The Great Acceleration

Robert Colvile argues that modern life is speeding up across almost every domain, and sets out to explain where that acceleration came from and where it is heading. The publisher's description opens with flash crashes, speed dating and instant messaging, examples chosen to show that the change runs from the devices people carry to the lives they lead. Colvile traces the pressure to three forces working together, the cult of disruption in Silicon Valley, the ceaseless advance of technology, and a human appetite for novelty and convenience that rewards whatever arrives soonest. Drawing on recent research, he follows the effects through working and social life, through the food people buy and the music they listen to, and argues that the same dynamic is reshaping the media, politics and the financial markets. The book then asks the harder question, whether human bodies and the natural environment can cope with a pace set by machines and markets rather than by biology. Colvile does not treat the trend as simply good or bad, and the publisher frames the work as a guide to both the wonders and the dangers of a world filling with new technologies, new ideas and new discoveries.

Written from the catalogue listing at Blackwell's reproducing the Bloomsbury publisher's synopsis.

What this vault takes from it

Nothing yet. The title appears in the registry because it has been mentioned in passing, and no concept or person note currently draws on it.

Reliability

Not audited here. 0 notes in this vault draw on it.