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So, we always seem to complain about how today is making life to fast or how were getting lazier because of all of this new technology.
But I've found this webcomic here: xkcd: The Pace of Modern Life
That may explain that we may have been complaining about modern times way longer than we realize. Is this really true? Where can I find more information on this?
All Golden Ages get identified after they have already passed, no one has ever actually recognized that he or she was in the Golden Age while it was taking place.
It is phenomena triggered by the fact that while the times are always getting better, we personally are deteriorating. With age comes the loss of idealism, the awareness of inconsequence in the universe, and the unwelcome knowledge that one keeps getting closer to the end rather than the beginning. The real changes are taking place in the people, but the tendency is to place the blame on the alterations of the world.
People compare current life to the past not the future and generally speaking, at least in the past 200 years, life have been getting more advanced and moving at a faster clip exponentially. Today we consider this to be fast and compared to the past it is but in just 10 years people will back on this time and ask the same questions we ask about people in the 1970's and laugh because they thought complained life was moving too fast.
People have been complaining about the pace of "modern life" since 3000BC. Look at Khufu he built that pyramid in 20 years...why in my day it took a good 50 years to stack stones that high...and we appreciated it...you kids and your new fangled papyrus...
Last night I saw the Nat Geo channel and it showed a how a bunch of cold die-hards lived in areas around the Arctic Circle. Absolutely stunning vistas and gorgeous scenery. They were ostensibly living in 'idyllic' circumstances until until you get a peek at their 'modern life' up there. From the looks of they had constant strees to deal with, to hunt for food, to make shelter, to plan for devastation. Oh they enjoyed themselves too but when one sees their experience it looks to me like you can never escape the pace of 'life' anywhere and at any epoch. We're eons from prehistoric man but really we no doubt have the same stresses as they did in their pristine environments of no cars, no buildings, etc etc. It's all the same except those back when didn't have to register for Social Security...;-)...
Have we always been complaining about the pace of modern life?
It would seem so. There are Egyptian papyri lamenting the increasingly fast pace of life and the lack of respect the younger generation has for its elders.
I think the "generation gap" is reflection of this. If I recall correctly, this gap is a modern thing, where tech has been advancing so fast that the next generation are using different technology than the previous, so there is a notion that things are moving fast to the point a parent's children are not using the same tech as the parent were when they were children.
Before the technology revolution, the pace of things were rather slow, while inventions did come, none were at the pace they have been for the last 100 years or so. Just look at someone who lived during the wild west days; some had the possibility of living with just horses, all the way to when the atomic bomb, that is one heck of an advance in technology compared with all the previous years in history.
I think in the past, pretty consistently, people generally regarded the pace of life as being too slow. It took a really long time to do very ordinary things, and the impetus of technological development was almost always directed at getting things done sooner if not quicker, because people were disaffected with how slow they were.
I hate it when I click on a link and it takes three seconds to open. I complain about how slow it is, even today.
You know we've been really talking about clock-time so far. I think there's another type of time and that's the psychological one. I think all of us have experienced that one, i.e. when you're having a great time, the passage of time seems to go by quicker. When you're not enjoying yourself, time goes by slowly.
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Have we always been complaining about the pace of modern life?
