Hyperculture : the human cost of speed / Stephen Bertman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bertman, Stephen.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Speed--Social aspects.

Speed.

United States--Civilization--1970-.

United States.

Civilization.

Technological innovations--Social aspects--United States.

Technological innovations.

Technological innovations--Social aspects.

Physical Description:

xii, 266 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Westport, Conn. : Praeger, 1998.

Summary:

"If you don't have as much time to read as you wish you had, you must buy this book. Sit down, read it slowly, carefully, and thoughtfully, and discuss it with those you live, love, and work with. Professor Bertman has his hand on the dangerously rapid pulse of a society spinning wildly out of control and rushing perilously away from the values, rituals, sacredness, and simple joys essential to health and healing. Unless we heed his carefully researched warnings about the risks of our mass hyperactivity, we may end up dying before we have ever fully lived".

Paul Pearsall

Author, The Heart's Code

The rampant illnesses of our society -- including the disintegration of family values, destruction of the environment, soulless consumerism, and bodies ravaged by stress -- are familiar to us all. Stephen Bertman attempts to explain these disparate, overwhelmingly negative phenomena with a single unifying principle: that the accelerated pace of technological and social change has polluted American society and eroded the essence of our most fundamental values. In 1970 Alvin Toffler identified the psycho-biological disease of "too much in too short a time" and called it "future shock". Now Bertman daringly diagnoses an even more serious condition, "hyperculture", a pervasive and chronic warping of ethics and morals. The treatment for hyperculture, he argues in this book, will require nothing less than reasserting control over the technologies that now dominate us and taking bold steps to preserve the rapidly depleting bounty of nature.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [209]-260) and index.

ISBN:

0275962059

OCLC:

37854206