No Time: Stress and the Crisis of Modern Life

Sarah Robertson is editor of the Canadian Book Review Annual.

Heather Menzies is an adjunct professor of Canadian Studies and
Women’s Studies at Carleton University, the author of eight books, and
a self-confessed workaholic. No Time, she notes in the preface, is her
“fourth book probing how society is changing as it entrains itself in
instant, globalized communication.”

Drawing on insights gleaned from such authorities as Jane Jacobs and
David Suzuki, the book explores the relentless movement toward global
synchronization and some of that movement’s by-products: today’s
hypermedia social environment and the stress-inducing space-time
compression it has brought about, deteriorating civility, a crisis of
meaning and accountability (epitomized by the Walkerton tainted-water
scandal, or, as Menzies puts it, “Canada’s Chernobyl”), our waning
ability to engage with the material world on both a civic and personal
level, and the rise of attention deficit disorder (“a perfect
set-up,” the author observes, “for an adulthood of compulsive work
and equally compulsive consumption”).

The book is divided into four parts. Parts 1 through 3 consider the
anaesthetizing effects of information overload and the acceleration of
everyday life on individuals, institutions (from health care to
social-welfare services), and society, respectively. Part 4 provides
glimmers of hope and tentative solutions. “The protests at the
People’s Summit in Quebec City and elsewhere,” Menzies writes,
“suggest that people sense the cracks in, if not the bankruptcy of,
running society on the bottom-line rules of speed and business
efficiency.” She offers prescriptions for personal and collective
renewal, but what resonates most in this section are her warnings of a
post–9/11 drift into totalitarianism.

Especially poignant are the author’s conversations with casualties of
the digital age: time-pressured truckers (“surrogates for our
isolation”), a fellow academic who falls victim to chronic fatigue
syndrome, and a BlackBerry-addicted management consultant who belatedly
recognizes the damage his workaholism has inflicted on family life.
Menzies’s timely, cogently argued book is essential reading for anyone
who identifies with these cautionary tales.