The age of two speeds.. HAPPY NEW WHAT YEAR?
One of the earliest notions we learnt about this age is that it is the age of speed. Everything is happening faster than ever before. But now and strangely enough, it seems that time itself, is somehow running so fast, as if out speeding the speediness of the age! The day ends, as if with fewer hours, the month by only a portion of a month, and the year ends as if with few months spent only.
How often we hear the remark, years start and end in a glimpse.
How often we hear the remark, years start and end in a glimpse.
The new year evening arrives, and the past new year evening had just been celebrated only a while ago! And this has made us hardly able to follow the sequence of the rapidly passing years!Increasing the speed of everything became one of the most desired targets of modern society. Starting with the spread of travel and transport, to speed of production, to the speed of message sending, and all culminating in the speed of computing in the computer, and all else the computer and its sister products achieve today. Speed was and still is one the biggest titles of success. One of the most important conditions for beating competition.
And reducing the time to produce or deliver anything, became synonymous with reducing the needed time to succeed.But one of the main consequences of such speed, that reduces the time to produce or achieve anything, should have been that we are left with ample free time. Especially that this speed reaches of course not only the commercial and industrial milieu, but even everyone’s home, where kitchen appliances have reduced the time needed for all sort of home tasks. This should meant, that we should all have time for our other interests and hobbies. And to see more, and spend more time with each other and the people we like. But the general impression is contrary to this logical conclusion. Everyone seems so busy all the time, giving true or even made up excuses for not seeing each other. True or made up excuses, one and all feel that they have less free time than ever, and are certain that their day’s hours are somehow tied down by all sorts of requirements.Hours of the day, seem much less and so are the days of the month, and the months of the year. As if something has made the speed of time itself, go faster than the speed of the age. Or in other words we are not in the age of one speed, but two. The age of two speeds.When the novel of George Orwell 1984 appeared, and then the movie Odyssey 2001, everyone felt that they were talking about such a distant future. But now we see that distant future is way behind us. So could time and it’s speed in modern age, have been affected by a certain relativity factor, like the relation of time and speed in the theory of relativity? So the speed of time depends on where you spend it. Such that in the context of the modern city, and modern life where there this outburst of social, commercial and all sorts of human activity, that turns our life into a factor of less gravity, we truly live the age of speed…the age of two speeds.
Translation of an article with the same title from alQafilah magazine July-August 2008
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