Mahatma Gandhi once said that there was more to life than increasing its speed. Yet, it’s likely our rate of travel will keep increasing without us noticing it all, much as passengers don’t feel an airliner going from four hundred to five hundred miles an hour.

Do you remember what’s called the inverted pyramid of knowledge? We start at the bottom. Let’s say that’s the start of recorded knowledge. Knowledge builds on knowledge, throwing the pyramid skyward and to the sides. The more man learns, the more the inverted pyramid grows.

For the most part, population has followed this model. More and more of us increase the inverted pyramid every second, upward and outward. I would say that speed increases, too, for everyone, getting faster and faster as our society knows more and has more people.

We can go into the woods and retreat from society and slow down our own lives. But down the street, back in the city, the laboratories and the classroom, experiment is building on experiment, research comes to new conclusions that are analyzed and developed and everything keeps moving faster.

We’re all building on something we can’t see and we’re traveling at a speed we can’t feel. I’m not trying to be profound or say something millions haven’t thought before. But the other day I was researching an article, sitting in a chair, wearing an Apple watch, and I felt I was going very fast.