The great rush forward

Nurturing takes time, as do a lot of things that are good for us: slow, sustainable food; a gradual detox; a laid-back, more reflective way of life.

Yet speed seems to govern modern life, and many of us feel there are no chances to slow things down. "As cities get bigger, everything starts accelerating," Geoffrey West, a theoretical physicist, told the Times magazine. "There is no equivalent for this in nature. It would be like finding an elephant that's proportionally faster than a mouse."

If it's quicker, it's better, and every second counts. Google assumed that when it introduced Google Instant, which predicts Internet search queries and shows results as soon as someone begins to type. Google calculated that the tool would cumulatively save people more than 3.5 billion seconds every day.