March 2, 2004
Kamloops Daily News



"Technology has been a rapid heartbeat, compressing
housework, travel, entertainment, squeezing more and more
into the allotted span,"  says social historian Theodore
Zeldin.

No one expected that the result of technology would be the
feeling that life moves to fast.  Technology was supposed to
reduce work and give more leisure time.

The effect has been just the opposite.   Technology takes
more time from us than it saves.  The faster technology
operates, the less time we have.

The pace of life has accelerated.  We have sped up in an
attempt match our lifestyles to the to speed of technology. 
"The DOOR CLOSE button in elevators, so often a placebo,
with no function but to distract for a moment those riders
to whom ten seconds is an eternity," says James Gleick in
his book FSTR (he has removed the vowels to convey the idea
that we are in a frenzied hurry to save time).

Stress from too little time is taking it’s toll, says
Statistics Canada.  They followed more than 10,000 people
over 6 years and found that Canadians are getting sick
because they are trying to do too many things at once. 

The high level of stress in men and women have led to health
problems such as arthritis and rheumatism, back
problems,chronic bronchitis and stomach or intestinal
ulcers.  Men tend to get heart disease while women get
asthma and migraines

The use of TV remote controls have increased the speed of
commercials and news coverage.  If  a commercial doesn’t
grab you in a few seconds,  you’re off to another channel. 
In 1968, politicians could expect 40 seconds to answer
questions about complex issues.  Now it’s less than 10
seconds.  Only the superficial and glib survive. 

Everyday conversations have become compacted.  If someone
can’t make their point in a minute, we find our remote
control fingers twitching.

Leisure is not a lifestyle, it’s a business.  Corporations
have created the leisure industry - - the term itself an
oxymoron.  As things speed up, we have less time to relax
and the solution is to pack more intense pleasures into less
time.  Maximize the precious little time we have.

Now you can buy a boat or snowmobile, holiday vacation or
ski weekend that packs maximum enjoyment into those moments. 
The speed of leisure time exceeds that of work.  We want to
get back to work just so that we can relax.

There is opportunity in haste.   Fast food restaurants cater
to our need to have food now.   Marketers anticipate our
frenzy with microwave ovens, quick video playback, and fast
credit.  A medication is marketed for women who don’t have
time for a yeast infection.  "As though slackers might have
time for that," says Gleick.

What are we doing with all that spare time that
labour-saving devices provide?  For one thing, we’re sitting
in cars, especially in big cities.  Cars are slowing at the
same rate that waistlines are increasing.  More cars on the
same old highways means that everyone is going nowhere fast.

There is a solution.  Urban planners could design
communities where citizens could walk to work, shopping,
schools.   But oil companies would protest. They prefer that
we sit in our cars with engines running, regardless of
whether we are going anywhere.

We have less time for sleep.  The National Sleep Foundation
estimates that average sleep has dropped buy 20 per cent in
the last century.   The result is general fatigue and
exhaustion the affects productivity and health.  Driver’s
loss of attention result in more accidents.   "Eventually,
if the sleep debt becomes large enough, we become slow,
clumsy, stupid and, possibly, dead," says Canadian
psychologist Stanley Coren.

We like sex but we aren’t getting much.  One of the most
comprehensive  surveys on the subject was done in 1994 by
the University of Chicago.  They found that the average time
devoted to sex is 4 minutes a day.  You, of course, get more
but remember that these are averages. This includes not only
intercourse but sex-related activities such as fantasizing
over sexy billboards as we sit in our traffic-jammed cars. 

"Time is a gentle deity," said Greek philosopher Sophocles. 
For him, maybe.  These days it just cracks the whip.

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