We have technological revolutions every few years and sometimes even months. What this does is increase our expectations of timekeepers like science, entertainment and even technology itself. For instance, every newfound disease, after its initial culture shock, seems to have a built in life span or expectation timer. Science now has the unenviable position of being the fastest gun in town, complete with an empty revolver and a straitjacket dipped in pheromones. Not having access to the latest and greatest can severely dampen a persons will to play the game.
Technology soon becomes just another way to divide groups or create hierarchies among friends.
The quickest way to become a social pariah is to convince the middle-management of the group that you re simply not capable of heightening the status of the core group amongst rivals. Even entertainment seems destined for the history books. The faster and more complicated work becomes, the more it seems to manifest as entertainment itself. In effect, only our perceptions of time have changed, not the passage of time itself. As long as the field of history still exists and thrives in its own unobtrusive way, this quickening of time shouldn t become the forbidding beast it appears to be.