Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - James Gleick Audiobook

This post has 11 comments with rating of 5/511

• 
  pryderi
  October 7th, 2023
  

  

  By the time I first read Augustine (’What is time’ :: Quid est ergo tempus) I had already noticed that the Romans and Greeks had perfectly good words for days and weeks, but only a sort of working approximation for hours, and next to nothing for minutes or seconds.
  I now understand that this is an even more perplexing cultural shift than it at first seems, and that there were very good reasons why mechanical clocks appeared in China long before they did in the West (where they only turned up at the very end of the Dark Ages).

  James Gleick’s Faster is a very good starter pack for the fascinating study of time awareness. but you won’t be able to stop there.

  Thanks again hdgdf.

  Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - James Gleick
• 
  wolfcomm
  October 7th, 2023
  

  

  @pryderi

  Could you recommend a list of other titles to look for in the same vein? Thanks

  Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - James Gleick
• 
  pryderi
  October 7th, 2023
  

  

  @wolfcomm

  Off the top of my head: G J Whitrow’s Time in History and Holfrod-~Strevens The History of Time.

  Whitrow is way easier to read, but Holfrod-Strevens has excellent footnotes and suggests other titles for further study.

  Having said which: Gleick’s book also offers several suggestions for further reading, especially if you are interested in the Arts side of the story.

  And obviously Dava Sobel’s Longitude, which is more about the ability to measure time accurately than the perception of time itself, but these are closely interleaved issues.

  Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - James Gleick
• 
  pryderi
  October 7th, 2023
  

  

  @wolfcomm

  And you want to read the James Gleick’s Time Travel: A History as well.

  But you probably already know that.

  Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - James Gleick
• 
  biscuit1
  October 7th, 2023
  

  If a photon is drawn into a black hole perpendicular to the event horizon, can it temporarily accelerate faster than the measured speed of light?
  And if sdo, what happens…?

  Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - James Gleick
• 
  caesar963
  October 8th, 2023
  

  

  Pains me to say, but “dark ages” in that context is a term now only deployed by the historically illiterate. (Those who (above) also ignorantly deny that the Brutish empire committed genocide.)

  Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - James Gleick
• 
  privateero
  October 8th, 2023
  

  @biscuit1, yes, my understanding is it accelerates beyond the speed of light and enters into another dimension. The SOL has been shown to be bypassed in teleportation as well as non-locality and quantum physics research. what is fascinating are the billionths of time units in one second. amazing.

  Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - James Gleick
• 
  pryderi
  October 8th, 2023
  

  

  I rarely respond to the planter’s nonsense; he is a seriously disturbed young man, and not my problem.

  For third parties however, I would like to point out that Charles Freeman (one of caesar’s favourite authors, if you can believe the stuff he posts) wrote: ‘Science, God’s Philosophers and the Dark Ages’ for the November 2010 edition of the New Humanist.

  If Charles Freeman be historically illiterate, I feel privileged to join that club.

  Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - James Gleick
• 
  caesar963
  October 8th, 2023
  

  “Planter?” Well, that’s another lie. Your imperial lot were the planters, remember. So, that’s more historical ignorance. It is also a hateful racial slur, whereby you blame the victim population for your own faults. Standard imperialist procedure. Anyone who knows Irish history would be aware of this.

  I regard your appalling claim that the Brutish empire did not commit genocide (unlike Germany), as seriously disturbing, and a further indication of historical ignorance. It is genocide denial.
  “Dark ages” is an historiographical term of art, applied to eras for which we have no written sources (such as the Greek Dark Age, 1100–900 B.C.). The term is consequently misapplied to the medieval period - & indicative of vast historical ignorance. It has not been used by professional academic historians since the 19th c.

  Consequently, in order to find support for your misuse of the term, you must seek out a magazine article. Yeah, Freeman’s work on the Classical era was excellent (your ref here to my taste in books seems somewhat stalkerish). On the medieval era, he is less reliable, and has something of an ideological bent. His piece is refuted in a subsequent issue.

  Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - James Gleick
• 
  apnea
  October 11th, 2023
  

  

  The humans continue to push the pedal to the metal as they’ve long passed the point of no return as we approach the extinction cliff. I’ll wager there won’t be a human standing come 2100. Y’all know I’m right or you soon will.
  ~~ ~~
  **How Did We Get Here? July 19, 2023**
  ‘
  “This is the opening question of Peter Russell’s excellent new book highlighted below. Sooner or later, almost everyone who is alive today will ask themselves the question of how we have come to this point in time. Some people may ask how we went so wrong or so far off the path. In reality, we have done exactly what we were supposed to do - be one of the most successful species ever to live on this planet. Of course, no differently than other wildly successful species, we have been TOO successful.”
  ‘
  https://erikmichaels.substack.com/p/how-did-we-get-here
  .

  Hurry up humans. There’s other species waiting to fill whatever niches we leave.

  Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - James Gleick
• 
  maxxhq
  October 11th, 2023
  

  

  Thank you again

  Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything - James Gleick

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