Modern inventions have speeded up people's lives amazingly. Motor-cars cover a hundred miles in little more than an hour, aircraft cross the world inside a day, while computers operate at lightning speed. Indeed, this love speed seems never-ending. Every year motor-cars are produced which go even faster and each new xomputers boasts of saving precious seconds in handling tasks. Then there is the speed with which we access information wherever we are. Pocket computers and mobile phones enable us to log on to news or contact our friends in seconds, even from some mountain tops.
All this saves time, but at a price. When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an aeroplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jet-lag; our bodies feel that they have been eft behind in another time zone. Again, spending too long at computers results in painful wrists and fingers. Mobile phones also have their dangers, according to to some scientist; too much use may transmit harmful radiation into our brains, a consequence we do not like to contemplate.
Out behaviour, also, has felt the impact of modern technology. people seem to be in a rush, and increasingly impatient. Automatic doors on the lifts never open quickly enough for us and we tap our feet impatiently if our computers take an extra few seconds to access information on the internet. Even some of our clothes reflect this impatience, for we need to acquire the right 'look' as quickly as possible. Who wants to wear denim jeans as stiff as tin when you can uy them pre-washed, pre-faded and pre-patched at the knees?
The obsession with saving time results in many people trying to imitate computers in an effort to handle several taskes simultaneously - multi-tasking, as it is called. They talk to somebody on the telephone, listen to somebody else nearby, and look at a computer screen, all at the same time. Frequently, the efficiency of their work suffers. Speed of thinking , too, is often confused with intelligence itself. The student who takes pains to weigh up a question before answering will not be considered as smart as those who snap their fingers and glibly claim they know he answer.
However, what we do with the time we saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We re so accustomed to constant activity that we find it difficult to si and d nothing, or even just one thing at a time. Perhaps the days are long fone when we might listen quietly to a story on the radio, letting imagination take us into another world.
There was a time when some people's lives were devoted simplu to the cultivation of the land or the care of cattle. No multi-tasking there; their lives proceeded at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestors faced: they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to fashion tools from wood and stone. Modern machinery has freed people from that primitive existence.
Technology has also made work in factories far less tedious, with machines performing the dull, repititive taks previously carried out by human hands. The computer, too, has brought major advantages in printing processes. No longer has each individual letter of every word to be set by hand in wooden blocks, ready for the printing press to 'read'. Such is the speed of a computer printer that an author can out the finishing touches to a book and see it printed on the same day. The motor-car has been blamed for its polluting effects and its demands for more and more roads, but it has banished the time-consuming and uncomfortable journeys endured in horse-drawn vehicles.
Despite the hold that speed has on out lives, its attractions are beginning to dwindle. Countries have abandones thoughts of ultra-fast, supersonic passenger aeroplanes, and shaving minutes off journeys by road does not win the approval of society as a whole. Possibly the world's long fascination with seed is finally ending.
All this saves time, but at a price. When we lose or gain half a day in speeding across the world in an aeroplane, our bodies tell us so. We get the uncomfortable feeling known as jet-lag; our bodies feel that they have been eft behind in another time zone. Again, spending too long at computers results in painful wrists and fingers. Mobile phones also have their dangers, according to to some scientist; too much use may transmit harmful radiation into our brains, a consequence we do not like to contemplate.
Out behaviour, also, has felt the impact of modern technology. people seem to be in a rush, and increasingly impatient. Automatic doors on the lifts never open quickly enough for us and we tap our feet impatiently if our computers take an extra few seconds to access information on the internet. Even some of our clothes reflect this impatience, for we need to acquire the right 'look' as quickly as possible. Who wants to wear denim jeans as stiff as tin when you can uy them pre-washed, pre-faded and pre-patched at the knees?
The obsession with saving time results in many people trying to imitate computers in an effort to handle several taskes simultaneously - multi-tasking, as it is called. They talk to somebody on the telephone, listen to somebody else nearby, and look at a computer screen, all at the same time. Frequently, the efficiency of their work suffers. Speed of thinking , too, is often confused with intelligence itself. The student who takes pains to weigh up a question before answering will not be considered as smart as those who snap their fingers and glibly claim they know he answer.
However, what we do with the time we saved? Certainly not relax, or so it seems. We re so accustomed to constant activity that we find it difficult to si and d nothing, or even just one thing at a time. Perhaps the days are long fone when we might listen quietly to a story on the radio, letting imagination take us into another world.
There was a time when some people's lives were devoted simplu to the cultivation of the land or the care of cattle. No multi-tasking there; their lives proceeded at a much gentler pace, and in a familiar pattern. There is much that we might envy about a way of life like this. Yet before we do so, we must think of the hard tasks our ancestors faced: they farmed with bare hands, often lived close to hunger, and had to fashion tools from wood and stone. Modern machinery has freed people from that primitive existence.
Technology has also made work in factories far less tedious, with machines performing the dull, repititive taks previously carried out by human hands. The computer, too, has brought major advantages in printing processes. No longer has each individual letter of every word to be set by hand in wooden blocks, ready for the printing press to 'read'. Such is the speed of a computer printer that an author can out the finishing touches to a book and see it printed on the same day. The motor-car has been blamed for its polluting effects and its demands for more and more roads, but it has banished the time-consuming and uncomfortable journeys endured in horse-drawn vehicles.
Despite the hold that speed has on out lives, its attractions are beginning to dwindle. Countries have abandones thoughts of ultra-fast, supersonic passenger aeroplanes, and shaving minutes off journeys by road does not win the approval of society as a whole. Possibly the world's long fascination with seed is finally ending.