Fast Paced Society Causes People to Speak and Move Faster

A childhood game meant to amuse children with the silliness of very slow movement and speech accelerating to extremely fast speech, and movement, goes "Motor boat, motor boat go real slow." While the speaker talks in a very slow voice two people face each other holding both hands and walk slowly around in a circle. Picking up the pace, the speaker says, "Motor boat, motor boat go a little faster," as the participants move faster. Finally, talking as fast as possible, the speaker says "Motor boat, motor boat, step on the gasser," and the participants, stretching their arms out as far as possible and pulling on each other's hands, begin to circle fast and furiously, usually careening out of control and dropping to the floor.

But, in today's society, talking and moving as fast as possible is not seen as silly. Everything in our society seems to be about speed. There's Fast Food, Speed Dating, Speed Dialing, and Faster Internet. Faster internet allows us to participate in more social networks and read more information. This self bombardment then propels us towards even faster movement and speech, because now there is so much more information to digest and so many more "friends" to connect with.

In a fast-paced society, people tend to speak rapidly because there seems to be so many things to do in so little time. This quicker pace of life may cause some to rush their speech. All this obsession with speed causes people to talk at such a rapid pace that often their speech is incomprehensible.

Competing against so many people and so many ideas could be one reason that people speak extremely fast. John Moschitta Jr., (born 6 August 1954, in New York City) is a performer best known for his rapid speech delivery and commercials he did for FedEx. Before the category was eliminated, Moschitta was credited in The Guinness Book of World Records as the world's fastest talker, with the ability to articulate 586 words per minute. Raised with five sisters, he often remarked that he needed to talk fast "just to get a word in edgewise." Although Moschitta spoke extremely fast, every word he said was intelligible. (John Moschitta, Jr.)

Some fast talkers, due to a lack of inflection and variation in speech pattern, are sometimes unintelligible. Recently, a bored looking young girl at a restaurant's order counter repeated my order in staccato rapid fire speech. Due to this, and the fact that she spoke very softly, barely opened her mouth to speak, and the loud background noise, I finally just confirmed my order--hoping it was correct. I have heard professional auctioneers, trained to speak as fast as possible, speak slower-but also much more distinctly. On another occasion, my husband ordered a hotdog at a drive-up window. I ordered a hamburger. The girl at the window kept repeating his order and getting it wrong. My husband is one of those people who, at times, speaks extremely fast. On top of that, when speaking fast, he sometimes doesn't enunciate and will drop his head to his chin. Finally, we heard the order taker tell the manager "I can't handle this." The manager came to the window and took my husband's order. He also couldn't get the order right. My husband finally gave up and just said, "yes, that's correct" to whatever the manager said he had ordered. Ironically, my husband got the meal he ordered--because the cook, apparently misreading the order given to him, cooked exactly what my husband wanted--hotdog and fries.

It could be that people speak rapidly due to boredom with a job and desire to get rid of a customer quickly, so that they can return to thinking about more exciting things. Or perhaps social media has something to do with this--there are so many people to connect with, the need to think faster and faster becomes necessary. Maybe talking faster is a result of job stress. Workers believe that if they talk faster, they will get orders processed sooner, and thus have more time to relax between orders. Or is it that people, so used to receiving information at lightning speed from the internet, try to emulate that in the way they communicate? Another reason that people talk faster might be that speed is seen as giving the best customer service in the corporate culture.

There are two problems with all this "fastness." First, humans aren't computers, therefore, we will never be able to assimilate information as fast a computer. Secondly, we will never be able to calculate information as fast as a computer.

Star Trek fans may remember an episode where the Enterprise was lured to the planet of Scalos by a distress call. The landing party, unable to find any life on the planet, except for the buzzing of an insect, beamed back to the enterprise. Unseen to the crew, Deela, the Queen of the Scalosians, and other Scalosians beamed aboard the Enterprise with the landing party. Deela dropped a solution in Kirk's coffee cup, which hyper-accelerated Kirk. In front of the crew's eyes Kirk simply disappeared, as he, like the Scalosians, began moving at hyper-speed. Kirk tried to stun Deela with a phaser, but she easily moved out of the way of the beam. Amused at Kirk's defiance, she told him "it always happens this way; they are very upset at first" but "then it wears off and they learn to like it." (Wink of an Eye episode)

Deela tells Kirk that radiation poisoning transformed the population of Scalos, accelerating them out of the normal time frame and causing sterility in the males. Their only hope is to abduct members from other races in order to procreate. Unfortunately, to do this, the Scalosians have to hyper-accelerate the other race, causing them to die quickly. (Wink of an Eye episode)

Perhaps, people who live hyper-accelerated lives in real life, also at first resent it, but then become addicted to the fast pace. However, the stress of trying to keep up with the speed of computers--working faster and faster-eventually begins to take its toll on humans.

Their fate will be the same as those artificially hyper-accelerated races in the Star Trek episode. In the "Wink of an Eye" they too will burn out faster.

Sources:

John Moschitta, Jr., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Moschitta,_Jr.

Wink of an Eye (episode), http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Wink_of_an_Eye_(episode)