Enough of Your Borax, Poindexter!

In a recent New Scientist editorial, it was pointed out that some researchers "extrapolate and speculate wildly." Case in point: there is evidence that people are walking more quickly than a decade ago, at least in 35 city centers around the world. According to the principal investigator (PI),

"The key conclusion is that the world is speeding up....
    "Pace around the world is 10% faster than ever before. That's not great for our health. As people speed up in their lives they are not eating properly, exercising or seeing friends and family. All these things can lead to all kinds of things, especially heart attacks."
     People who walk fast are also more likely to speak and eat quickly, wear a watch and get impatient, he says. They don't like to sit still, sit in traffic or wait in queues.

I wish, I wish there was a link somewhere to the study, or at least an abstract, because maybe there's more to this study than is being reported. But based on what's been reported, the PI is really overreaching in his inferences. I'd even go so far as to say he's just makin' shit up (and I was trained in anthropology, so I know from makin' shit up).

The data that have been reported are (1) people are walking 10% faster, and (2) they're covering 60 ft. in about 12 seconds. So, that's a savings of about 12 seconds for every 600 ft. Added up over a day, I'm guessing that's a savings of, oh, what, maybe 10 minutes? And what, pray tell, does the PI think people are doing with so much extra time? By which I mean, I can't think of many things that an extra 10 minutes a day would let one squeeze in. And it's not cumulative time, either; an extra 10 minutes a day saved by walking fast doesn't give you a whole 'nother free hour on Saturday. Plus, the study only considered people not on their cellphone and/or not carrying burdens. So, in other words, it only considered people walking flat-out. But it didn't seem to consider what proportion of the population is walking flat-out at any given time, which seems pretty important if one is going to argue that the pace of life is speeding up. Plus, this was all done in city centers. Few city centers offer a pleasant stroll (and even in those that do, it's only a small part that does).

Me, I walk pretty fast for a mile during my commute. I do it intentionally, for exercise; and for exercise to be of any use, you need to get the heart rate up.

I also walk fast from one place to another in town, because that gives me more time at the places I want to be: not so I can go to more places. And given the piddling amount of time saved by walking fast, I suspect that that may be what's up with a lot of fast walking. I don't know how you could calculate an average pace of life (how do you measure 'slowing down' at home or a museum, for example?), but data like walking 10% faster is meaningless in the absence of it.