4. Stories About Speed and Time

In this chapter, the focus is on perspectives about the time needed for change. Five case studies concentrate on human limits, historical developments, speed, and time. For example, the Lotka-Volterra model which examines the relationship between prey and predators indicates just how long-term phases and developments can be. A longer-term view highlights the need to protect human existence: by burying nuclear waste in Finland or safeguarding seeds and crops for millennia in Norway. The Long Now Foundation proposes that adding a zero in front of the year in which humankind is living can make time look quite different—a formula that, with the exception of the dates of publications, the authors adopt throughout the whole of this book. Looking at time through such a longer-term perspective can encourage people to zoom in and focus on items and issues that are really important within the longer timeframe of survival and sustainability. What happened on the New York Stock Exchange in May 02010 indicates just how out-of-human control technology has already become, particularly in the financial field. As a result of using a case study-based approach that emphasises a longer, slower understanding of time, as in this chapter, awareness can grow of how much more needs to be done to both gain and regain control over critically important information systems.