March 6, 2019
“The envelope arrived with no explanation but a New York City postmark. Kathryn Bouskill tore it open and shook out a small, silvery coin. It was stamped with a “20,” she saw as she turned it over in her hand—not 20 cents, or 20 dollars, but 20 minutes.
Bouskill studies health and human behavior as an anthropologist at RAND. She and another researcher, Seifu Chonde, teamed up to examine our scramble for new technology, our headlong rush to make everything go a little faster. We are hurtling toward a time of transformation, they concluded, without asking what all this speed means for our society, our security, and our sanity.
She knew the value of that coin right away.
Do We Have "Hurry Sickness"?
There's a word in German for that discombobulated feeling that life is just racing by: Eilkrankheit, “hurry sickness.” It means rushing home from work just to flip open your laptop. Or checking your cellphone more than 50 times a day, the U.S. average.
Bouskill wondered whether we might be coming down with a case of societal hurry sickness. She partnered with Chonde to test that idea. He came at the question from the opposite perspective, as an engineer and data scientist. He reminded Bouskill that a train can jump the tracks by going too fast, but also by going too slow.
He looked at how quickly technology will advance in the next 20 years. She looked at what that could mean for the human experience.
They concluded that we are about to shift into hyperdrive. The experts they interviewed, the research they reviewed, all pointed in the same direction. Dozens of technologies with the power to transform human life, from 3D printing to cognitive implants, could become as ordinary as a cellphone by 2040.
Society will have to adapt, on the fly, in ways it never has. It took the telephone 85 years to become a household mainstay; color television, 21 years; and the smartphone, 13 years. A key difference was the infrastructure involved. It took a long time to connect every household to a telephone line. In the digital world, it takes no time at all.
Years Until Technologies Became Mainstays of Life
Technology Years
Smartphone 13
Internet 15
Color Television 21
Car 71
Telephone 85
As Technology Transforms Life, Can We Adapt?
The speed of change is already testing our ability to respond. In 2010, for example, a high-speed trader working from home executed a series of split-second sales by algorithm, triggering a “flash crash” that briefly wiped nearly $1 trillion from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In 2013, a law student prompted a regulatory crisis by posting designs for a 3D-printed gun on the internet.
By 2040, the researchers concluded, the speed of life itself could pose a security challenge. In a crisis, the people making decisions will have less time to react, and more information coming at them. That's already a concern at the highest levels of national security and government. As Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned in a recent essay: “Decision space has collapsed and so our processes must adapt to keep pace.”
By 2040, the speed of life itself could pose a security challenge.”