Our cars, computers, Internet connections, TV sound bites, all reflect the high speed we desire at all times and under all circumstances. We try to eliminate meal preparation by eating fast food. We also have books and seminars on how to compost faster, create a 36 hour day and make love in a more time efficient manner. Since the Industrial Revolution, striving for greater speed has become increasingly desirable. Steam engines, trains, cars, planes, jets, concords and space shuttles have been progressive landmarks during the last few hundred years.
Speed provides people with a pleasurable high.
This high can be experienced on a roller coaster or a fast bike, in a speeding car or by consuming coffee or amphetamines. Starbucks' meteoric success and the billions of dollars spent annually on caffeinated drinks, methamphetamines and cocaine, illustrates the addiction aspect of speed in our culture. Cell phones, beepers and wireless laptops are annoyingly and intrusively present not only in restaurants, movie theatres and on remote hiking trails but also in our offices. When hurried adults become frustrated, discontented and short-tempered, children are also affected. Most adults and their children seem to have a constant desire to be in front of a computer, play station or television.