http://www.ced.org.in/docs/ced/publications/DD/DD3/The-Tyranny-of-Time.pdf
But Historian Stephen Kern, a professor at Northern Illinois University whose book The Culture of Time and Space chronicled the soaring velocity of life between 1880 and World War I, pointed out that "new speeds have always brought out alarmists." In the 1830s, he noted, it was feared that train passengers would suffer crushed bones from travelling at speeds as high as 35 miles an hour. Kern considers the current concern about the effects of our speeded-up lives a similar form of hysteria. "Technologies that promote speed are essentially good," he said, adding that, "the historical record is that humans have never opted for slowness."
Think about washing machines, Hoover vacuum cleaners etc. Even automobiles.
ReplyDeleteIn Canada speed limits are more of a suggestion that a law, as long as you keep within 20 km of the posted limit. So on our major highways where the limit is 100 kmh, it's pretty usual to goo up to 120 kmh, sometimes 125 kmh if there's no traffic congestion. This is a known thing. Everyone does it. Yet a couple of years ago when the government officially raised the speed limit on one local highway to 110 kmh the usual risk-averse fanatics all started shouting about how they would make the roads more unsafe.
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