urbanites, some things I identified with (I most definitely multitask for example), and yet I do not channel surf despite having a digital satellite dish, I still read newspapers and books and have even been known to watch the Newshour on PBS where soundbites are much longer than 8 seconds.

The other quibble is that Mr. Gleick shies away from making any predictions. What are the costs and benefits of all this "speeding" up? Will there be a backlash? Obviously no one knows the answers for sure, but without making the effort, the reader may be left asking, so what?

But despite those quibbles, this is still a book worth reading for anyone who cares about the lives we lead today.

Rating:
Summary: Make the time to read this
Review: Faster is a well written book, that flows quickly. Gleick is an engaging writer, but more than that, Faster makes you think about your life and American society.

You like microwave ovens? You think that they make cooking go by quicker? What about fax machines? "Door close" buttons on elevators? Do you like watching sports where winners are chosen by 100th second intervals? Does watching MTV exhilirate you with its choppy images?

Have you noticed that now that we have Federal Express overnight service and fax machines, that all of a sudden everything has to get everywhere overnight?

What are the ramifications of our sped-up society? Read this book to find out. Gleick is not heavy handed; he allows you to draw your own conclusions. I suspect you will find yourself nodding in agreement.

Rating:
Summary: Insiteful...but....
Review: This is an excellent book, and I would recommend it to most anyone I know. And for 99.9% I agree with the author. However, when he talks about devices which are meant to save time actually 'costing' us more time to program (like a speed dialer or microwave) he looses me, mainly because he seems to see time as all being equal, when clearly it is not. For a day trader, the several seconds saved by a microwave or the speed dialer is important to him when he is using it during trading hours (now from 7 AM to 9 PM) than when he is programming the dialer or the microwave, probably on his off time, at which point seconds dont matter. This can be translated into other things, an ER trama center may find the 1/10 of a second useful. This brings me to my other point, especially about the speed dialer. One of the reasons we have it is so that we dont have to memorize all the numbers we want to know. The author claims we only save a few second a year. He neglects to add in the time we would have spent searching for the number, or asking someone, what the number was, when taken from this time, the speed dialer can save you a lot of time. Otherwise...his book is REALLY good. I suggest you read it, and take your time on it.

Rating:
Summary: A Non-Fiction Page-Turner
Review: Light years ago Marshall McLuhan speculated about how technology would change consciousness. "Faster" illustrates it--in fascinating detail--demonstrating how multitasking has become second-nature to our nervous systems. In his exploration of the opeartions of the telephone company's 411, or air traffic control, he shows how corporations keep slicing seconds off of already tight schedules, shifting the time cost to the consumers. The question: is the savings of a few cents worth the lost minutes?

Rating:
Summary: Collection of interesting essays
Review: This book was not really a book, but a series of essays on time. While I found most of the essays interesting, the book lacked an overall thesis or theme to pull it all together. Many of the essays were contradictory (which is fine, but needs resolution). I loved Gleick's biography of Richard Feynman so I was a little disappointed by this book. However, it is well worth a read to have yourself think about how you use time in your own life.

Rating:
Summary: Quick-- A Tongue-In-Cheek Review of Our Fast Paced Lives
Review: James Gleick's "Faster" is a wry, many-faceted meditation that takes as its starting point the notion that our lives, both at work and at leisure, have inexorably sped up. That's not a new idea, of course. Get any group of people 35 or older reminiscing, and the topic will eventually be chewed over till everyone sounds like Dana Carvey's Cranky Old Man on Saturday Night Live....

'Why, we remember the days when you had to actually go into a bank and see a teller to get cash, when nobody had a fax machine, when we had to keep from playing our favorite tunes too often because, as every audiophile knew, the grooves on the LP needed time to rest; and, dammit, we liked it that way!'

Employing a knowing, tongue-in-cheek style and, yes, a suitably fast pace, Gleick examines every time-related dimension of life in what he calls this "epoch of the nanosecond." He observes that "a compression of time characterizes the life of the century now closing," and he proceeds to peg our obsession with correct time, our frustration with things that go too fast or too slow, the evolution of the concept of speed, the pervasive influence of the computer and the effect of the culture of acceleration on the arts.

His most resonant chapter heading is "The Paradox of Efficiency." Gleick uses the phrase to describe the complicated systems that businesses use in order to become vastly more efficient (and less likely to bend to your whim). Missed your connecting flight? Thanks to modern flight planning programs that keep far fewer "extra" planes on hand, you stand a good chance of waiting longer than ever for another one.

But the paradox of efficiency doesn't apply to customer service alone. The nemesis of the "just in time" inventory systems that have made auto production much more efficient is that little spare parts factory in Ohio that, each time it suffers a strike, shutters every GM plant in the Midwest.

Closer to home, this paradox is the creepy certainty that the more you have the resources to work with every day -- the more words you can process, the more e-mails and faxes you can send and instantly answer -- the more expectations of your output expand. You can now do more, so you can't do enough.

One day the Internet is a marvelous new tool; the next afternoon you're drumming your fingers during transfer time, despairing that it takes 15 seconds to have an entire library catalog a continent away at your fingertips. With the rise of time consciousness has come, Gleick notes, the rising status of the overbooked. Think of all the exaggerators you know who with straight faces claim 80-hour work weeks. Why revel so in the notion of overwork? For many people today, having time on your hands feels downright dirty. What kind of a slacker are you? "The transformation of time into a negative status good has odd social consequences," Gleick writes, and he quotes Michael Lewis on the "wonderful new prestige [of] any new time-saving device. After all, who needs such a device? People who have no time. And who has the least time? The best people!"

There is a benefit to reading about acceleration beyond the fact that this book is consistently witty and fine: "Faster" makes you consider your own role in accepting the acceleration of modern life. Time, Gleick reminds you, "is not a thing you ever had. It is what you live in. You can drift or you can swim, and it will carry you along either way."

Rating:
Summary: FIND THE TIME TO READ IT!
Review: I am stretched for time but I think it was time well worth spent reading the book. The chapters are standalone so it can be read in short 'sittings'. One of the chapters, 'The Paradox of Efficiency' clearly shows how computers are running our life! Each chapter has a story of its own and it can be a learning and self-discovery experience if you reflect on it. Find the time to read FASTER!

Rating:
Summary: Intrstng fcts abt th spdng up of scty
Review: This book presented interesting essays about the acceleration of the pace of today's (American?) society, but nothing more. It was another nonfiction book that I thought could have been pared down to 100 pages or less. Is that a reflection of my shorter attention span or too much superfluous fluff to stretch writings out to book length? Probably both.