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New technology was supposed to make our lives easier, not take them
over
Jeremy Rifkin
Guardian
Saturday May 26, 2001
The whole world is rushing to join the information
revolution. Everyone wants to be connected. It is generally believed
that the only debate worth having in the "new era" is how to ensure
that everyone has access to cyberspace. Now an equally important issue
is beginning to loom: is too much access as big a problem as too
little? Is it possible that the information and telecommunications
revolution is speeding up human activity at such a rate that we risk
doing grave harm to ourselves and to society?
Two experiments by American scientists reported recently should give
all of us reason to ask where we are heading in this era of
instantaneous global electronic connections. In the first, two Harvard
University teams succeeded in slowing light down to a full stop,
holding it in limbo, then sending it on its way again. Light travels
at a speed of 186,000 miles a second and is thought to be the fastest
form of energy in the universe. This marks the first time light has
ever been stopped and temporarily held in storage, and researchers
hope it will lead to a new type of technology revolution called
quantum computing and quantum communication. Quantum technologies
could vastly speed up both computing and communications in the coming
century.
In the second experiment, scientists at Princeton succeeded, for the
first time, in making a light pulse travel at many times the speed of
light. While researchers were quick to point out that nothing with
"mass" can exceed the speed of light, scientists now believe that a
"pulse" of light can. The physicists conducting the experiment hope
that their work will lead to a dramatic speed up of optical
transmission rates.
These experiments bring us to the cusp of a new era in human history:
we are beginning to organise life at "the speed of light". Every day,
new software and telecommunication technologies are being introduced
to compress time, accelerate activity and process greater stores of
information. We live increasingly in a nanosecond culture. But is it
possible that the very technological wonders that were supposed to
liberate us have, instead, begun to enslave us in a web of
ever-accelerating connections from which there seems to be no escape?
A new term, 24/7 - around the clock activity, 24 hours a day, seven
days a week - is quickly coming to define the parameters of the new
temporal frontier. Our fax machines, email, voice mail, PCs and
cellular phones, our 24-hour trading markets, instant around-the-clock
ATM and online banking services, all-night e-commerce and research
services, 24-hour television news and entertainment, 24-hour food
services, all vie for our attention.
And while we have created every kind of labour- and time-saving device
and activity to service one another's needs and desires, we are
beginning to feel we have less time available to us than any other
humans in history. That is because the new services only increase the
diversity, pace and flow of commercial and social activity around
us. For example, email is a great convenience - until we find
ourselves spending much of the day frantically responding to each
other's email. The cell phone is a great timesaver - except that now
we are always potentially in reach of someone else who wants our
attention.
Today, we find ourselves in a far more complex interdependent temporal
world made up of ever-changing webs of human relationships and
activity - a world in which every available minute becomes an
opportunity to make another connection. Descartes' dictum, "I think,
therefore I am," has been replaced by: "I am connected, therefore I
exist."
What happens when our lives are embedded in around-the-clock
relationships operating at the speed of light? The telltale signs of
our new time angst are everywhere. Stress-related illness is rising
dramatically all over the world. Much of it is attributable, say the
experts, to information overload and burnout as more and more people
find themselves unable to cope with the pace, flow and density of
human activity made possible with new lightening-speed
technologies. In the UK, three in 10 employees suffer mental problems
each year from stress-related behaviour. Stress-related illness and
absenteeism costs the economy the equivalent of 10% of its GDP.
According to a recent report of the International Labour Organisation,
one in 10 adults worldwide suffer stress, depression and burnout. The
ILO predicts a dramatic increase in stress as even faster technologies
are introduced and globalisation accelerates. Stress related diseases
- including depression, heart disease, strokes, cancer and diabetes -
are rising so quickly, say some observers, that stress may become the
leading cause of illness.
The new, fast-paced 24/7 society is having other profound effects on
people's lives. Around-the-clock activity has led to a serious decline
in the number of hours devoted to sleep. In 1910, the average adult
was still sleeping nine to 10 hours a night. Now the figure is less
than seven hours in highly industrial countries: an extra 500 waking
hours a year. But our internal biological clocks are set to the
rotation of the planet and daily, monthly and seasonal temporal
rhythms. We are biologically designed to go to sleep after sunset and
wake at sunrise. Massive sleep deprivation, brought on by the frantic
new pace of living, is increasingly being linked to serious illnesses
including diabetes, cancer, strokes and depression.
Nowhere is the "speed of light" society having a greater impact than
with the dot.com generation. Millions of children (especially boys)
are being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in
the US, with a rising number of cases in Europe. Sufferers are easily
distracted, unable to focus their attention; impulsive and quickly
frustrated. But if a child grows up surrounded by video games and
computers, and comes to expect instant gratification, is it any wonder
that he develops a short attention span? Quicken the pace, and we
risk increasing the impatience of a generation.
Is the hyper-speed culture making all of us less patient? Already,
new stress related, anti-social behaviour patterns are beginning to
emerge. "Desk rage," "road rage" and "air rage" have become part of
the popular lexicon as more and more people act out their stress with
violent outbursts. In the click-click culture, we shouldn't be
surprised if everyone is poised for a hair-trigger response.
Perhaps we should be asking what kind of "connections" and what types
of "access" matter. If this new technology revolution is only about
speed and hyper efficiency, then we might lose something even more
precious than time - our sense of what it means to be a caring human
being. Until now, we have asked only the question of how best to
integrate our lives into the new technology revolution. We need to ask
a deeper question. How do we create a social vision that makes these
new "speed of light" technologies a powerful complement to our lives,
without them taking over our lives?
* Jeremy Rifkin is author of The Age of Access
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