The times they are a-changin’.
This post seems to be older than 12 years—a long time on the internet. It might be outdated.
The tech world is obsessed with what’s next. It has become so used to the constant flow of new products and new companies that newness itself has been placed on a pedestal. But outside of a few breakthroughs here and there, most things that are good are good because they got there slowly.
One of the constants on my mind is, “What’s next?” This is a hold over from Andrew Ferguson: The First 23 Years, in which I was always focusing on what was next, and which I acknowledged and talked about in The Blessing.
But how are we supposed to slow down? How do I live in a world that is going a million-miles-a-minute1? I have this vision from “Time Out of Joint“, an episode of Batman: The Animated Series. The Clock King has a device that allows him to operate at an extremely accelerated time rate apart from the rest of his reality. It’s been ages since I’ve seen the episode, but basically Batman and Robin are in Batmobile and the Clock King sticks his device to their car, making all the cars on the freeway appear super fast (I’m going to ignore the obvious relativistic implications of all of this):
Video clip if YouTube is being lame.
That’s how I sometimes feel about life (especially the part about me being Batman): I’m sitting in my awesome Batmobile and the world is passing me by and I need to do everything I can to bring myself back in-sync with the world. It’s also why my goal for this year has been pace; I don’t want to feel like I have to be trapped going at tortoise speed and don’t want to feel like I have to be forced to go at hare speed. I want to go at my pace; I want it to be good, even if that means slower than everyone else. And I have to say, it’s been harder than I expected with lots of things pushing and pulling me in every direction.
0a mere 1/11th the speed of light ↩