Author: Judy Wajcman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198782853
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
There is widespread perception that life is faster than it used to be. This book argues that popular and scholarly claims about acceleration gloss over the complex relationship of technology, speed and time. Rather than digital devices rushing us, our experience of always being rushed is the result of the priorities and parameters we ourselves set
Author: Hartmut Rosa
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231148348
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 514
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Book Description
Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies in particular three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time. According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match future results and events. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "slipping slopes," a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life.
Author: Judy Wajcman
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022619647X
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
The technologically tethered, iPhone-addicted figure is an image we can easily conjure. Most of us complain that there aren't enough hours in the day and too many e-mails in our thumb-accessible inboxes. This widespread perception that life is faster than it used to be is now ingrained in our culture, and smartphones and the Internet are continually being blamed. But isn't the sole purpose of the smartphone to give us such quick access to people and information that we'll be free to do other things? Isn't technology supposed to make our lives easier? In Pressed for Time, Judy Wajcman explains why we immediately interpret our experiences with digital technology as inexorably accelerating everyday life. She argues that we are not mere hostages to communication devices, and the sense of always being rushed is the result of the priorities and parameters we ourselves set rather than the machines that help us set them. Indeed, being busy and having action-packed lives has become valorized by our productivity driven culture. Wajcman offers a bracing historical perspective, exploring the commodification of clock time, and how the speed of the industrial age became identified with progress. She also delves into the ways time-use differs for diverse groups in modern societies, showing how changes in work patterns, family arrangements, and parenting all affect time stress. Bringing together empirical research on time use and theoretical debates about dramatic digital developments, this accessible and engaging book will leave readers better versed in how to use technology to navigate life's fast lane.
Author: Maggie Berg
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442645563
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 126
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Book Description
In The Slow Professor, Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber discuss how adopting the principles of the Slow movement in academic life can counter the erosion of humanistic education.
Author: Hartmut Rosa
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271047704
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325
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Book Description
Everywhere, life seems to be speeding up: we talk of &“fast food&” and &“speed dating.&” But what does the phenomenon of social acceleration really entail, and how new is it? While much has been written about our high-speed society in the popular media, serious academic analysis has lagged behind, and what literature there is comes more from Europe than from America. This collection of essays is a first step toward exposing readers on this side of the Atlantic to the importance of this phenomenon and toward developing some preliminary conceptual categories for better understanding it. Among the major questions the volume addresses are these: Is acceleration occurring across all sectors of society and all dimensions of life, or is it affecting some more than others? Where is life not speeding up, and what results from this disparity? What are the fundamental causes of acceleration, as well as its consequences for everyday experience? How does it affect our political and legal institutions? How much speed can we tolerate? The volume tackles these questions in three sections. Part 1 offers a selection of astute early analyses of acceleration as experienced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Part 2 samples recent attempts at analyzing social acceleration, including translations of the work of leading European thinkers. Part 3 explores acceleration&’s political implications.
Author: Vince Poscente
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345506197
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
To succeed in today’s ever-accelerating world, speed is the name of the game. Forget “slow and steady wins the race.” The key to getting ahead is not fighting or hiding from speed, but embracing speed and using its power to your advantage. As Vince Poscente demonstrates in this rewarding and, yes, fast-paced book, speed has a unique ability to enrich your life. He empowers you to take control of your time, your tasks, your priorities, and your talents, and start making life everything you want it to be. Twenty new tips–exclusive to this paperback edition–show you how to: • recognize the difference between repetitive chores and passionate pursuits, and assign the appropriate amount of time and energy to each • mentally shatter the outdated idea that work, home, and leisure should be completely separate, and create a new, purpose-driven model of organizing your time • discover how to control interruptions, including how and when to accept them–by learning when to multitask and when to focus Speed provides amazing benefits–you become more conscious of how you spend your time, understand your authentic purpose, and find yourself more flexible and open to new opportunities. When you harness the power of speed, your life and work become less stressful, less busy, and more balanced. What are you waiting for? Praise for The Age of Speed: “The Age of Speed is your bible to surf the speed tsunami that’s overtaking business and life.” –Scott Cook, chairman and co-founder, Intuit “Thought-provoking . . . It’s time to make peace with the whoosh of your 24/7 lifestyle.” –Time “[Vince Poscente’s] counterintuitive notion of embracing speed rather than coping with it will change the way people live and work.” –Stephen M. R. Covey, author of The Speed of Trust
Author: Ken Browne
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745632572
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 489
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Book Description
Thoroughly revised and fully updated, An Introduction to Sociology gives concise yet comprehensive coverage of all the topics specified by the GCSE examining boards. The second edition was described by the AQA's Chief Examiner for GCSE Sociology as establishing 'the standard for textbooks at this level' - this new edition builds on the book's existing achievements. New material is found throughout the book, including substantive new sections on gender, identity, citizenship, education, new social movements, poverty and the welfare state, religion, the mass media, work and leisure, and population. The book has been carefully designed to support and extend students' learning. Each chapter begins with a summary of the key issues to be covered, and goes on to highlight important terms, which are then explained in a clear glossary. Summaries at the end of each chapter, a lively range of new activities and discussion points, the use of websites, as well as helpful suggestions for coursework, all add to the book's value as a learning and teaching resource. Student-friendly cartoons, tables, diagrams, and photographs - and the re-designed internal lay-out - also enliven the text, making sociology seem exciting and relevant to students of all interests and abilities. The new edition of this highly successful textbook will prove invaluable to anyone taking an introductory sociology course, especially at GCSE and related levels. Students taking AS and A-level - as well as Access, nursing, and health and social care courses - will also find the book provides an easy and fun introduction to studying sociology.
Author: John W. Mohr
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231542585
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
Social scientists seek to develop systematic ways to understand how people make meaning and how the meanings they make shape them and the world in which they live. But how do we measure such processes? Measuring Culture is an essential point of entry for both those new to the field and those who are deeply immersed in the measurement of meaning. Written collectively by a team of leading qualitative and quantitative sociologists of culture, the book considers three common subjects of measurement—people, objects, and relationships—and then discusses how to pivot effectively between subjects and methods. Measuring Culture takes the reader on a tour of the state of the art in measuring meaning, from discussions of neuroscience to computational social science. It provides both the definitive introduction to the sociological literature on culture as well as a critical set of case studies for methods courses across the social sciences.
Author: Donald MacKenzie
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691217785
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
A remarkable look at how the growth, technology, and politics of high-frequency trading have altered global financial markets In today’s financial markets, trading floors on which brokers buy and sell shares face-to-face have increasingly been replaced by lightning-fast electronic systems that use algorithms to execute astounding volumes of transactions. Trading at the Speed of Light tells the story of this epic transformation. Donald MacKenzie shows how in the 1990s, in what were then the disreputable margins of the US financial system, a new approach to trading—automated high-frequency trading or HFT—began and then spread throughout the world. HFT has brought new efficiency to global trading, but has also created an unrelenting race for speed, leading to a systematic, subterranean battle among HFT algorithms. In HFT, time is measured in nanoseconds (billionths of a second), and in a nanosecond the fastest possible signal—light in a vacuum—can travel only thirty centimeters, or roughly a foot. That makes HFT exquisitely sensitive to the length and transmission capacity of the cables connecting computer servers to the exchanges’ systems and to the location of the microwave towers that carry signals between computer datacenters. Drawing from more than 300 interviews with high-frequency traders, the people who supply them with technological and communication capabilities, exchange staff, regulators, and many others, MacKenzie reveals the extraordinary efforts expended to speed up every aspect of trading. He looks at how in some markets big banks have fought off the challenge from HFT firms, and how exchanges sometimes engineer technical systems to favor certain types of algorithms over others. Focusing on the material, political, and economic characteristics of high-frequency trading, Trading at the Speed of Light offers a unique glimpse into its influence on global finance and where it could lead us in the future.
Author: James Gleick
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 067977548X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
From the bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of Genius and Chaos, a bracing new work about the accelerating pace of change in today's world. Most of us suffer some degree of "hurry sickness." a malady that has launched us into the "epoch of the nanosecond," a need-everything-yesterday sphere dominated by cell phones, computers, faxes, and remote controls. Yet for all the hours, minutes, and even seconds being saved, we're still filling our days to the point that we have no time for such basic human activities as eating, sex, and relating to our families. Written with fresh insight and thorough research, Faster is a wise and witty look at a harried world not likely to slow down anytime soon.
