Now Hear This, Quickly: the 66-second minute

From magic no-doze pills to speed speech to cram more hours in your day. Already they're quipping about 66 second minutes. The faster stimulus comes the less time we have to analyze and the more passive we become. Although, I guess becoming a passive sponge while studying is a good thing, if everyone starts doing this (news stations, etc.) it'll be 1984 double plus good. You think I'm alarmist? Read below:

"Ms. Gaines is the vice president of Prime Image, a maker of devices like the Digital Time Machine that shorten audio and video recordings by up to 12 percent with "no discernible results." Micro-editing, as the process is called, created a stir last year when some broadcasters were reported to be using the technology to squeeze more advertisements into the same block of time. "

and

"Digital time compression, however, works by discarding tiny segments of repetitive audio (for example, 30 milliseconds of a vowel) and reconnecting the remaining bits, leaving the pitch unaltered. "

People already love it. Does you child want to get jiggy wit it? How about hooked on speed.

"I've heard of instances where people go to 4X, and they still want it to go faster," said Blake Erickson of Telex Communications, which makes "talking book" audio players for the educational market. "

www.nytimes.com...

edit- check out how invasive this is pervasive:

" Perhaps the most popular is Enounce's 2XAV plug-in (which works with both Real and Windows players and costs $29.95); the latest version of Windows Media Player offers a proprietary version of this feature. Similar capabilities are finding their way into other hardware - for example, the latest DVD recorders from Panasonic. "

[Edited on 2-10-2003 by ktprktpr]

interesting..

why dont they just talk faster though...

ihavenoclueitmightbesomethingcalledthedreadedchipmunkeffect,ifyouunderstandwhatimean!

haha i see what you mean so they get 6 secconds back of time or sort of they save 6 secconds sounds an interesting idea...

I read about this a while ago and thought it was a very good product.
Ever record a lecture and go back to listen to it for note taking, its boring and you wish it would speed up. Actually I have a variable speed tape recorder that can speed it up a bit, but the speaker sounds like a chipmunk. This is the same idea but with out the sound pitch being affected.
You know you can read a book far faster then listening to someone read it to you, and you understand it with no problems, this is a bridge between the two, someoen is still reading to you, but you can make it a bit faster and still absorb it well.

You try telling a college professor to "Speak faster"

half the ppl r all hyped up on coffee too, maybe it's a conspiracy to speed us all up?? faster production...more money fer them

I'm a professional audio engineer,and this technique has already been used with non-linear editing programs such as Pro Tools.It seems that they've simply created software that allows you to compress A/V without going into the waveform and manually doing the edit.They've been compressing songs on the radio for a while now-(You've never noticed that songs you know well seem to play a little faster on the radio,or you hear a new song,like it and but it,and when you take it home it sounds different,or slower?).A second here and there adds up to advertising dollars for the broadcasters.Similarly,have you ever noticed that you can't keep up with a lot of rappers(not that that's my genre of choice,BUT-),or that when they perform live they need extra rappers with them to get all of the lines delivered?They edit their lines in the studio,that's why you can't keep up-no one has that kind of lung capacity.
We have already been mutated and didn't even notice it.
Relax,and enjoy your "GENETIC UPGRADE"..........

I like my music au naturel and ad-free wherever possible. If I ever found a radio station engaging in the compression process to build their ad time, I would bypass it and never listen again.

That's unlikely for me though, because I don't listen to the stations that play manufactured pop. I think they're on a permanent ad cycle anyway.

This will get more complex as we rely less on larynx and more on telepathy in future. I hope we get to evolve some decent filters... all in time.

Originally posted by MaskedAvatar
I hope we get to evolve some decent filters... all in time.

...I'm still trying to find a junk mail filter for my email that will just automatically throw it out *before* it even gets into my Junk Mail box...Personally, I'd rather just be able to manually add the email addresses I want into a Safe List & the account would simply throw out everything that isn't on that list.


Essentially though, this is how technology has outstripped the human social capacity to understand it...Humanity is being forced to adapt to technology instead of technology adapting to humanity.

Evolution does *not* advance as fast as technology & humanity can't keep up with it. We should be making the technology adapt to *us* instead.


[Edited on 4-10-2003 by MidnightDStroyer]

Possibly this has been going on for a hundred years or more. I have a friend very into classical music. He says that most, if not all, classical music is played much faster than it was played originally.

I don't really mind this speeding up of life, unless I notice it.

sounds like they want to create "newspeak" to me

i like "oldspeak" quite well thank you