Change is the process by which the future invades our lives, and it is important to look at it closely, not merely from the grand perspectives of history, but also from the vantage point of the living, breathing individuals who experience it.

The rate of change has increased so much that our imagination can’t keep up.”

our attitudes toward things reflect basic value judgments.

This flow of experience consists—or is conceived of consisting—of innumerable “situations.” Acceleration of change in the surrounding society drastically alters the flow of situations through this channel.

In a famous study of a Canadian suburb they call Crestwood Heights, sociologists J. R. Seeley, R. A. Sim, and E. W. Loosley, state: “The rapidity with which the transition has to be accomplished, and the depth to which change must penetrate the personality are such as to call for the greatest flexibility of behavior and stability of personality.

A well-oiled machinery for the creation and diffusion of fads is now an entrenched part of the modern economy.

We have in our time released a totally new social force—a stream of change so accelerated that it influences our sense of time, revolutionizes the tempo of daily life, and affects the very way we “feel” the world around us.

The nomad of the past moved through blizzards and parching heat, always pursued by hunger, but he carried with him his buffalo-hide tent, his family and the rest of his tribe. He carried his social setting with him, and, as often as not, the physical structure that he called home.

How fast should children—or adults for that matter—be expected to make and break human relationships? Perhaps there is some optimum rate that we exceed at our peril? Nobody knows. However, if to this picture of declining durations we add the factor of diversity—the recognition that each new human relationship requires a different pattern of