Review - Faster

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Review - Faster - James Gleick

James Gleick is the master of edgy popular science, probably best demonstrated in his masterful book on chaos theory (Chaos) and also in his technology surfing books. Unfortunately, interesting though the topic of Faster is, his approach doesn't work quite as well in this book, which is most reminiscent of a Malcolm Gladwell book on a conceptual issue, such as The Tipping Point.

The premise is both interesting and often made - that the unforgiving pressure to do more, to achieve more, to cram more into life, means that we are constantly looking at ways of doing things faster. Fast food. Multi-tasking. MTV. Sound bite culture. Classical music radio that never plays a whole piece. And much more.

There's nothing wrong with that premise - and it was worthy of a book. The problem is that Gleick's approach doesn't deliver as well as it should. It's a little over heavy on the fancy prose (I obviously wanted something, erm, faster), but most significantly, it's like the whole book is an introduction. Chapter after chapter is "There's this happening. And this. And this." The reader keeps waiting for the actual book to start - the analysis, the development. And it never comes. There's just too much of a tirade, a bombardment of "this is the way it is", without doing anything with it.

Given that Gleick is a very clever writer, this is probably intentional. The idea, I presume, is to subject us to "faster" style bombardment of fact. But unfortunately it's a triumph of style over content. Like the fast food or MTV, it doesn't satisfy the consumer who wants some depth. We need more.

Of course it's not all bad - how could it be with Gleick at the helm? There are plenty of fascinating facts and historical context. We see how the second used to be constantly refined to match the world, until it was decided that the second itself was more important, and after that it was the world that got it wrong. There's the remarkable way that US radio producers have been able to chop great chunks out of a programme time (allowing more time for advertising - shorter and shorter ads, of course) by electronically removing hesitations and slips, and by slightly speeding up the whole thing. And much more. But it's still one of those buffets that leaves you wanting more very soon after, and that's a shame. (Oh, and am I the only one who sees the irony of this book being available as an abridged audio CD?)

Also in hardback: also in audio CD (abridged):
also in audio cassette (unabridged): also in download (Microsoft Reader):

Reviewed by Martin O'Brien

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