Speed Limits: Where Time Went and Why We Have So Little Left

Taylor (religion, Columbia Univ.; After God) argues that the world in which we live is speeding up. Nearly everything can be done faster, and is, while emails and cell phones pursue us relentlessly. He maintains that climate change has brought frightening speed to natural processes as well. Ancient glaciers do not disintegrate in a single flash, but the suddenness with which they are disappearing can be grasped in startling time-lapse images. The author has gathered data that suggest that as we work at ever-increasing rates, we are in danger of losing ourselves and our purposes. He hints at what may be the ultimate horror—the speed at which events happen and data piles up has made it extremely difficult for political leaders to keep track of daily crises. The chaos of ethnic and religious clashes, often fuelled by corruption, leaves little time to think for politicians for whom, in the United States at least, election campaigns now go on continuously.