Am I the only person who doesn’t believe that “life is moving faster and faster these days”?
If you look long enough you can find someone saying that about every age of human history. I’ll bet there’s a cave painting somewhere which translates to “Life faster since wheel. World smaller now. Ug miss olden days of sledge. Ug girlfriend left Ug for wheelsmith. UG HATE WHEEL!”
Life is as fast, or as slow, as you make it.
It’s kinda like the internet: I used to think a 14,400kbd connection was painfully slow because it took forever to download music over it. Now I think my DSL is slow because it takes forever to download movies. Likewise, it used to be a day’s journey to visit friends in the next town over via horse-drawn carriage. Now I have friends all over the United States, and it takes a day’s journey (or more) by car or train to reach them. Everything evens out in the end.
I used to think 1gig hd space was HUGE! Now, I barely have 1gig free, and am begging for a terabyte. đŸ™‚
Some study (perhaps an urban legend) measured traffic in London in the late 18th century and compared it to today.
Average speed, 18th century: 12.5 MPH
Average speed, 20th century: 12 MPH
In 200 years, we’ve decreased speed in London. (These measurements were taken prior to the recent fees for travel in central London.)
Opportunity cost
The more things people have to choose from, the higher the cost of doing any particular thing.
So, yes.