Faster, James Gleick
Faster, James Gleick
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Faster
The Acceleration of Just About Everything

Author: James Gleick

Narrator: James Gleick

Abridged: 5 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/01/2011

Synopsis

From the bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of Genius and Chaos, a bracing new work about the accelerating pace of change in today's world.

Most of us suffer some degree of "hurry sickness." a malady that has launched us into the "epoch of the nanosecond," a need-everything-yesterday sphere dominated by cell phones, computers, faxes, and remote controls. Yet for all the hours, minutes, and even seconds being saved, we're still filling our days to the point that we have no time for such basic human activities as eating, sex, and relating to our families. Written with fresh insight and thorough research, Faster is a wise and witty look at a harried world not likely to slow down anytime soon.

About The Author

James Gleick is our leading chronicler of science and modern technology. His first book, Chaos, a National Book Award finalist, has been translated into twenty-five languages. His best-selling biographies, Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman and Isaac Newton, were short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul on October 10, 2023

Twenty-first century life in the fast lane! James Gleick, author of the bestseller CHAOS has created another compelling and often disturbing tale of the nature of our society. FASTER characterizes our modern day thinking as overwhelmingly occupied with notions of time - time management, saving time,......more

Goodreads review by Paul on March 31, 2009

This book is great. The acceleration of society/culture by way of technology is a subject that interests me greatly, maybe more than any other, so this book was right up my alley. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Faster is, despite its being almost a decade old, it's still entirely relevant. Asi......more

Goodreads review by Tessa on January 21, 2008

An OK book. It's written for a somewhat pop audience and contains few revelations. However there is an interesting section towards the end where he discusses the limits of speed and uses the example of the disabled "close door" buttons on newer skyscraper elevators which exist only so that people ca......more

Goodreads review by Lukasz on December 30, 2018

"I put instant coffee in my microwave oven and almost went back in time." (From a Steven Wright's stand-up routine) It is quite depressing to read a nineteen-year-old book that focuses on one of the things that are obviously wrong with our civilization and realize that the problem has gotten much wors......more

Goodreads review by Andrew on April 26, 2020

It's pretty common to hear people say 2020 is such a fast year and compare it to turn of the century when Y2k and hanging chads in Florida seemed the world's biggest problems. 'Faster: The Acceleration of just about Everything' by James Gleick, published in the year 2000, is thus a useful time capsu......more

Quotes

Praise for James Gleick:

Chaos
"Chaos is not only enthralling and precise, but full of beautifully strange and strangely beautiful ideas."
-- Douglas Hofstadter

"There is a teleological grandeur about this new math that gives the imagination wings."
-- Vogue

"Gleick has a novelist's touch for describing his scientists and their settings, an eye for the apt analogy, and a sense of the dramatic and the poetic."
-- The San Francisco Chronicle

Genius
"The clearest statement I have seen of the true spirit of science. Although I am a long-time friend and admirer of Feynman, I feel that I know him better after reading this book than I did before."
-- Freeman Dyson

"A rare jewel-like biography. I can't remember a book in which, confronted with a personality so complex and a subject so difficult, I felt, as a reader, so secure."
-- Robert Kanigel, The Washington Post

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