Hyperculture.docx

1、Hyperculture Hyperculture Stephen Bertman 1 High-speed living enforces a live-for-the-present mentality that obscures history and memory. We must restore a balance of the past, present, and future.2 The airplanes that first attempted to break the sound barrier were ripped apart when they tried to pe

2、netrate the turbulent pressure waves rushing ahead of them. Only redesigned aircraftwith thinner, swept-back wings and streamlined fuselagespermitted test pilots to puncture the invisible wall of compressed air.3 The principles of physics that explain the sound barrier can also help us understand th

3、e origin and nature of stress in our lives. As the velocity of everyday life increasesas we fly faster and faster through the atmosphere of daily experienceour “aircraft” encounters a turbulence it was never designed to withstand. As our speed increases, invisible pressures buildup, pressures strong

4、 enough to shatter the structural integrity of our personalities and our relationships. Ultimately, we may lose control, or the craft we fly may disintegrate.4 The simple solution, of course, is to slow down. But if we cannot slow downor choose not tothe only remaining answer is to redesign our live

5、s, to adapt structurally to our newfound speed. But what does “adapt structurally” rally mean? An aircraft can be given swept-back wings that help it break the sound barrier, but we are human beings, not machines. What parts of our lives can we alter? And if the stress each of us feels is experience

6、d socially as well as individually, what changes must society as a whole make to accommodate itself to faster times?5 The answers to these questions will ultimately define the quality of American life. For the adaptations we make to speed alter the fundamental nature of our existence, not only in te

7、rms of our behavior but also in terms of our priorities. A faster society is a different society, different not merely in its velocity but in its values. Not stress but rather our accommodations to it will determine the future character of our civilization.Social Acceleration6 In 1970, Alvin Toffler

8、 described the symptoms of a new disease he called “future shock.” According to Toffler, future shock was a psycho-biological condition induced by subjecting individuals to “too much change in too short a time.” Toffler argued that technological and social changes were taking place so rapidly that p

9、eople could no longer adapt to them. “Future shock,” he wrote “is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the futureUnless man quickly learns to control the rate of change in his personal affairs as well as in society at large, we are doomed to a massive adaptational break

10、down.”7 Since the publication of Future Shock almost 30 years ago, the rate of social change has radically increased. Largely responsible for this increase has been the rapid development and deployment of older technologies and the swift introduction and growth of new ones. Supported by an electroni

11、c network of instantaneous communications, our culture has been transformed into a globally integrated system in which the prime and unchallenged directive is to keep up with change.8 The computer received scant attention in Future Shockand the understandably so. After all, the first word processor

12、did not appear until 1970; the first silicon chip, not until 1971; the first personal computer, not until 1975. Even as late as 1984, only eight out of 100 American households had a computer. In just two years, however, the figure doubled. And by 1994, there was a computer in more than one out of ev

13、ery three American homes. Meanwhile, computer speed was increasing at a rate of 55% a year, and e-mail and Internet use were just starting to become commonplace.9 At the same time, other technologies were revving America up. Sales of cell phones and fax machines, numbered in the low hundreds of thou

14、sands in 1980s, climbed to 7 million a year in just a decade. And by 1997, some 2 million Americans were carrying electronic pagers.10 Yet more important than the popularity of any one of these technologies is their combination, which radically reinforces and intensifies their individual impacts. It

15、 is their electronic linkage that keeps pictures, sounds, and data continually coursing on a nonstop, high-speed track, saturating our environment with instancy. And the more that society depends upon electronic information flow and entertainment, the more our everyday lives need to keep up with its

16、 speed-of-light pace, since our economic and emotional existence is wired into its circuitry.11 Without question, this speed can be exhilarating. It brings us what we need and want faster than ever before. But that same speed can also add stress to our lives. 12 For example, in a national survey con

17、ducted in 1986 by the Louis Harris organization, one out of three Americans said they live with stress nearly every day. And six out of 10 said they experienced “great stress” once or twice a week. In 1994, two out of 10 people questioned reported feeling great stress almost every day, according to

18、the findings of the Prevention Index survey.13 In addition, use-of-time studies by University of Maryland sociologist John Robinson have revealed a progressive increase in hurriedness over the years. In 1965, 25% of those surveyed said their lives were rushed all the time. By 1975, the figure had ri

19、sen to 28%; by 1985, it had climbed to 32. And, more recently in 1992, Penn State researchers Geoffrey Godbey and Alan Graefe put the figure at 38%, almost a 50% increase from 1965. Strikingly, those who lived in small towns felt as rushed as those who lived in big cities. Just as strikingly, both g

20、roups felt their lives were hurried not only at work but also at play.14 The presence of stress in our lives is also revealed by the printed word. In the last five years, almost 400 articles on stress and time management have appeared in popular national magazines. In addition, there are some 900 bo

21、oks currently in print on these topics. All these publications do more than just show that stress is a popular subject. They also demonstrate how little control we seem to have over it.15 Like it or not, weve all been drafted into an army, a peacetime army that fights on the battlefield of everyday

22、life. We wage “time wars” to use author Jeremy Rifkins term: wars between the slower pace our minds and bodies crave and the faster tempo our technology demands. We are all combat veterans of such wars.The Power of Now16 As we travel at warp speed, we fall under the sway of a new force, the power of

23、 now. The power of now is the intense energy of an unconditional present, a present uncompromised by any other dimension of time. Under its all-consuming power, the priorities we live by are transformed in a final act of adaptation to electronic speed. Our lives cease to be what they once were, not

24、because life itself has changed, but because the way we see it has been altered.17 The power of now replaces the long term with the short term, duration with immediacy, permanence with transience, memory with sensation, insight with impulse.18 Unlike the monastery or the desert, where mystics once a

25、ttained transcendent perspective by withdrawing from the world, the real of now is an environment of pervasive sensory stimulation and swift flux, a continually altered cosmos that offers us no fixed horizon. As a consequence, our lives come to be characterized more by their random trajectory than b

26、y any reasoned destination.19 The individual, the family, and society at large are all being transformed by the power of now. Not only is it altering their nature, it is changing the very meaning these words have in our minds. Thus, under its influence, both reality and our understanding of reality

27、are being reshaped. The Fluid individual20 The power of now immerses each of us in an atmosphere of transience and flux. We float on the current of an electromagnetic sea whose waves are visible on the screens of television sets and computers. Even as it seductively entertains or informs us with its

28、 content, each medium indoctrinates us with its form, a form characterized by instantly changing images. As result, we become progressively desensitized to the importance of continuity and wholeness in our lives. Inured to what is temporary, we lose touch with the permanent.21 In a culture fed by a

29、fast-moving electronic stream, those who “go with the flow” to find excitement and fulfillment inexorably speed up their lives. More than simply inducing stress, the prolonged acceleration of behavior can lead to marked changes in personality, changes evident in ones external appearance and inner se

30、nsibilities. Through diets, steroids, and plastic surgery, people seek the transformation of the outer self in the shortest possible time. Meanwhile, through psychotropic drugs and teachings that promise shortcuts to happiness and well-being, they seek the transformation of the inner self as well.22

31、 By assigning the highest priority to speed, the power of now undermines the value of those experiences and activities that require slowness to develop: psychological maturation, the building of meaningful and lasting human relationships, the doing of careful and responsible work, the creation and a

32、ppreciation of the arts, and the search for answers to lifes greatest problems and mysteries. At the same time, by encouraging the immediate gratification of the senses, the power of now obscures the need to cultivate those skills and virtuespatience, commitment, self-denial, and even self-sacrifice

33、 without which no civilization can long endure.23 Fulfilling the need to feel a certain way, satisfying the desire to look a certain way, the power of now shapes the individual within and without. Like a chameleon, whose colors change to match the background against which it moves, the individual fluidly glid