Over a hundred years ago it was considered miraculous that people could go over 35 mph. Instead of taking a month or two to cross the continent, it could be done in a week thanks to transcontinental railroad.
Now we don't have the patience to take the train. We would rather fly and be on the other coast on the same day.
We don't have the patience to take the bus in our own cities. We would rather hop in our cars and be there in "no time".
I mused on this when I accessed the web from our cabin. In Duluth we have a nominal 1500 kbps with DSL and 28 kbps at the cabin (actually more like 24). It took three minutes to load a newspaper page. Part of the problem is that the designers of the page wrote it for those with higher speed connections. Somewhere I published this as Magree's law, but I can't locate it at the moment.
Although I would like to read a lot online while at the cabin, like the local papers, the relative slow speed tries my patience.
Many things we take for granted are far faster than our greatgreatgrandparents experienced. We flip a switch and have light; no lighting candles or kerosene lamps. Some things we don't even do with any effort. Our heat or air conditioning comes on automatically. No lighting a fire or waving a fan.
