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Loading... Faster (original 1999; edition 1999)by James Gleick
Work detailsFaster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything by James Gleick (1999) None. A decent read. A few conspicuous anachronisms really dated the writing. As far as I'm concerned James Gleick could write about the mating habits of obscure Amazonian birds and it'd still be worth the effort. The man can write. (  ) MattP225 | Apr 27, 2013 |  Food for thought. i've really enjoyed all of his books that I've read. ( ) lauren.castan | Apr 3, 2013 | A collection of fascinating anecdotes that tries to mirror its subject matter by delivering itself in short bursts. It is not clear what it all adds up to, but as you read it the time will fly. (  ) dazzyj | Mar 29, 2012 | As befits a book about peoples' increasingly shortening attention spans, the chapters in 'Faster' are short and zippy. This makes it an easy book to read, in contrast, say, to the author's latest work, 'The Information', which is much denser. And many of the chapters deal with relatively lightweight subjects such as MTV and time management self-help books. But there are plenty of interesting and valuable insights here, in chapters like 'The Paradox of Efficiency', and 'Decomposition takes time'. And Gleick is refreshingly esoteric and literary in his references, quoting Kafka, Sophocles, and Dostoyevsky along the way. Reading this book in 2011, there's no doubt that parts of it are a little dated, as you'd expect of a 12-year-old book dealing with societal change. But then a book that serves up gems like this will always stay current: "What we have learned to see, we can start to imagine." ( ) Raftus | Jul 7, 2011 | I first encountered this as an audio book. When I saw that a book subtitled "the acceleration of just about everything" was being offered in an abridged version that you could listen to while doing something else... and read by the author, no less, I just had to have it. After listening to it I bought a copy and re-read it (or read it for the first time). Yes, like other books by Gleick it is a popular account. But it's very well told, and I've given copies to friends who would not usually read non-fiction. (  ) lamona | Apr 19, 2009 |
 [W]hile the book excels descriptively, it falls short analytically and prescriptively.  [W]hile it is fascinating to crawl through the fine points of MTV video cutting, even the most sympathetic reader will begin to wonder whether he has anything else to tell us. Gleick doesn't alight long enough on any subject to give it depth.  In this intelligent and thought-provoking book he addresses the ways in which the modern world saves time, spends it and keeps track of it down to tiny fractions of a second. James Gleick's ''Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything'' is nimble, smart, often funny, and -- best of all -- fast.
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(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:01:03 -0500)
Presents a study of the human fascination with time from a psychological, biological, and cultural perspective, tracing the development of measuring time and exploring ways in which we try to stretch our allotted time.
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