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Book Reviews: Faster - The Acceleration of Just About Everything, by James Gleick

January 1st, 2001 seems to be an appropriate date to review James Gleick’s book “Faster”, since the book is about the continual (and especially the recent) acceleration of many aspects of our lives. “Faster” also seemed appropriate for a FabTime book review, because it is by and large about time. Faster received numerous positive book reviews from newspapers and magazines when it was first released. The book is well-written, and well-researched, with a slew of references and anecdotes. It is written in a detached, but frequently amusing style, and covers a wide range of sub-topics concerning time.

The main idea behind the book is that as our technologies speed up, so do other aspects of our lives, such as our expectations for entertainment, and doing multiple things at the same time. Gleick feels that “if we don’t understand time, we become its victims” and so the book analyzes our relationship with time. Particularly interesting tidbits include the fact that the door close button on most elevators is actually disabled, but remains, in part, to give people a sense of having more control over the process. Also the fact that television and radio interviews are routinely compressed slightly, to remove the annoying pauses and delays of ordinary speech. Rush Limbaugh was apparently quite surprised when he found that his producers were able to save six minutes out of each hour-long program this way (and fill them with advertising, of course). We also found interesting Gleick’s examples of how large corporations save their own time at the expense of their customers’ time, through the use of things like complex automated voicemail systems.

We thought that the chapter most relevant to semiconductor manufacturing was one entitled “The Paradox of Efficiency”. Here Gleick explains how increasingly efficient systems are more negatively affected by unexpected events than systems that include more slack. The example used in the book is commercial flight scheduling. The airlines have become so good at scheduling flights to minimize idle airplanes that, when there is a problem with a plane, there are no extra planes around to take over. Similarly, with tightly scheduled hubs, weather delays cause cascading series of problems. Gleick refers to systems without much spare capacity as “tightly coupled”, where perturbations are felt throughout the system. This is analogous to a wafer fab in which all tool groups are highly utilized. A problem at one tool can lead to WIP bubbles throughout the fab, because the tools have insufficient slack to absorb the extra variability.

Gleick seems to have a slightly negative attitude towards this acceleration of our culture, and the things this acceleration is taking away from us. However, it is difficult to say for certain, because he refrains from drawing many conclusions. We thought that the book would have benefited from some firmer conclusions, some further discussion of the implications of the acceleration on our future. However, Gleick writes more as a scientist, dissecting a phenomenon in which he has interest. And, of course, nothing he writes is going to slow down society’s “overdrive”, so perhaps there is no point in his making empty recommendations. Overall, if you have taken note of the ever-decreasing amounts of quiet time, the chronic increase in multi-tasking, or just the general way in which time seems to be going by faster and faster, you will likely find “Faster” an engaging read.

If you would like to buy this book, just click on the following link to open a new window and go directly to Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything on Amazon’s website. FabTime is an Amazon affiliate.