Wednesday, October 3, 2018

Five books to get to a grip on the pace of life

Judy Wajcman is the Anthony Giddens Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is the author of several books on technology and culture, such as The Social Shaping of Technology, Feminism Confronts Technology and TechnoFeminism.

Wajcman's latest book is Pressed for Time: The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism.

At the Guardian she tagged "five books to explain why we’re moving so fast – and how to slow down," including:
Our fixation with optimising time recalls The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ry, whose eponymous hero arrives on Earth to find a merchant selling sophisticated pills intended to quench one’s thirst: take one each week and the need to drink disappears. “Why are you selling those?” the little prince asks. “Because it saves a lot of time,” replies the merchant. “Experts have worked it all out. You save 53 minutes a week.” “If I had 53 minutes to spend,” says the prince, “I would walk very slowly towards a spring of fresh water.”
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue