Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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39 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A Breathlessly Superficial Collection of Tidbits, August 22, 2002
After hearing so many people rave above Gleick's two previous books, "Chaos" and "Genius", I was very much taken aback by this unstructured collage of factoids and tidbits. Written in a whiny and grating first-person address to the reader, the book regurgitates endless anecdotal and semi-documented examples of how modern life has accelerated the pace of everyday life. It's somewhat bizarre (or perhaps nudge-nudge, wink-wink, ironic) that the book is divided into wee snippets of psuedo-chapters, reflecting/acknowledging?, the national decline in attention span. While some of these individual items are certainly interesting in their own merit-I liked the discussion of the original research into "Type A" personalities, the bit on telephone voice acceleration technology, and the brief economics of time part near the end-the overall effect is like reading a scrapbook of magazine sidebars and mini-features with no framework other than the self-evident notion that in the industrialized West, we live at a "faster" pace than any previous generation. Nowhere is there any discussion of how we might, as a society, turn away from this trend, or even if we should. (Gleick implicitly characterizes this trend as a negative one throughout). A breathlessly superficial survey which offers no analysis or insight.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hurry up and read this book!, January 23, 2001
"Faster" is a book about the modern culture of speeding up to save milliseconds. James Gleick finds so many interesting aspects of this "age of acceleration" that we are now living in... further, he wastes no time in describing the many facets of this new lifestyle and the possible ramifications of what he calls "hurry sickness".Why are we in such a rush?? Are we really saving time? And just what do we DO with those few seconds we seem to save by multitasking even the smallest of our daily activities? "Faster" answers many of those questions and it also looks into other scientific aspects of time and how we perceive it. I highly recommend this book for those who feel rushed in their lives but don't know why. I also recommend it for anyone interested in the science of time and time travel. James Gleick is a genius. He has an incredible way of provoking the reader to look closer into something and see what is really happening there. Hurry up and read this book, you'll be amazed at what you'll learn.
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18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Read this FAST... before you don't need to read it anymore!, November 24, 2000
I've rated "Faster" only 3 stars not for want of James Gleick's writing ability, but for how quickly I predict the book will date in This Faster World. Having enjoyed "Chaos" and "Genius", I knew that Gleick researches well, interviews wisely and has the penmanship to make brave new science (and wacky quantum thinkers) accessible to the layest, laziest reader (using myself as the yardstick of course). This time around, Gleick charts lucidly and with his usual wry humour the parabolic curve taken by the lives of those of us in the "developed" world. In short order, the author introduces us to the man who keeps time for the world (and asks The Director what watch he wears); guides us on a tour through the unbelievable engine of Directory Assistance (where efficiency and productivity is measured in micro-seconds); and teaches us that the height limit of a skyscraper is determined more by the number of elevators needed to service such an Olympus than any other engineering constraints (this, dear cultured reader, is a science journalist who calls up Kafka and Escher when imagining a tower made up of only elevators). But wouldn't so accurate a snapshot of the turn of this millennium look positively sepia-toned in the future which is barrelling down on us like a bullet-train? Of course, Gleick would probably feel vindicated that even a book as snappy and modern as this one will become historical research fodder quicker than any science book ever before. Is "Faster" for you? Well, take this short quiz: Do you stab the door close button repeatedly (it's an impotent placebo in many lifts)? Are you the person who's checked in one good hour before flight-time, or the one who throws himself through the plane door seconds before it closes for take-off (and which is the one who suffers from "speed-sickness")? Does your remote-control jockeying skills and mercury concentration allow you to watch 3 hour-long shows and 15 music videos in one hour (thereby missing some of the smartest fast-cut ads ever created)? But I expect I've lost my target audience ... this review took longer than 12 seconds to read, didn't it?
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