Living Fast and Slow
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 12 July 2018
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Abbreviated books, short-form TV, time-management gurus - has the cult of speed gone too far and is it time to slow everything down?
Ed Butler speaks to two business people hoping to cash in on our ever more hectic lives: Holger Seim co-founded Blinkist, which offers boiled down versions of long-form non-fiction books, while Perrin Chiles runs Adaptive Studios, which produces TV mini-dramas squeezed into slots that can be as short as 10 minutes.
But rebellion is afoot in the form of Carl Honore, whose unabbreviated book, In Praise of Slowness, pushes back against our culture's supposed need for speed.
(Picture: People rush through Manhattan, New York City; Credit: Georgijevic/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:08.4 | So you've heard about fast food, fast leisure, fast news on the go. |
| 0:14.0 | Time for Fast TV. |
| 0:15.7 | We've really gotten very excited with the rise and evolution of short formform storytelling, really shrinking the narrative from 22 or 44-minute-length episodes down into more snackable bites. |
| 0:29.5 | Yes, today we are asking, where will all this abbreviated culture take us? |
| 0:34.8 | We're hardwired for feast and famine in a world of abundance. We eat too much. The same thing happens with information technology and social media. We're hardwired for feast and famine in a world of abundance. We eat too much. |
| 0:38.2 | The same thing happens with information technology and social media. We're hardwired for those |
| 0:41.9 | little dopamine squirts we get from connection and distraction. We go for it, but that doesn't |
| 0:46.2 | make it good for us. Time to slow it down a bit. Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:53.9 | There has been a lot of debate in recent years about the stresses of modern life on our limited attention spans, increasingly limited, some claim, and our ability to deal with all the demands that are busy life places on them. |
| 1:06.1 | Sorry, couldn't get away. I didn't. I've got an intern in a week doing a video conference. |
| 1:11.3 | You know, it just seems like |
| 1:12.5 | that's the way we talk to each other. |
| 1:13.9 | It's no longer, how are you, I'm fine. |
| 1:15.5 | I'm so lucky if I get to bed before three, |
| 1:17.2 | then I'm up again at six and it starts all over again. |
| 1:19.3 | It's like, how are you? |
| 1:20.1 | I'm busy, I'm actually thinking of getting my makeup tattooed on my face just to save time. Such a good idea. |
| 1:28.3 | Yeah. |
| 1:28.8 | It's just finding the time to do it, though. |
| 1:30.6 | The busy person is someone that's racing, cramming, multitasking. |
| 1:35.1 | It's about juggling after-school activities. |
... |
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