LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

James Gleick

We are in a rush. We are making haste. A compression of time characterizes many of our lives. As time-use researchers look around, they see a rushing and scurrying everywhere. Sometimes culture resembles "one big stomped anthill," say John P. Robinson and Geoffrey Godbey in their book Time for Life.

Instantaneity rules. Pollsters use electronic devices during political speeches to measure opinions on the wing, before they have been fully formed: fast-food restaurants add express lanes. Even reading to children is under pressure. The volume One-Minute Bedtime Stories consists of traditional stories that can be read by a busy parent in only one minute.

There are places and objects that signify impatience. The door-close button in elevators, so often a placebo used to distract riders to whom ten seconds seems an eternity. Speed-dial buttons on telephones. Remote controls, which have caused an acceleration in the pace of films and television commercials.

Time is a gentle deity, said Sophocles. Perhaps it was, for him. These days it cracks the whip. We humans have chosen speed, and we thrive on it—more than we generally admit. Our ability to work and play fast gives us power. It thrills us.

And if haste is the accelerator pedal, multitasking is overdrive. These days it is possible to drive, eat, listen to a book and talk on the phone—all at once, if you dare. David Feldman, in New York, schedules his tooth flossing to coincide with his regular browsing of online discussion groups. He has learned to hit Page Down with his pinkie. Mike Holderness, in London, watches TV with captioning so that he can keep the sound off and listen to the unrelated music of his choice. An entire class of technologies is dedicated to the furtherance of multitasking. Car phones. Bookstands on exercise machines. Waterproof shower radios.

Not so long ago, for most people, listening to the radio was a single task activity. Now it is rare for a person to listen to the radio and do nothing else.

Even TV has lost its command of our foreground. In so many households the TV just stays on, like a noisy light bulb, while the life of the family passes back and forth in its shimmering glow.

A sense of well-being comes with this saturation of parallel pathways in the brain. We choose mania over boredom every time. "Human shave never, ever opted for slower." points out the historian Stephen Kern.

We catch the fever—and the fever feels good. We live in the buzz. "It has gotten to the point where my days, crammed with all sorts of activities, feel like an Olympic endurance event: theeverydayathon," confesses Jay Walljasper in the Utne Reader.

All humanity has not succumbed equally, of course. If you make haste, you probably make it in the technology-driven world. Sociologists have also found that increasing wealth and increasing education bring a sense of tension about time. We believe that we possess too little of it. No wonder Ivan Seidenberg, an American telecommunications executive, jokes about the mythical Day Doubler program his customers seem to want: "Using sophisticated time-mapping and compression techniques, Day Doubler gives you access to 48 hours each and every day. At the higher numbers DayDoubler becomes less stable, and you run the risk of a temporal crash in which everything from the beginning of time to the present could crash down around you, sucking you into a suspended time zone."

Our culture views time as a thing to hoard and protect. Timesaving is the subject to scores of books with titles like Streamlining Your Life; Take Your Time; More Hours in My Day. Marketers anticipate our desire to save time, and respond with fast ovens, quick playback, quick freezing and fast credit.

We have all these ways to "save time," but what does that concept really mean? Does timesaving mean getting more done? If so, does talking on a cellular phone at the beach save time or waste it? If you can choose between a 30-minute train ride, during which you can read, and a 20-minute drive, during which you cannot, does the drive save ten minutes? Does it make sense to say that driving saves ten minutes from your travel budget while removing ten minutes from your reading budget?

These questions have no answer. They depend on a concept that is ill formed: the very ides of timesaving. Some of us say we want to save time when really we just want to do more—and faster. It might be simplest to recognize that there is time and we make choices about how to spend it, how to spare it, how to use it and how to fill it.

Time is not a thing we have lost. It is not a thing we ever had. It is what we live in.